I have always found myself drawn more to bows and arrows than guns and bullets. To cavalry over tanks. Elder Scrolls over Fallout. So when new studio Raw Power Games revealed its debut title, Chronicles: Medieval, back at Summer Games Fest last year, my interest was immediately piqued. Now, a year later, Raw Power is back, giving us a better peek at what players can expect from the blood-soaked battlefields of Chronicles: Medieval.
To catch you up, Chronicles: Medieval is a sandbox RPG that mixes third-person action combat with larger strategic-based battles where you assume the role of an army’s commander. Set during the period of the Hundred Years’ War in Europe, your time will be spent earning renown, recruiting troops, waging battles, and growing your legacy. Serving as one of the core pillars that Medieval has been built around, these battles will range from smaller skirmishes of a mere 20 soldiers all the way up to large-scale battles with 2,000 at your command.
Battles look to be divided into two main approaches – a battlefield view to give directions to your forces, and directly controlling your character over their shoulder. Giving orders to your army will look and feel a bit familiar to fans of other medieval strategy games, where you will be aligning your troops into various formations. Battle planning will begin before the first arrow is even shot. During this preparation, Medieval has you organize your forces into “battle lines”, positioning them in your starting lines from a high-in-the-sky vantage point, and giving them their initial actions. Raw Power explains that these act as a sort of underlying “rule” that your AI units will follow during the battle.
While playing battlefield commander is neat and all, I’m more excited about assuming direct control of my character and heading to the front lines. I enjoy a good strategy game as much as the next knight, but sometimes I just want to swing my sword around and hit things. Speaking to members of the development team, Medieval’s action combat will utilize a combo system that incentivizes you breaking an enemy’s posture (sounds a bit like stamina from a FromSoftware game), allowing you to pull off a gruesome execution attack.
Besides looking sweet, with blood splattering across the screen, performing these attacks with your own forces around to see looks to have a far more important effect – boosting morale. Morale among your troops (ranging from Inspired / Confident / Concerned / Wavering / Broken) will allow your men to fight better while inspired. On the flip side, should their wills ever be broken, it may cause them to flee in terror, causing a rout and losing you the battle. Your enemies have their own morale too, and breaking them will cause a similar outcome, allowing you the choice to spare or run down the escaping forces.
On that topic, the folks at Raw Power talked briefly about how this would work, or at least a component of it. As you progress through the campaign, while on the “Exploration Map” (which is where it seems like more of the RPG-ish elements will be found), one such option is with the recruitable mercenaries. The specifics of how this will all work remains a mystery for now, but the general gist is that paying these potential allies – ranging in quality and strength – will bring them to your cause. I look forward to making my own little medieval version of Outer Heaven in Chronicles: Medieval one day.
Raw Power briefly touched on a number of exciting other features that will be added closer to launch to shake up combat even further. The big one has to be the addition of sieges. The idea of laying siege to a massive castle sets my nerdy heart all aflutter, and paired with a weather system that will impact battles, really gets my blood going. Unfortunately, Raw Power didn’t have any real specifics in terms of timing. On the plus side, fans can look forward to pretty weather effects sooner, albeit without any gameplay effect, being purely cosmetic.
Rounding out our look at the Medieval’s combat, the Raw Power crew had one last surprise for us. The original announcement trailer featured the voice work of actor Tom Hardy narrating the dramatic trailer, but that isn’t all the star power that Raw Power is looking to bring to bear. Grand Admiral Thrawn himself, Lars Mikkelsen, will be adding his voice to the cast in some fashion. Specifics on who the prolific Danish actor is unclear, but no doubt he will bring his signature gravitas and weight to whatever situation puts your character and him in way of one another.
Raw Power is still keeping much of Chronicles: Medieval close to their chainmail vests, and despite the team’s planned early access later this year, we still know very little about how Chronicles as a whole will work and play. The team began posting dev diaries back in April detailing their plans for some mechanics and their general philosophy, but outside of those, we only have the two trailers to really see things in action. The frequency of these, we’re told, will be ramping up here shortly, so hopefully the fog that currently lays heavy on the fields of Burgundy and this game will soon be lifted.
Between Chronicles: Medieval providing me a more grounded-in-reality and historical adventure, and the high medieval fantasy of Crimson Desert from earlier this year, I should have all my sword-swinging bases covered. The mix of strategic planning and in-your-face swordplay here has definitely got me interested, and I can’t wait to check it out myself. The fields of battle call to me. Somebody fetch me my armor and sword.
Scott White is a freelance contributor to IGN, assisting with tabletop games and guide coverage. Follow him on X/Twitter or Bluesky.
