Arthur isn't a direct participant on the battlefield, but instead commands from a omniscient point-of-view, directing his knights to act on his behalf. As knights are added to the round table and new lands come under his rule priorities shift back-and-forth from conquering new lands to managing the kingdom. In turn based mode, players can assign fiefs to knights, and their reputations and skills impact the productivity and happiness of the territory. As the king, players set taxation rates and deal with emergencies whenever they arise. At the same time, players can pick up quests that will either further the storyline, bringing Arthur another step closer to attaining his destiny and determining whether he ends up being a righteous or tyrannical king who follows the Old Faith or Christianity. These alignments unlock special abilities and bonuses. Certain quests change the shape of the political landscape depending on what side the player supports to form alliances or to pit rival factions against each other.

Most of the game's emphasis is on real-time combat. Although there's an auto-battle button, where the computer calculates the probability of success and skips the fight, it's rare for them to work out in the player's favor. So players may prefer to take the hands-on approach to combat. As mentioned previously, the general look and feel is very similar to Medieval II: Total War. Players take command of armies and strategically maneuver them across the wide open battlefields. Knights act as hero units and can use special abilities that range from hiding soldiers to outright damaging or hindering opponents. At the same time, players will have to keep a number of factors in mind such as terrain, unit fatigue, and remembering what unit counter each other on what terrain. This isn't a game for casual strategists or beginners, a fact that's underscored by its difficulty.

Real-time combat is functional, but sometimes inconsistent. For example, the enemy was once able to spot our army's approach from the other side of a forested hill. Thick forests seem to do very little to throw off arrow attacks and the hide troops from sight quite the way they're supposed to. It's also hard to see units when they end up fighting in the woods. Another major issue with the battles is that a number of the units and magical abilities are overpowered, making an already difficult game even harder. The Curse of Shadows spell in particular can decimate armies. There's no way to set up a second army to send in reinforcements should a battle start to go badly, so we spent a lot of time having our armies trampled by everything from magical creatures to civil uprisings.

Even on the lowest difficulty setting, King Arthur is tough to play. The game provides a few throw away conflicts early on for the sake of the tutorial, then suddenly ramps things up greatly. The computer employs major bonuses and advantages that put it way ahead of the player. While the player is stuck using newly recruited soldiers, opposing factions are loaded with high ranking knights that use multi-star veteran units. Computer controlled factions also seem to have an endless supply of knights, compared to the player's very finite round table. So trying to starve out an opponent by taking out knights one at a time doesn't always work. Even when you manage to defeat some of the subordinates and conquer a town or two, victories tend to be very short lived. Territories are small enough to ensure that there will almost always be another knight nearby, ready to take advantage of your weakened post-battle state. Some of the enemy armies are so powerful that one of them can wipe out all your forces in a few turns. We believe games should be challenging, but the kinds of odds players face in King Arthur are a little ridiculous.

Unfortunately, there are only a handful of ways to improve units. The fastest way is through combat, and that requires the player to deal with the issues previously stated. There are no random creature encounters except quests to help level up the troops, so that means players have to find and defeat a low level knight, return the knight back to his king for ransom, then beat him down again. This process prolongs conflicts, but it's profitable and much more preferable than constantly being thrown down and kicked in the face by overwhelming forces. Otherwise, the only other out of combat training system involves sitting idly in special towns and hitting the end turn button until the soldiers level up - a slow and boring process. The game manual indicates a way to spend resources to train troops out of combat, but it must take a very long time to unlock because we never found it.
Players can also go on quests, which are text based adventures that both influence the local politics or drive the story forward. The decisions players make during quests will impact their moral alignment. These little adventures ended up being our favorite part of the game, especially since the game's excellent music score helped set the mood. They are also good way of gaining experience, but there's oftentimes a risk of falling into a battle that the player isn't prepared for, since quests offer no insight as to what kind of force the player might face until it's too late.

King Arthur packs a ton of features into the game, but sabotages itself with its unbalanced difficulty and general lack of diplomatic options. Besides quests, there's no way to open up diplomatic channels with neighboring regions, no way to coordinate attacks with allies, and no way to improve unstable relations with gifts. In many ways, the game practically forces players to go to war with all the neighboring regions. It's hard to believe how a game that involves so many layers of strategy has such a shallow diplomacy system. Even though we enjoyed playing many aspects of the game, there's only so many times we can take having our armies decimated by overwhelming forces while being powerless to do anything about it. Perhaps future patches will address this issue further, but enjoyment is limited to players who enjoy enduring that kind of punishment.