Renown lures you in with the promise of your own castle and action-packed sword fights. Exactly what other games before it have mastered.
Few games have shaped my tastes today as much as the first Stronghold. I was literally enchanted at the time and fell into a veritable medieval frenzy. I was probably already fascinated by castles, knights and catapults before that, but it was only after Stronghold that I was unconditionally enchanted by the Middle Ages.
How could I not? At least in that game I could build my own castle and more importantly – I could fight epic siege battles. That”s what got me back then and today I”m sitting here, in my medieval costume, and I can”t help but wait for the next game that will take me back to that time.
That”s where a game like Renown comes in handy. Because once again it allows me to build my proud castle. Not like Stronghold, though, but instead the studio mixes gameplay from another chivalry game I had great pleasure with – Chivalry.
Build your own castle
Renown is by no means a building game, even though building villages and castles plays a major role here. Renown is clearly oriented towards typical survival games, in which I not only have to survive but also expand my personal empire. The open world is traversed from the first-person view and nowhere are resources safe from my pickaxe.
Stones? Smashed! Trees? Fallen! Iron? Dug! You know the game. Everything that is not nailed down is packed into the inventory and, in the best case, made nailed down in your own camp. Either by combining the resources at a blacksmith”s forge to make a nice suit of armour, a sharp sword or other useful tools.
Or by constructing buildings from them. These can be simple huts, especially at the beginning. Later, however, they become real half-timbered houses and finally I show off with a huge citadel complete with wooden battlements. Such large buildings easily become prestige projects of entire clans whose members have built the structure together.
Renown wants to avoid the annoying grind traps of other survival games of this kind. It is important to the development team that players get to their feet quickly, don”t have to spend a lot of time searching around and, above all, don”t have to walk the same paths too often.
For this reason, carts and warehouses are available early on. With the help of such transport carts, large quantities of resources are to be brought into the territory of one”s own clan and shipped to warehouses. I can then access all the resources in the warehouse at the forge, while my clan brother Oswald does the same in the tailor shop.
Honourable duel
Simplifying Renown also involves a slightly different approach to survival. While the competition is always about gathering enough food, at least initially, Renown puts that in the background. Originally, no system for hunger, thirst or cold was planned at all. In the meantime, it has become an option again. But even if it should come in the course of development, this aspect of survival remains a small part.
Actually, Renown is supposed to be primarily about fighting other players. You fight for your life with your head held high, sword in hand, and will not starve to death in the forest at some point. PVP is the most important principle of Renown and this is due to its roots.
Nearly all of the team members at the development studio play or played Chivalry and Renown is expected to carry over much of what worked well in that game. As a reminder, Chivalry and Chivalry 2 are a kind of medieval Battlefield. Only here it”s all about wielding wands, maces and crossbows. For me, both parts belong to the best medieval battle experiences that games have to offer.
In the briefly available battle demo of Renown, I could already try out the system a little. And yes, it really does play exactly like Chivalry. So the right attack angles, timing when parrying and strategic positioning are immensely important. It also shows that Renown has quite an elaborate combat system without being too overwhelming.
Can this be good?
Renown could be a really exciting title for all those who feel at home in the Middle Ages – or at least in our glorified idea of them. Because on paper it has a lot of what a rousing action game about noble knights actually needs. It has an action-packed combat system that nevertheless requires a lot of practice and talent. But it also has a building part, in which I collect goods, claim territories, carve houses, forge weapons and build castles. The castles are then crumbled in hopefully stylish sieges.
And there”s the rub – it”s still completely unclear how imposing it will all be. Renown looks fancy thanks to Unreal Engine 4, no question about that. But the world still seems rather empty and barren. In order to create battles as fantastic as those in Chivalry, the servers have to be really full. The clans must organise themselves and large-scale battles must occur naturally.
This makes Renown very dependent on its community. On the one hand, this will discourage individual players, but it is also a general risk. If the calculation doesn”t work out and there are too few real battles, then in the worst case, what remains is a reasonably nice castle-building simulator without a real challenge.
But things can also turn out quite differently if the team does a good job. Both in developing their vision and in making Renown known to enough potential buyers.
Editor”s Verdict
I like building, but I also find destructive sieges quite appealing. That”s why Stronghold and Chivalry are among my favourite medieval games. So Renown is knocking down open castle gates with me. Of course, I”m under no illusion that Renown can come close to copying the castle belly arm of Stronghold, but I”ve been wishing for the option to pull up such a structure from the first-person view since Medieval Dynasty.
Renown has a lot more in common with Chivalry. After all, the battles are controlled almost identically. But the team has to remember that Chivalry is still more than its battle system. Here I actually have the feeling of storming a castle together with a hundred other knights. I don”t feel that atmosphere in Renown yet. And it won”t happen unless the game lives and its community makes it their own. That will be the big challenge!
