Thank you Kingdom Games for sending us this game to review!

Under King David’s rule, the Ammonites have been forbidden from doing human sacrifices.  To get around this restriction, they have implemented arena battles to serve the same purpose.  As a descendant of one of King David’s mighty warriors, you have been tasked with infiltrating the Ammonites' operations by becoming an arena champion.  There are many arenas to do battles in and all but the first one requires an admission fee to participate.  It’s time to sharpen your battle skills and make your king proud!

Each of the arenas have objectives that will reward you if completed.  Some examples include surviving several rounds without being defeated or leveling up a certain number of times.  Before a round begins you’ll see what types of enemies await you.  You’ll be fighting against archers, spear wielders, sword fighters, and various forms of wildlife.  You’ll be fending off wolves, lions, and crazy chickens.

While there is a decent variety in enemies, the formula remains the same for the arena battles.  After dispatching a set number of enemies, a boss battle ensues.  When the boss is defeated a reward chest will spring up from the ground and it usually contains money, weapons, and armor upgrades.  You’ll also be awarded experience at the end of the round.  I’m not sure why it’s not awarded for each opponent slain, but leveling up after every other round isn’t uncommon.  

Sometimes the rounds have a little variety with some mini-bosses appearing with the normal soldiers and then fighting a stronger boss at the end.  The crazy chicken rounds are memorable and story sequences break up the repetition a little bit, but despite these efforts, this game is still very repetitive and requires a lot of grinding to progress the story.  

The developers have been very active in patching the game and making improvements to it.  Since its release they have added better quality texture packs to it.  Maybe they can spice up the gameplay in the near future too.   

Even after the graphics patch, I was still unimpressed with the visuals as the bosses and warriors are recycled a lot throughout the game.    Another issue is that the character’s faces in the dialog box are very blurry and low quality.  I still love the comic book style art used in the Bible stories that the old man in town tells. Some of the enemies from Five Guardians of David make an appearance as well.  I still dislike the alchemists with their fire bomb attacks.  

The audio is a mixed bag with the narration and background music being well done.  I like the fact that you can play as a male or female champion, but a far as I can tell, most the enemies are male.  Granted there could be females underneath the more armored combatants.  However, some of the male fighters don’t have shirts on and the female shrieks and screams are used on these models.  While humorous, it’s still a glitch worth addressing.  

I did encounter some graphical flickering around my champion’s hands and my AMD drivers are current.  Other issue worth mentioning is that this game has crashed to my desktop once.  It happened in the middle of a boss battle, too. 

Despite the combat violence, there isn’t much bloodshed.  The defeated opponents do remain on the ground for a while though.  The violence is pretty mild compared to other Teen rated games out there.

In the end, I’m not impressed with Five Champions of Canaan.  I enjoyed Five Guardians of David and highly recommend that game over this one.  It’s a bit more expensive at $15, but it offers better storytelling and more variety in gameplay. On the other hand, Five Champions of Canaan is only $5 and may entertain someone for a little while.