King’s Bounty II, a title developed and published by 1C Entertainment and Prime Matter, is the next entry of this series that started with King’s Bounty: The Legend. This entry takes place in a newly developed open 3D world of the Kingdom of Nostria, with spaces consisting of countryside to the hills of the forest.
Once you dive into King’s Bounty II, you will have three options straight away with the character you want to take control of. Each character will give you a head start in certain ways and how you plan to play the game through the quests you will take on. The first option is the Warrior Aivar, who used to be a Knight of the Royal Guard till he was banished and became a mercenary. He comes with abilities that will help in up-close combat with his leadership abilities and how his abilities are less magical based. Then there is the Mage Katherine, who is from a long line of nobles of the rugged mountain region as she strives for research in arcane knowledge and magic. Her skills come with powerful spells that help her units tremendously in battle. Lastly is Paladin Elisa, where the other two are from a line of nobles Elisa is a peasant that believes she has a responsibility to save Nostria. Elisa’s abilities are based around being a tremendous leader with a combination of magical abilities and hand-to-hand combat to protect units around her.
Once you select your character you jump into this world of Nostria with the basic RPG activities that await you. In which you take on quests and missions to gain XP which in turn level you up so you can upgrade your character with skill points that are gathered. Though tackling these quests either socially or through combat there are four options you can take with them from Order, Power, Anarchy, and Finesse through which you decide to take on each encounter. This also goes into your skill map with different abilities in different sections of those four branching paths. As one ability will be more aligned with Anarchy so you would choose that skill in that part of the skill map, which will, in turn, lead you more towards that path. This even goes into recruiting units that will fight battles for you as some units will work great together with their alignment or not which in turn will lead to them having distinct disadvantages as they don’t work well together.
The story begins with you meeting the prince of the land as there happens to be evil through the land that you must investigate and figure out what is going on. You also learn like in several RPGs that you are supposed to be the ONE that saves the kingdom. The story is bland and is not the highlight of this game as it just gets you into the action. But it is disappointing as the story is important for me to truly get invested in a game, but this title does not have that. Now as you go through the world you gather up different pieces of equipment or junk to either use or sell to gather up wealth. With this wealth, you can gather up more units or upgrade yourself and the units you have.
Now the interesting part of this game is the combat. As the units, you gather through the story when you go into combat they come and help you out. As a hex pattern battle grid is created and you take on the enemy through turn-based tactical combat which is based around movement and action points becoming vital. This is where special abilities come into play as well with your character becoming the leader during the battle. It’s important to get units with different stats that will affect the abilities they possess, the distance they can travel each turn, the amount of damage they can afflict, the range they can attack from. I enjoyed this gameplay as the character is calling the shots and using the abilities to help your units from the sidelines. However, the combat suffers from a less desirable HUD and UI like the line of sight having issues in several instances that drove me nuts. The combat took me a bit to figure out at first as the enemies will jump on every mistake you make but through a bit of a learning process, you will start to pick up the strategy. As a strategy game lover, I liked this challenge at times but for others, this could be a steeper learning curve that could frustrate them, so think about that when jumping in. Another issue that arrives is dealing with losing your units as once they die, they are lost forever, which adds some intrigue to the game for me, but the game makes it difficult to rebuild your armies once you lose. As this can become time-consuming with having to build up your troops you lost in battle so a lot of the time, you will reload a save to retry the battle which is a shame.
Overall, I enjoyed the combat of King’s Bounty II it added some intrigue for me with the turn-based tactical elements that I enjoy. But the game falters with its dull story that does not bring one into the story at all with a tale that we all have heard before. The world while at times is gorgeous has some bland AI in it which makes it feel empty at points. King’s Bounty II has some issues that keep it from being a great success while the combat saves it at points the entire package is a bit of a disappointment for me.
You can check out the King’s Bounty II trailer here – https://youtu.be/xsUTQPWtJLI
King’s Bounty II is available now on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam.
Gaming has always been an outlet for me to interact with different people and explore all kinds of possibilities. I play a wide variety of games always willing to try different mechanics and storylines that developers are trying to create for their games. I grew up delving into MW2 and World of Warcraft, I miss the Wrath of The Lich King days, and as I have gotten older I have found a love for RPGs and strategy games, my favorites being The Witcher 3 and Total War. Always looking forward to the next great game.
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