Follow TV Tropes

Following

Video Game / The Kings League

Go To

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_kings_league.jpg

The King's League is an online 2D Flash strategy game developed by kurechii

Kurestal Kingdom has prospered many years under the diligent reign of its King. However, the current King is already old of age – 90 years and counting. Plus, he has no living heirs left to take his place in the throne. Thus, His Majesty has declared a league – The King’s League – that whoever emerges champion will be eligible to battle him and ascend his throne and become king of the land. Ten people, and their loyal followers behind them, have decided to enter this league (including yourself) in hopes of becoming king. The main question is, will you be able to recruit enough people, fame, fortune, and territory to win the league, challenge the king, and take the throne?

A sequel, titled The King's League: Odyssey, has been made. In it, following the events of the original game, the winner of the King's League succeeded the king of Kurestal Kingdom. However, some time later, he became the target of an assassination. He survived, but his most trusted knight, Whitney, had to do a Heroic Sacrifice to save him. Kraig the Dark Knight was appointed as viceroy and a new King's League was announced to choose a replacement for Whitney. A young knight named Tristan joins the tournament in hopes of fulfilling his dream of being recognized as the mightiest warrior in Kurestal.

The original game can be found at here or here. The sequel can be played here.


Tropes present in The King's League:

  • Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You may have only two to four (once upgraded) units in your active party. All others can be in reserve - though, you still need to pay maintenance costs (gold and food). The sequel increases this limit to three to five, and as in the original, you have to pay for the additional slots.
  • Black Knight:
    • Kraig the Black Knight dons an all-black armor. In the first game, he can be recruited and serves as the super-powered Unique version of the Knight. In Odyssey, however, he betrays the King and ends killing Whitney during an attempt of assassination at the King.
    • Tybolt , much like Kraig, dons black armor. But his only relevance is that he fights in the polearm tournament representing the spearmen. If you choose to support the lancers instead, you'll have to fight and defeat him and 4 spearmen, but if you support the lancers, you get to recruit him for free if you defeat Quinsforth and 4 lancers.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: The mobile version allows players to buy five very powerful unique units with great classes for real money.
  • Cap: The maximum level your units can reach is 10. Stats, however, can be trained ad infinitum as long as you have the resources and time to afford it.
  • Colour Coded Armies: Played straight most of the time with most foes, and Subverted in others where some of their units look identical to yours.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: In Odyssey, losing 5 battles in a row is required to recruit the Unique Priest, Corthello. You'll likely to meet the requirements to recruit him on the eponymous Kings League, due to the immensely strong opponents when you enter the league for the first time being likely to curb-stomp your party.
  • Fragile Speedster:
    • Knights (Including Kraig, the Black Knight) in the first game mix this with Glass Cannon, as they typically have very high strength and high agility, which allows them to attack (and recover) the fastest compared to other units. But, they falter in terms of stamina. As a result, they are one of the first units to usually die in battle - not to mention they get murdered by archers and/or magicians.
    • Rogues and Assassins in Odyssey are typically fast, but have lower health compared to their Knight and Warrior equivalents.
  • Glass Cannon: In Odyssey, Spearmen (and later, Berserkers) focuses on solely improving their attacking power, albeit their durability are worse than the Lancers (and later, Gladiators).
  • Gold-Colored Superiority: Quinsforth the Lancer in Odyssey wears golden armor, and is a Unique unit, essentially making him one of the strongest units you can recruit... if you choose to support the Lancers in the polearms tournament.
  • Guide Dang It!: It will take some knowledge and achieving a hidden condition to recruit Unique units. The game however lets you know if you are able to get a chance at recruiting a unique unit. However in Odyssey, the game doesn't use this indicator at all to tell you if you can recruit Christabel the Thief (the unique Rogue), as she only shows up once you amass a lot of money and search for the city. The only tip you get is in one of the possible messages that appears in the recruitment menu.
  • Harder Than Hard: The sequel has Insane mode as one step above Hard. It gives enemies very high stats that grow at a heightened pace as the team rises through the league.
  • Jack of All Stats:
    • Swordsmen (renamed to Knights in Odyssey) at lower levels have near equal strength, agility, intelligence, and stamina. At higher levels, they start to specialize into slightly more defensive-leaning builds with high Stamina and Agility.
    • Odyssey have Lancers, which are a more straight example of this as their offenses and defenses are balanced between the offense-leaning Spearmen and the defense-leaning Knights.
  • Knight in Shining Armor:
    • Whitney the Crusader in the first game dons all-white armor (in contrast to Kraig), who is the Unique version of the Swordsman class.
    • Generally, this is the class promotion for the Knight class line in Odyssey (which fills the role of Swordsman class in the first game), which naturally includes the unique Knight Tristan.
  • Mutually Exclusive Party Members: In Odyssey, you can only get either Quinsforth the Lancer or Tybolt the Spearman due to the Polearm tournament event only happening once, and you can only choose to support either side. This also means the achievement you didn't get initially for recruiting either, must be done separately on a different playthrough.
  • Prestige Class:
    • Subverted in the original. A unit's class cannot be be upgraded to a stronger class. However, there are five unique characters or units (one corresponding to each basic class) available to be recruited (provided you find them in time) whose classes are basically upgraded versions of the typical ones. Crusader for Swordsman, Sniper for Archer, Black Knight for Knight, Wizard for Magician, and Cleric for Priest.
    • Played straight in the sequel. When they reach the appropriate level and you buy the right upgrade, your units can receive a two-tiered promotion into stronger classes. Knights upgrade into Templars then Paladins; Warriors can upgrade to Lancers or Spearmen, then to Gladiators and Berserkers, respectively; Archers to Hunters or Rangers, then to Sentinels and Snipers; And Mages to Wizards or Clerics, then to Sages and Bishops. The unique characters are still around, and sometimes they have unique classes, like Adela the Enchantress, who can be upgraded to Kurestal Maiden. Finally, while Tristan is a Knight, he has unique promotions: Crusader and Hero.
  • Rank Inflation: The final rating rank attained after defeating the King in combat goes from a minimum of E to a maximum of SSS.
  • RPG Elements: Each unit has four primary stats which influences how it performs in combat (and how the stats are used depends on the class). Strength affects physical attack power. Agility affects unit speed and minor defense power. Intelligence affects magic and healing power. Stamina affects the unit's maximum health and minor defense power. Every one of these stats can be trained (for a certain cost of food and time) meaning some of the class distinctions can be blurred.
  • Squishy Wizard: Magicians, Wizards, Priests, and Clerics all have very low to low agility and stamina - meaning that they can be easily killed by a few direct hits. However, they are the only classes with very high intelligence, and are the only magic classes. Magicians and Wizards focus on attacking foes, whereas Priests and Clerics focus on healing friendly units.

Top