Chronicles Medieval is a historical open-world sandbox game that is developed and published by Raw Power Games. The game is set across three major areas during the Hundred Years’ War. These areas include the British Isles, France, and the Holy Roman Empire. These are also the three playable factions players can choose from.
Chronicles Medieval has players build a character that starts from nothing and builds their way up through whichever faction they choose to play in Medieval times. This includes recruiting and training armies, fighting massive battles, and exploring the map.
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During Gamescom, in Cologne, Germany, we got a chance to see how these large battles will work in Chronicles Medieval. These large-scale battles can have armies with up to 1000 people per side or a total of 2000. This is just a start, as the team talked about expanding to a larger number over time, but we figured 2000 would be a good starting point.
These battles work in two phases: Battle Planning and, of course, actual fighting. During our presentation, we saw this Battle Planning phase where we aligned our units into strategic positions and then attempted to do a flank with some archers. Unit type and rank matter quite a bit, as in any battle, different types of units have different strengths and weaknesses.
Chronicles Medieval is about Medieval immersion.
How trained and/or ranked up your units are helps, as if your soldiers are higher ranked, they have better armor and weapons to help in battle. They also react and fight better as a unit. Each faction has its own set of unique units for players to use. Players may also recruit mercenary units from any faction to be used in battle, even if you are fighting the same faction as your mercenaries.
Once players set up their armies, whether by specific commands or just where they would like them to be located on the battlefield, the battle can then start. Battle Planning will feel familiar for anyone who knows Total War: Warhammer battles, as you will need to position your armies in the best possible situation to be successful. However, once the battle begins, things become more personal. Players will no longer have total sight of the battlefield and will be zoomed in to a third-person view of their character.
Players then proceed to battle in this third-person view as their character and will give commands by moving around the battlefield and shouting to their armies. In our presentation, our character was a commander on horseback, so we moved across the battlefield supporting our armies while giving orders.
Battle is where Raw Power Games’ Chronicles Medieval is at its strongest.
After a while of this battle, our side became victorious, and the other side retreated while we were left to collect the spoils. I will say this is where things were off to me, as in the end no one knew whether our flank of archers did anything or even survived.
Therefore, we did all this planning and started the battle, and while it was a larger-scale battle of a couple of 100 per side, it didn’t quite feel that grand, as in reality you are just a single character in this battle, and there are plenty of components to the battle that just have no idea what is going on or any control over.
This really does play up the grounded portion and open-world sandbox feel, as in reality you are just a single character in this ever-moving world in Chronicles Medieval, but it does feel a little lacking, knowing we spent 10 or so minutes strategically maneuvering these troops only to have no idea if any of it worked and only that well, “we won” the battle. Which I guess means something worked since we won the battle, even if no one knew what happened to the flanking archers.
Our Chronicles Medieval preview leaves a lot of questions.
The main showcase of our presentation was how these battles work, and the variety of units players can choose and train. There is also a whole other portion of Chronicles Medieval based on exploration, including territories for players to claim or fight for, owning a castle, or even potentially running your own shop if you choose to. The team said they really want this to be as open-ended as possible, with unlimited options for players to choose from.
If you want to fight to become the King of England, you can, or become a mercenary or even a shopkeeper; it will be up to the player what they decide to do in Chronicles Medieval. I am not entirely sure how it will all come together, as even in our presentation the team discussed so many potential gameplay loops that describing this game felt a bit tricky.
The team at Raw Power Games is definitely going big with Chronicles Medieval with so many systems, but with all these systems it seemed a little disjointed, and I couldn’t quite pinpoint what exactly this game is other than: do you want to be a person who lived in medieval times who likes big battles?
Now, this presentation was mainly focused on combat, so I don’t want to get too carried away, as there is still so much left to be seen of Chronicles Medieval, and things could easily make more sense as we get closer to Early Access
Chronicles Medieval is set to release sometime in 2027 on PC via Steam.
