King’s Bounty II
Darkness descends over the world of Nostria. Conspiracies, sabotage, and necromancy are overshadowing the country. But maybe a saviour – the kingdom’s last hope – is already here, to fight back and finally restore peace and order in Nostria!
King’s Bounty II is the long-awaited sequel to the legendary King’s Bounty video games franchise, one of the most iconic representatives of the turn-based RPG genre. Expanding on this legacy with an entirely new epic story, factions, enemies, and new features to forge an open and breaking fantasy world Antara. With the kingdoms in disarray, counties demanding independence, bandits prowl the roads, all the overseas nations have denied the King’s authority over them, and blighted creatures lie in wait for the unwary, new accidental heroes emerge as last hope.
They determined to bring order to the chaos. Plays as one of them, recruiting, developing, and commanding your personal army on a non-linear adventure of betrayal, sacrifice, and survival. Fighting for your own future, outsmarting enemy in uniquely turn-based combat, making difficult decisions, and experience the intensity of one of the classic sagas in an exciting new way.
• IMMERSIVE AND CHARACTER-DRIVEN EPIC STORY:
Play as one of three main heroes, rescuing and building your personal army in a journey of leadership, survival, and sacrifice. Every decision you make has profound and lasting consequences.
• UNIQUE MASSIVE WORLD TO DISCOVER:
The world of Antara is wide open and ripe for exploration. Unearth hidden places and dangerous enemies — Antara is a vast home to a thousand wonders and secrets for players to discover.
• CUSTOMIZABLE SQUAD AND EQUIPMENT:
Each army squad has its own set of skills and visual appearance. Build armies of different creatures who will fight with you throughout the majority of your adventure.
• TACTICAL DEPTH ON THE BATTLEFIELD:
The environment and landscape matters in King’s Bounty II Players will encounter diverse terrain types, directly impacting battlefield tactics. Every battle unique in its own way.
Steam User 83
Overall, this was a pleasant experience, albeit different from original KB series.
Good:
- Overall Story: nothing to complain, has some interesting moments.
- Majority of battles, especially in the second half of the game, feel organic and responsive to player's build.
- Hard difficulty does provide decent challenge
- Units, while less numerous, provide some opportunity to craft different builds.
- Units from different ideals feel completely different from each other.
- Arenas and their integration in the world feel organic and fun.
- Healing units after battle gives you much more freedom
- XP system for units is fun and balances previous point
Bad:
- Navigation. Horse. Hooooooorse.....
- Not very polished.
- Repetitive quest design and riddles
- Low versatility on armour sets/equipment overall/spells/ somewhat units
- Balance
Ugly:
- 3d person did more harm than good. Fun from dialogues side, not fun to navigate.
- Unit caps... I can see why they are there, I just don't think they belong in the game this way. Limits army versatility.
- 1 map, while big, will feel like you're walking on the same place for the entire game. Variety in scenery, they built a good world and... I expected more travel.
- Slow ramp up, until mid game a lot feels like a struggle on Hard, but maybe it's expected
- I felt like I was abusing taunts until the last battle, and now I hate the last battle.
- Person who has decided to give out set pieces as random quest rewards -- my personal F word is for you.
Not the best game I've played, not the worst. Satisfies like 2/3 of the King's Bounty checkmarks, and I am happy I have deiced to pick it up.
Steam User 37
After reading many mediocre reviews about this game a was a bit sceptical to try it out. However, after spending 47 hours in the world of Antara, finishing the game (and loving it!) I feel obligated to share my positive experience with people that are interested in the game.
I played the game after the roadmap of patches and hotfixes had been completed so I suspect that many reviews are based on the early state of the game.
The game features an open world where you are free to roam around. The amount of resources available in the world (gold, mana, experience, etc) is limited so that adds a dimension to the game that makes it more challenging then most games. There is no grinding easy battles to farm xp and cruise through the difficult battles more easily.
This game does not get easier by number crunching. It gets easier by playing it, understanding it's mechanics, finding out it's secrets and applying them. My first playtrough was on hard and I got stuck pretty early in the game. After putting in around 10 hours I decided to restart on hard with the same character and this I jsut breezed trough that first part simply by understanding the game better. It was a very rewarding experience.
I've read some criticism on the voice acting and the graphics. I think the voice acting of the very first character you meet is kind of mediocre which may set the tone for the rest of the game but a lot of the voice acting in the rest of the game was decent in my opinion.
As for the graphics, I think they are respectable for a game like this. I realy enjoyed the environments and the farsights and character models definetely around good looking. Then again, I used to play Kings Bounty on the Sega Megadrive 30 years ago so maybe I'm just used to monster being composed in 100x100 pixels.
Steam User 61
Just finished the game and i thought that the game was quite good.
I feel that a lot of the negative reviews are harsh and undeserved.
Whilst i understand that not everyone likes change, not all change is good and "if its not broken, don't fix it" but i personally welcome the change to 3D and open world.
I see it as King's Bounty meets The Witcher.
The graphics are really quite good. The world is very beautiful and detailed and you can tell that a lot of effort was put into it.
The apparel looks good. If you want to be critical, some NPC's have the same face.
I think the voice acting is decent over all.
The combat is quite good and at times quite challenging.
The puzzles are mostly easy but there were a couple with no real hint, just try every combination until you guess right.
The story is good/decent.
I really liked the graphics of the environment. And i liked how there is loot everywhere so exploring is rewarded.
I don't understand why people feel the game is boring or tedious so much? At times it is but no more or no less than most RPG's that require a lot of back and forth, lots of side quests and repetitive missions.
Aren't all/most RPG's like that?
Personally i found some of the other older King's bounty games to feel like that at times.
I am a long term fan of the franchise. I hired the old one on my Sega Mega Drive/Genesis back in the day and thought it was cool.
I've played and completed a couple of the newer ones on Steam. Even got the 4th highest score on one of them.
And i liked this one quite a bit.
The music is good. Even though there is not a whole lot of it.
I don't think the horse is useless. like I've seen suggested. And i hated Roach in The Witcher lol.
Admittedly, when the game first came out i was put off by the price tag and my initial impression was not good, i thought it did not look like Kings Bounty or very good.
I cant speak on if the game was buggy at launch but in its current state its not very buggy at all.
It's an absolute steal at the 75% discount.
Steam User 18
so I enjoy this silly game
but here's a thing I wish I knew on my first playthough, as they're annoying to figure out and knowing those maybe I could avoid reseting my campaign.
-u share your battle mana with mana spent on learning spells, don't try to learn every spell
Also upgrading spells is expensive and drains mana a lot in battle.
-reseting your skill tree will cost (0 > 10k > 50k).
You will be able to learn level 2 abilities ONLY after having points from quests, not those spend onto skill tree.
-paladin playthrough if FORCED onto Order campaign, so if you plan to replay this game, try other playstyle as Wizzard and Warrior
-realistically you should invest only into 1 army, maximizing 2 types will either ask you not making losses in battles, or picking improved experience rate for units.
-Experience of whole unit stack killed can be preserved if you have reserves (you can purchase units straight into reserve).
And melee units level up so much quicker than ranged ones, as it's dependant on KILLING BLOW of enemies, not dealing dmg. Thus melee can do counterattack or zone control. While ranged only depend on your own turn attacks. Thus do keep ranged reserves.
Steam User 18
Disclaimer: I ended up playing the game on GOG so hours won't match
TLDR: It's not that bad and gets a lot of bad reviews for no reason. Not worth full price tho, wait for sale.
What I had issues with:
-lag, poor optimalization in some areas
-walking (add a sprint button or more waypoints)
-story was just boring
-kinda easy? i expected (if only the final battles) more of a challenge, much easier than old games on impossible
-short - not enought content for the price
-level cap ... why? why not reward the player for proper perk distribution and good xp scroll usage
Despite all that I enjoyed it quite a bit
+the combat worked quite well and was skilled based*, this was shown in the challenges, which i liked
+the combat arenas were very interesting and made battles less boring and repetitive
+the world looke quite nice (even tho it was mostly grass)
+overly animated dragons
Despite all the issues I'd give it a 8/10. Still buy it on sale, it is way to expensive for a 30ish hour game.
*fuck morale
Steam User 21
You must be a fan of both the King's Bounty series and third-person RPGs (like Witchers and Gothics), and you also need to be capable of enduring eurojanks. If any of these conditions are not met, the game will likely fall short of your expectations. Otherwise you will literally have a blast playing it, as it combines turn-based strategy and exploration/questing in a very enjoyable and addicting way. Sleep deprivation is guaranteed. Too bad, it was cut in half and we are likely never gonna get the second part (the story ends on a cliffhanger).
Steam User 17
Get it with, at least, 50% discount.
I'm a fan of the genre, so I got my moneys worth out of this game. But it's very much unfinished, and further development has stopped.