Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees
Overview:
Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees is a classic western RPG inspired by the games from the 90s like Might & Magic, Wizardry, Ultima, the Gold Box series and others. Using the classic first-person perspective, over grid movement, turn-based system to travel in an open world with fast travel options and a quick combat.
You lead a party of 7 adventurers, manually assembled or pre-made, on an epic adventure to fight the evil which lurks in Amberland. It’s light, fairy tale, epic, heroic and slightly humorous. It does not take tons of hours to complete or require an endless grind to progress. Basically, it’s a love letter from the 90s, the golden era of RPGs.
Notable features:
* First person perspective, 90 degree rotation, over grid movement (like in the 90s).
* Turn-based (both combat and exploration).
* Party-based (7 heroes, either predefined or manually assembled upon new game).
* Fast paced combat, especially blazing fast against much weaker enemies.
* Quick travel to reduce backtracking.
* Easy inventory management with separate personal equipment encumbrance system and an infinite magic bag of carrying for items not equipped at the moment.
* Open world with a big overworld to explore.
* Quests (including both main storyline quests and side quests).
* Rich world lore (spanning between all games of the series, but no knowledge of prior games required).
Technicalities:
The game was designed to look and feel like one of the old games while working flawlessly on modern machines, especially on very high resolutions. It has very low hardware requirements and should run on even very old machines.
About the relation to the prequel:
The Legends of Amberland titles can be played in any order you wish. They share the same world and lore (historical events) but each has a separate and self-contained story. There might be some mild references to events in the previous titles of the series, but more like a flavor, so it does not hinder the ability to play those in any order.
Game Discussion
Steam User 13
What it does, it does well. If you come from Might and Magic or Wizardry, you will enjoy it. If you new to grid-based dungeon crawlers and you start with this, you will find that going to "legacy" titles is actually harder since this has quality of life things that didn't exist in the 90s.
Steam User 5
Bought this a while back, was reminded I had not yet played it and decided why not?
Pleasantly surprised, this game has the fun and just one more hour appeal of the classic Might and Magic series IV.
Open world so you can go anywhere but some areas require certain skills to reach.
You really need to develop your party for versatility and one of the interesting things is to collect sets of equipment to deal with different types of creatures.
A good balance of challenge and tactics to work out.
Steam User 5
Great improvement over the original with Secret Doors and auto-casting buffs at midnight. More complex dungeons than the original and a more open-world environment than before with more Might & Magic VI elements of Novice/Advanced/Expert skill teachers. More classes and newer class-specific spells. Bards are more useful now too.
Completing the game out-of-order can create some soft-lock flag issues, but the game designer gladly fixed some early game bugs. Looking forward to a third installment trilogy.
Steam User 5
Legends of Amberland II is a first-person, turn-based, dungeon-crawling RPG that hearkens back to the subgenre roots while incorporating many modern conveniences. Moreover, it is a superior sequel thanks to a slew of adjustments, additions, enhancements despite not really doing anything drastically different from the first game. But if you enjoyed the initial entry - or first-person dungeon crawls in general - it is almost guaranteed you’ll enjoy this one.
What I Liked
Exploration: Plenty of places to explore and plunder across an assortment of locales and environments. Lots of hidden paths to uncover, most of which lead to treasure (or traps!) for those with keen senses.
Combat: Turn-based combat that, while brisk, provides an adequate amount of decision making and challenge at times.
Improvements Without Reinvention: Lots of subtle differences/improvements compared to the first game, configured in a way to feel both comfortable and refreshing to returning players of the series and newcomers alike.
Compact And Convenient An enjoyable journey that allows for fast travel, saving anywhere, and can be beaten in around 10 hours (on normal).
What I Didn't Really Care For
Story: Serviceable, but nothing to write home about.
Pawn Shop: Pawning price way too low to be worthwhile (realism +1 though).
Missing Stats: Unless I’m completely blind, some stats (like crit) are missing from the character sheet. Would have been nice to see this especially for classes that gain additional crit chance from the knowledge stat.
Skills: These massive bonuses are gated simply by gold, and may have been better suited as rewards at the end of crafted side quests.
Ailments: Some feel way too punishing in the early game, often requiring you to leave dungeons many, many times before you have the means to cure them yourself. In the spirit of classics? Sure. Enjoyable? Not so much to me.
Overall Opinion: GOOD
Based on a BAD, OK, GOOD, GREAT rating scale.
Played completely on Steam Deck
Steam User 4
Its like the first one, but better. A lot of reused Assets, but thats totally fine for a single Dev. The World is suprising big, you can go wherver you want in which order you want. The game has enough depth to feel like a real RPG but not to much to distract from its core: Killing Hordes of Monsters to get Stronger to kill even more Monsters.
Steam User 7
7/10
At first, I thought it was just the exact same thing as the first game. But there are a lot of tweaks, especially to spell damage, and they do add up to a considerably better experience vs the first game.
Obviously, you'd either want some Might & Magic nostalgia or a taste for that style of game in order to enjoy this.
Pros:
- Still captures that old school Might & Magic feel
- 7 party members is rather unique and I love having larger groups
- Combat can be fast paced if you want it to be
- Has some quality of life features that the older games it's based on don't have
Mehs:
- Group composition and positioning are too restrictive for my taste, but I can work with it
Cons:
- It didn't seem to add any races, classes, spells, portraits, etc. Rather disappointing and it's the main reason the score isn't higher. This could have just been a DLC
- It also didn't improve the UI or any other frequently mentioned annoyances from the first game the dev is surely aware of
- Even if you have a Healer, you cannot remove many status effects for a long time. Going back to town to do that kinda blows
- Some severe class imbalance in that some get defining abilities that are nearly useless (ie my Champion gets extra damage against casters but there are almost none... and gets extra crit based on a stat he'd never want). Others have terrible offense (Bard, Healer) and act as dead weight in combat if you don't need healing. Needs a total class rework for the next game
Steam User 3
Quick, has some quirky combat to it, you can take your time or really bruatlize your way through. Explorations if fun and simple, combat doesn't really have any strategy, Warriors pound away, mages nuke and healers drop their spells as needed.
Come to think of it overall i love LoA2, but to look at it's individual aspects, it's pretty shallow. Only healers and warrior matter, half casters just don't do enough AOE to invest in their spells, and end game defence is much more about stacking equipment buffs than stats. TBH your stats don't improve much over the game. and managing your gear is the more important part. Still charming and fun though.