King's Bounty II

[markec]

I really do miss the visual style of previous games.

 

[Reinhardt]

It's not like there is nothing to play in next month.

 

[IDtenT]

It's not like there is nothing to play in next month.

I bought it because I have nothing to play.

 

[IDtenT]

One more day.


Kinda worried there's no pre-release streams or something.

 

[garren]

Not too sold on the over-the-shoulder exploring, would have preferred the old overland map. Still, might be decent.

 

[Zyondyne]

I really do miss the visual style of previous games.

You mean the World of Warcraft aesthetic? Oh, boy, I have some mobile games just for you...

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/kings-bounty-2-pc-review

Kings Bounty 2 review: good strategy packaged with a baggy RPG
Where does the King stand on other chocolate bars?



You know when you order, say, a single HDMI cable from Amazon and it comes in a cardboard box the size of a dog coffin? That’s King's Bounty 2. Excessively over packaged. There’s a tight, varied, often-challenging Heroes Of Might And Magic-style tactical battler here, but you’ll have to tear through layers of baggy Dragon Age-style RPG to get to it.

Don’t get me wrong. Some of that packaging is really quite nice. Wintery snowscapes. Marble courtrooms with intricate, stained glass murals. Opulently textured facial hair flowing from the chins of impeccably groomed pig farmers. It just feels like King’s Bounty II lacks confidence in itself. Or at least confidence in an audience to give it a second look if it doesn’t at least try to cosplay as a Bioware game.

And I must insist that it is absolutely fair to judge King’s Bounty 2 as an RPG, because a large chunk of it is one. Heaps of voiced dialogue, animated NPCs, big explorable maps, multi-tiered CYOA side quests, cutscenes. Some of it is quite visually beautiful. Less of it is entertaining. Even less feels necessary. I’d wager it’s this stuff that’s whacked it up to a princely fifty quid, too, a price I can’t recommend it at.

However! This isn’t a bad game at all. Discard all that packaging, and, oh! There’s that cable you wanted. A solid core loop: sturdy. Flexible. A touch shiny in the right light. Win battles, get money, hire troops, learn skills, hire new troops. Keep your finances in check. Keep your army healed. Bang your head against that one nightmare battle until you make one tiny adjustment that clinches a victory. All of it is genuinely compelling.



Then, you run out of cash, or hit a wall, so you go a’questing. Light five torches, brave hero. Collect five scrolls, dashing swashbuckler. Take item A to reprobate B, you mug, you absolute tool of a carrier pigeon. It’s the sort of fluff only necessary when trying to justify having such terrifyingly massive maps. There is nothing quite on the level of DA:I’s egregious MMO-style timewasters, but at least then you were gathering plants like a manic apocalypse seedbank prepper in the service of a story and characters worth caring about.

The world of King’s Bounty II is....pleasant, in an almost proudly naff way. It’s default fantasy flavour, although I sort of get it, since it originates from a time where simple genre shorthands were necessary for readability. So there are dragons! Trolls! Gryphons! Literally everyone is white for some reason! No, don’t pay attention to that, look over there: it’s a wizard that looks like Gandalf! Remember Gandalf?

Now, there are some fun bits, too. Ever stand around in a dungeon puzzling out which route the designer intended, so you can check all the other routes for treasure and feel like a trailblazing genius? That's often rewarded here. The snatches of lore found in notes and books aren’t incredibly engaging, but they are plentiful and varied. Peasant trysts and noble lineage, myths and legends. Quests contain plots within schemes and character arcs peppered with sardonic humour that, while not gut-busting, isn’t unpleasant. The voice performances often evoke Resident Evil 1 with codpieces, though.

Let’s talk about the tactics, i.e. the good stuff. First, alignments. There are four: Order and Anarchy are opposites, as are Power (Might) and Finesse (Magic). Each corresponds to a troop type and skill tree branch. A pack of ancient wolves is Power, for example, while a deadly cadre of assassins is Anarchy. Story quests offer choices that correspond to an alignment. You choose a path, you get alignment points, you spend experience points (from battles and quests, but a separate thing to alignment points) to move further up that alignment’s skill tree.

Spoiler

This is something of a double-edged badger cudgel, because while it offers a throughline of strategy-brain pleasing nom-nom-numeric progression, it also hampers the storytelling. Once you make enough choices from one alignment, you get locked out of that alignment’s opposite. Also, if you choose Elisa the Paladin like I did, you’re locked out of Anarchy choices from the start anyway. So it’s more accurate to call this stuff fine-tuning your build rather than participating in a story. Which is fine in theory, but again, dialogue is at least as prevalent as the battles.

The alignment stuff works better for army and character composition. You could build a hardy frontline of Order knights flanked by dastardly Anarchy mercenaries on horseback to swiftly smash into enemy archers, but unless you’ve invested in the right skills, the morale penalty for mixing opposed alignments could be an issue. High morale means the occasional free attack, too, often a game changer. Since each alignment roughly corresponds to certain strategic elements (frontline, ranged, support, damage dealers), spreading your five regiment cap across the alignments might seem prudent. Again, though, not everyone plays nice together.


Then there’s your character’s own abilities: Leadership, Warfare, and Magic. Each is influenced by armour, weapons, and jewelry you collect from quests or buy from merchants. Leadership allows you to field bigger regiments - say, ten spearmen instead of seven. Warfare bestows army-wide damage bonus. It’s with Magic that things get really interesting.

There aren’t many twists to the actual hex-based positioning game. No flanking bonuses, very minor terrain effects. Archers can’t fire through houses, for example, a major benefit of home ownership. But magic allows you to manipulate things considerably. Summoning bears. Teleporting entire units across the map. Cracking enemy armour like stale walnuts. Innate unit abilities spice things up, too. I hired some gargoyles that can fly out, attack, then return to their initial hex. Incredibly annoying for the AI, I assume, based on how I feel when it does it to me.


I would have much preferred a slim, stripped back version that still did all this compelling tactical stuff. Songs of Conquest looks nice, doesn’t it? King’s Bounty 2 leaves me with the sense of a workmanlike adherence to genre trends rather than anything particularly creatively fulfilling or naturally complimentary to the core game. While the narrative context and contiguous casualties, experience, and treasury provided by the quests and exploration is good and necessary, it’s just all too puffed up in mostly uninteresting ways.

Right. It’s the final paragraph, and I’m switching metaphors. You know how a King size Bounty bar is actually just three fun size Bounties? Oh no! There’s been a cock-up at the factory, and only one of them has coconut in it. Bin the two extras, charge me a third of the price, and you’ve got yourself a customer. Again, though: Really good coconut, if you don’t mind shelling out a premium for all that plain chocolate.

 

[markec]

I really do miss the visual style of previous games.

You mean the World of Warcraft aesthetic? Oh, boy, I have some mobile games just for you...

Today every game needs to be either grimdark or generic brown "realistic" visuals.

Call them whatever you like but I found the visuals of previous games charming and I prefer them to this that look like any random game.

 

[cvv]

Not sure about this game I mean it looks like Dragon Age for the poor also can they really improve on the tactical layer because the previous games were really great and....

Literally everyone is white for some reason

 

[Hellion]

The reviewer for my site seems to like it.

https://ragequit.gr/en/reviews/item/kings-bounty-ii-pc-review/

PC Gamer, on the other hand, not so much.

https://www.pcgamer.com/kings-bounty-2-review/

 

[d1r]

The reviewer for my site seems to like it.

https://ragequit.gr/en/reviews/item/kings-bounty-ii-pc-review/

PC Gamer, on the other hand, not so much.

https://www.pcgamer.com/kings-bounty-2-review/

Ah yeah, PC Gamer who gave Dragon Age 2 a 96.

 

[IDtenT]

The reviewer for my site seems to like it.

https://ragequit.gr/en/reviews/item/kings-bounty-ii-pc-review/

ONLY WHITE PEOPLE

HOW COULD YOU?!

 

[Whisper]

The reviewer for my site seems to like it.

https://ragequit.gr/en/reviews/item/kings-bounty-ii-pc-review/

PC Gamer, on the other hand, not so much.

https://www.pcgamer.com/kings-bounty-2-review/

Ah yeah, PC Gamer who gave Dragon Age 2 a 96.

When i start to forget that paid reviews suck (most of them are on payroll of big game devlopers), i remember how PC Gamer gave Dragon age 2 a 96 score.
It is obvious that they are paid. Who would honestly give such sh1t as DA2 score of 96?

 

[IDtenT]

I still don't know how any dev could get away with as much blatant level reuse.

 

[jackofshadows]

Overall impressions of this review (Russian) are: the blandest fantasy-RPG ever coupled with meh tacticool combat (plus the game is tend to waste player's time a lot). Although the author isn't some kind of reliable one, far from it even, but I'm still inclined to beleive him. Also, it's not a sequel in any way shape or form if anyone hasn't figured out that yet. A shame. I liked some of the earlier games.

 

[Alienman]

I still don't know how any dev could get away with as much blatant level reuse.

The old or new game?

 

[Lyre Mors]

The old or new game?

He's referring to Dragon Age 2.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

They should've really just copied the presentational aspect of that Fire Emblem Switch game, because aesthetically that game's cut to a zoom-in ground level showing the troops clashing when you attack (and just having the ability to go in close and see your army at the ground level) looks far better than this shit where you're seeing a few soldiers standing in the hex and you see them clash from the same zoomed out view. It feels like they're trying to do something that's more visually dynamic and cinematic than just having the one character that represents multiple units, but it's less clean looking than being represented by one unit in this grid view, and it's far less dynamic, cinematic, and visually appealing than what Three House did two years ago.

 

[cyborgboy95]

The biggest issue with combat is how you are relegated to only spellcasting, severely limiting player choice. For magically-oriented characters, this makes sense, but for characters such as Aivar and Elisa, who rely more on their physical abilities than Katharine, the only thing they can do is cast spells, which takes away depth from combat. This also breaks immersion and what limited character development there is for Aivar as he’s specifically portrayed as magically unskilled and instead proficient in all things war.

Also, aside from army stat and magical ability buffs, character equipment has a minimal effect on combat, which not only arbitrarily limits player tactical options, but makes equipment matter very little, especially non-magical equipment. It’s quite frustrating to see a character with a shiny new crossbow or sword who isn’t able to use it on the battlefield to help their troops. It has the additional effect of making characters feel small and inconsequential, despite their supposed savior status in the story.

https://culturedvultures.com/kings-bounty-2-pc-review/

LOL one reviewer from Culturde Vulture literally complained that the player character being unable to participate in battles aside from casting spell is immersion-breaking, clearly that reviewer has never played previous King Bounty entries.

However, putting a single foot wrong can be very costly as a unit’s deaths is permanent and there's no way for them to return. Also, should all your units fall in battle, you must either reload a previous save to try again or explore the realm for extended periods of time to acquire a new army in order to proceed with the story.

https://www.pushsquare.com/reviews/ps4/kings_bounty_ii

Also, what's wrong with permadeath for units and the need to reload to a previous save when you fail? Isn't all of this King Bounty's staple??



After reading these reviews written by people who obviously has no experience with King Bounty's type-of-game, I have a feeling the new Disciple game with many changes to traditional gameplay/combat will receive a better score from them.

 

[Tigranes]

They should've really just copied the presentational aspect of that Fire Emblem Switch game, because aesthetically that game's cut to a zoom-in ground level showing the troops clashing when you attack (and just having the ability to go in close and see your army at the ground level) looks far better than this shit where you're seeing a few soldiers standing in the hex and you see them clash from the same zoomed out view. It feels like they're trying to do something that's more visually dynamic and cinematic than just having the one character that represents multiple units, but it's less clean looking than being represented by one unit in this grid view, and it's far less dynamic, cinematic, and visually appealing than what Three House did two years ago.

People actually play with that shit on???? It's like a 5 second lag showing some pointless ugly crap every time you attack.

 

[Whisper]

I still don't know how any dev could get away with as much blatant level reuse.

I remember this in Dragon age 2 too.

You clear map in mission, got ambushed way back to quest giver and you get same map. Next quest? Takes you to same small map.

I think there was like 3-4 maps total in game for all quests. This was so bad.

 

[Whisper]

https://www.pushsquare.com/reviews/ps4/kings_bounty_ii
Also, what's wrong with permadeath for units and the need to reload to a previous save when you fail? Isn't all of this King Bounty's staple??
After reading these reviews written by people who obviously has no experience with King Bounty's type-of-game, I have a feeling the new Disciple game with many changes to traditional gameplay/combat will receive a better score from them.

First Kings Bounty (english one, New World Computing, 1990) also had same mechanic. If unit died, it is dead and you need to replace.

Most of "reviewers" never play previous game and many of them do not even know genre games.
I dunno who cares or read reviews like this. Typical readers interested in games of this genre knows more than the ones who are writing for them.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Most of "reviewers" never play previous game and many of them do not even know genre games.
I dunno who cares or read reviews like this. Typical readers interested in games of this genre knows more than the ones who are writing for them.

This right here!

The review that Hellion posted is by someone who has not only played the original games for 100s of hours, but someone who appreciates the genre itself a great deal. If people are looking for an informed opinion, they should check that review out, as well as the preview he links in the review. In fact, I'm going to post it right here in the thread proper, just in case people skim over that link.

KING’S BOUNTY II
King's Bounty reborn


About a month ago we published a preview of King's Bounty II in which we described the main features of the game and its innovations compared to its predecessors. The feeling I got from the preview code at the time was of a title that was moving forward with changes on a superficial level without losing the connection to what came before. I had ended the preview in a decidedly positive mood, but I reserved my final conclusion for when I would have a chance to deal with the final code. So now, after dozens of hours of gameplay with all available characters and plenty of experimentation, I can definitively say that yes, King's Bounty II deserves to carry that glorious name, even if the new style it has adopted needs some tweaking to make it work 100%.


The most significant innovation in King's Bounty II is clearly the change in visuals from overhead to third person.
Since the preview with all the gameplay details is quite recent, I won't go into the individual gameplay details again and I will refer you to that article if you want to delve in. Instead, in this review I will focus on analyzing the developers' choices, critiquing them, and pointing out where I think there is room for improvement. As a quick summary, King's Bounty II belongs to the RPG/strategy hybrid genre, with real-time character movement on an open map and turn-based combat between armies whenever faced with a situation that must be resolved by force of arms. The main character does not directly participate in the battle but can have a decisive influence on its progression, either through stats that greatly enhance the units' abilities or through spell casting. One of the most interesting elements of the gameplay is the possibility of solving many quests in alternative ways that fit into four fundamental moral directives: order, power, finesse and anarchy. In fact, these options are directly linked to the levelling system, encouraging role-playing and specialisation.


The way you choose to complete a quest also affects leveling, as advanced perks require a minimum number of points on the relevant morale axis. These points are awarded each time you choose to complete a quest based on the relevant direction.
I think the most important question that all King's Bounty fans will reasonably ask is the obvious one: Does the change in visual perspective from overhead to third person offer anything? Does it improve the game, does it make it more immersive, does it cause any unexpected problems? So on this topic I have to say that yes, in the end I think the change in perspective was generally successful. The world the developers have created is beautiful, keeping the vibrant colours and charming design of the previous game and adding an even greater level of detail. After an initial period of adjusting to the new standards, as I had logged hundreds of hours in the previous games in the series, I can say that I enjoyed exploring the landscapes of Nostria's world, and I didn't miss the overhead visuals in the real-time exploration phase.


The developers have designed the world of Nostria with care and you will have the opportunity to admire many beautiful landscapes.
If there's one thing I'd like to see improved in this section, it's the character's movement speed and the relatively frequent occurrence of getting stuck on certain pieces of terrain. My opinion is that the developers should have added a sprint button because the speed at which the character moves is somewhat slow and many of the quests require moving from one point to another and back to the original quest giver. There are of course scattered spots for fast travel and the ability to use a horse (which appears in a flash with a whistle like in Witcher 3) but I think the horse should also be somewhat faster, and anyway its speed is drastically limited in cities to the extent that its use in them lacks meaning. As for glitching on various obstacles on the ground (rocks, tight corners, other objects), it's a minor annoyance but it somewhat spoils the joy of exploration combined with the character's inability to jump over various obvious low obstacles (e.g. fences). I think that in a 3D game with an open world, the player should be given freedom of movement that obeys the rules of logic.


The main character and her horse faithfully follow the greek adage "she who is in a hurry stumbles".
In the combat phase, the change in visuals (from the side view in the Heroes of Might and Magic style to overhead Civilization style) is more controversial. I wouldn't say it creates a practical problem since the camera can move freely and zoom in/out, but I think the old style was more pleasing to the eye because it allowed the player to enjoy the detail in unit design. With the new style the units are small and the animations when two groups collide are not as detailed as they should be so that it would make sense to zoom in and enjoy the battle. After a few tries at first you will most likely stop zooming in and play from the normal remote view. Also, I'll touch on the speed issue here too because I couldn't find an option in the settings menu to speed up the animations.


This is what you see when you approach an enemy group in the real-time exploration stage...

...and this is what the map looks like during a battle. The interface gives all the information you need to make the right decisions, but I personally found the style of the older King's Bounty games more visually interesting.
As for the gameplay, quests, writing and other gameplay elements, my positive impression from the preview was confirmed in the final version. The writing has retained the semi-serious and quirky style of the previous games, without missing the darker moments that create the typical King's Bounty contrast between humor and drama. The quests are generally set up in the classic style and style of the series, some can undoubtedly be described as fetch quests but in most of them there is some kind of twist (and of course the possibility of choosing the method of resolution as mentioned earlier) that gives the player extra motivation beyond the acquisition of quest rewards and the corresponding experience. But I'll reiterate my complaint here about the various chests, boxes, caches, etc. scattered around the world: the loot they offer is almost entirely a modest amount of gold and some junk items that can be sold to vendors for an equally modest amount. This greatly limits the allure of exploring every corner of the world.


Eh, I'm sure he's exaggerating, I'm not worried.

Don't get excited by the impressive chest, the loot is very rarely interesting.
Apart from the above issues, however, I have nothing else substantial to criticize King's Bounty II for. I adapted to the new style without any particular problems and quickly began to feel the familiar addiction that kept me hooked for dozens of hours with King's Bounty The Legend and Armored Princess. One of the game's strengths in my opinion is the lack of level scaling and the player really feels a great sense of satisfaction when he or she manages to prevail in a very difficult battle with overleveled opponents through proper and clever tactics. Having played a significant number of hours with all three available characters, I can confirm that leveling choices and tactics at the time of battle are very important and drastically alter the outcome of any given encounter. Victory is occasionally possible even against opponents that the game labels as undefeatable. Not always though, so if you find out that you can't succeed, deal with another quest and come back when you're stronger. In general though, you should be prepared for a relatively high degree of challenge because King's Bounty is traditionally a tough game.


The outcome of a battle depends on many factors: terrain morphology, the level of the main character, target priority, spell casting, tactics and... luck, since most attacks have a relatively wide range of possible damage.
In conclusion, I have no hesitation in recommending King's Bounty II to both fans of the series and newcomers who are interested after the change of the visuals. The beautiful world, the resolution options in the quests, the classically charming combat system and the addictive gameplay are enough in my opinion to prevail over the issues I pointed out and I'm keen to see how the series evolves next if the game succeeds commercially. My initial reservations were thankfully proven to be unfounded.

The ignorant reception this game is getting from "game journalists" is almost enough for me to want to purchase the game just to support the genre itself out of spite, but the above review and preview address a lot of my concerns directly and basically seals the deal.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

They should've really just copied the presentational aspect of that Fire Emblem Switch game, because aesthetically that game's cut to a zoom-in ground level showing the troops clashing when you attack (and just having the ability to go in close and see your army at the ground level) looks far better than this shit where you're seeing a few soldiers standing in the hex and you see them clash from the same zoomed out view. It feels like they're trying to do something that's more visually dynamic and cinematic than just having the one character that represents multiple units, but it's less clean looking than being represented by one unit in this grid view, and it's far less dynamic, cinematic, and visually appealing than what Three House did two years ago.

People actually play with that shit on???? It's like a 5 second lag showing some pointless ugly crap every time you attack.

The initial attack animations when it does the zoom-in thing in Three Heroes is about the exact same time as attacks in this game seem to be. The back and forth can make the Three Houses ones longer, but just because they are longer doesn't mean they have to be.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...ing-pains-mar-an-otherwise-encouraging-return

King's Bounty 2: growing pains mar an otherwise encouraging return
Not yet one to treasure.

This is quite the change. If you didn't know, King's Bounty 2 has gone 3D, in the sense that the camera is now over the shoulder of your hero rather than high up in the sky looking down on them, and the world around them. And that really changes things. It brings you into the world in a way the games previously didn't. You're in the world rather than observing it. You're up in the faces of the people who live there, talking to them, deciding things, buying things from them. You're inside their houses and their castles, and you're looking up at the rooftops of caverns or crumbling ruins.

Glance at King's Bounty 2 and it could be any number of other third-person role-playing games that you've played, and that's a huge step forwards for the series. It's never looked this accomplished before. And perhaps this is the beginning of a whole new era for King's Bounty. But there are growing pains that come with it.

Being so close in appearance to other RPGs means King's Bounty 2 invites comparison to them, and in these, it suffers. It's a bit rough around the edges, and that's fine, but it tends to mean you've always seen better somewhere else. Those snowy environments and castles aren't quite as nice as you've seen in other games. That character moves a bit woodenly, and that horse is annoyingly hard to turn around. And while it's great that there's an attempt at a cinematic story and performed dialogue, it tries a bit hard and feels overwrought, and it wasn't long before I ignored it almost entirely.

I think part of the problem comes from expectations. King's Bounty 2 is pushing towards a kind of experience it hasn't quite achieved, and one it's not known for. We know King's Bounty for being a series about building fantasy armies to fight in grid-based, turn-based battles. We know it as a strategy series with RPG layers on top. The fundamentals were galloping around a map and vacuuming up anything useful for increasing your hero's or army's power, which are essentially one and the same thing. The series had focus.

Now, it seems a bit at odds with itself and what it wants to be. On the one hand, you are the lone adventurer, running around on foot with a crossbow strapped to your back, and you're talking to people, buying and selling, and so on. But you can't actually fire the crossbow. You have to pull away from that immersion when combat comes around because you're the commander of an army which magically springs from you in battle, and you're standing at the back not quite taking part. This is how it's always been in King's Bounty and I like it this way, it's just the two styles of game jar, at times, rather than mesh.

A small selection of King's Bounty 2 screenshots, including some battle gameplay.

The new, more cinematic RPG presentation slows things down a bit too, both in terms of technical performance and concept, and it can make King's Bounty 2 sag and get boring at times. It's just not quite as good at the new bits as it wants to be, yet, and it feels like those are the parts it wants you to spend time admiring.

I think it's still growing into its new clothes. I'm glad King's Bounty is back, though, because many of the old pleasures are still there. It's not quite as zippy and assured as it was in, say, King's Bounty: The Legend in 2008, but give it time to adjust and I'm sure - at least, I hope - it will be.