King's Bounty II

It is "King's Bounty" in name only. If you are used to the 2D-view and cartoonish art style of other installments in the genre. Looking at the screenshots above, you might think those are cutscenes... They are not. This is gameplay. The game does, in fact, play in 3D, closer to a modern RPG than to HoMM or KB1. As before, you are still exploring the land on horseback (even though you can dismount), the map still limits you as to where you can go, and the battles are still round-based and tactical. However, that's where the similarities end. Exploration is real time, you control only one hero, no gathering of resources, or city management--with interesting consequences for gameplay. It is more fast-paced, it is drastically more immersive, thanks to being visually closer to the action. It plays like we have come full circle, reuniting the strategy with the RPG titles they are referencing. What it comes down to is this: If you go in expecting (wanting) another HoMM clone, you'll be utterly disappointed. Full stop. Do not buy. But, if you have no such expectation, there is a decent game here. One that plays so well, you may get this feeling again, that you are experiencing a genre for the first time. Yes, the story is a bit shallow, perhaps the music sometimes forgettable, and here and there gameplay ideas could use some polish--but it creates this "let me look around just one more corner" feeling again. Except when you check at the clock, you realize, you've played for hours. It got that itch again, of being something unique and different. tl;dr KB2 is to KB1, what WoW is to Warcraft1--similar in lore only. Con: If you want to relive a previous strategy experience, you'll hate it. Pro: If you are open to trying something different, you may find an enjoyable, decent tactical RPG-mix with its own, fresh approach, and good old-fashioned "just one more quest" appeal.

For whatever deity's sake that you follow, if you are at all sensitive to camera swivel and jerkiness, stay off the horse. Walking around will save you a lot of misery. You can adjust controls and most are bareable if not great, but that horse spins like a drunken mule. Learn to love your feet. The pace is a bit tedious and dialogue is mediocre after an hour or so in. Not upset over getting the game on a deep discount during a sale, but very much not worth full price.

Game starts out interesting but quickly clearly shows that developers never bothered with balancing and designed to be as much annoying and difficult as possible. Units variety is very low and while in previous game there was one skill to prevent morale problems from mixing unit types, here is split into FOUR with 3 levels EACH. Each unit also have hardcap on size so past certain leadership level they HAVE to be replaced and you always have them at too low numbers. Good units are very limited so losing stack (and you lose them very often, even when playing extra safe) is heavy drawback that force reloading save and resurrection spell comes very late and is restricted to basically one character class due to requirements. At certain point almost every single fight wipes half of your forces with ease and gold is limited. There is no place or possibility with experimenting like in previous games. And worst offense is that game was clearly designed with certain solutions in mind. Its some sort of cruel puzzle where you have to guess what was favourie developers combination and get punished for playing other way. I reached half of it and pretty much want to give up. There is no fun, just endless frustration - and thats on normal difficulty level, which was comfortable and fun in Legend or Armored Princess.

To preface my review I will start off saying that I went into this game expecting it to not be like the earlier King's Bounty games. The original formula had stagnated by the 3rd game. Unfortunately this game is just not good. I tried to like it, but the game does its hardest to make it impossible. It is full of poor design and balance that makes it very obvious that the game was never play tested in any capacity. Once the programming and art were done the game was simply released to the public. No one on the dev team played the game even once because if they had they would've instantly run into the myriad of problems the game suffers from. Simple things like many spells not scaling well and being traps / wastes of mana to learn, upgrade or use. Low level quests need to be completed in areas that are gated behind high level enemies, and by the time you do get there the quest reward is scaled to a low level and ends up being pittance. The way how you unlock new skills via quest choices has a clear bias in the beginning as most quests are of the yellow/green variety, while red/blue have to suffer a dull beginning hoarding their level up points before they unlock the next tier of abilities. Technically the game is also very rough. The horse controls are clunky and I found myself running more just because the controls felt better even if it was slower. Your running animation isn't synced with your run speed. Models look and are animated like animatronics you'd find in a novelty golf course, which is a problem here because you spend so much time zoomed in on them and talking with NPCs. If you spent your time zoomed out it wouldn't matter and probably would look fine like that, but from the more intimate angle it looks horrid. Tried to like the game and with another 1 year of active play testing, rebalancing and technical polish it could've been good. But as it is it's unplayable.