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 11
More of a aesthetic successor to Might and Magic 3-5, rather than a spiritual one. Much more emphasis on combat than the Xeen games, and the setting is quite mundane in comparison.
Love:
- Nails the Xeen-era Might and Magic aesthetic. Especially the music!
- Speed - dungeon delving is snappy. You can clear some dungeons in minutes, and there are a lot of them.
- Most XP comes from monster-slaying rather than quest XP bonuses. This is in comparison to the Xeen games, where quest XP was massive.
- Runs on absolute potato machines. Really nice to have a modern game that can run on ancient machines.
Like:
- More or less everything. It's very much like Xeen while being it's own thing. The mechanics are quite different than Xeen, but end up creating a very similar feel.
- Encumbrance system and arcane systems are neat and feel good. I think this is the only time I can ever say that an encumbrance system feels good in an RPG.
idk:
- I wish this game had more sci-fantasy vibes. Given the strong Xeen influence, it feels strange to have the setting and monsters be so mundane. Give me a spaceship dungeon and some robots with gatling guns, or at least some backwards-talking monks.
- Learning spells from XP levels feels sort of boring.
- Given how much fun in this genre comes from finding new gear, this game is quite stingy with drops. I think having a very low percentage drop rate from monsters would be nice -- you slay so many of them that even a 1% chance of dropping gear from defeating a monster would be an improvement, for example.
- The graphics don't quite stand up to the Might and Magic games. They're serviceable and match the vibe, but are a little clunky in comparison to the Xeen games, which had lovely animation frames. Even adding an exaggerated "ouch" frame for each monster would be nice.
- There's an emphasis on equipment shuffling, but the UI is too primitive to make this enjoyable. Shuffling equipment across 7 (!) party members is a drag. God forbid you accidentally unequip something (easy to do if you're using the mouse), because it's going to be (a) hard to remember what you had on and (b) you don't have any way of sorting to find it.
- A lot of equipment is pretty useless. Weapons, especially, suffer from having one modifier (Slayer) that is much better than anything else.
- Despite being a short game, it started to overstay its welcome near the end. The sheer number of monsters everywhere makes things feel like a slog in the later-game areas.
Great nostalgia trip, and a mostly enjoyable game.
Steam User 13
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Legends of Amberland 2 is extremely similar to its predecessor, which I reviewed here. Most of the same points still apply: it plays similar to M&M 3-5, there's a large open world to explore, you have a party of 7 characters, all the same races and classes are back, and while a couple new lategame spells were added to give mages more utility, the overall balance is very similar to the first game.
This brings me to my one gripe with the game: it really is just more of the same. While there are some new enemies, the majority of them is recycled from the first game. You will fight the same-looking ogres, snakes, lizards, etc as in the first game, sometimes even in similar scenarios like ogres that are occupying a castle.
Legends of Amberland 2 is quite a bit bigger than the first game, has more naval exploration (you can buy a boat at some point and have to find navigation trainers to be able to sail out into deeper waters) and more nonlinearity in its progression, as well as some welcome quality of life improvements. Even so, it feels extremely similar to the first game.
If you never played the first game, I would recommend to just start with this, as it's bigger and better. If you played the first game, I can only recommend this if you want more of the same. It's essentially the same game but the layout of the world is different, you will encounter the same enemies in the same environments with the same combat system. While Might & Magic 3 and 4, for example, were also very similar, they felt a lot more unique compared to each other than Amberland 1 and 2.
This really is the most "more of the same" game in this genre I've seen in a long time. While the game is fun, I hope Legends of Amberland 3 is going to vary things a little because as it is, the Amberland series is a little too simple to copy its formula again and again without getting boring. Even the Might & Magic games are more complex in comparison, and they were always among the easier dungeon crawling RPGs!
Steam User 10
This sequel feels like the exact same game with a fresh new map. Enjoyed it, as I did the first one.
There's nothing too exceptional about the series, they're rather basic blobbers (which leads to very repetitive combat) which emulate the style of Might & Magic 3-5 or Lands of Lore 1. For people that don't know these games, perhaps Legend of Grimrock is a more recognisable title for comparison, though rather than one big dungeon this game has a world with multiple smaller dungeons and turn-based rather than real-time combat.
They are very accessible games though, easy to understand and play and just a solid experience if you're into this genre.
Steam User 3
The sequel adds just enough wrinkles to keep the gameplay fresh, and the rework of resistances and loot tables is a huge boon. It also works great on the steam deck / with a controller, which was unexpected for a traditionally keyboard-heavy genre. There's a certain fairytale lightness to the storytelling that keeps the whole thing feeling...comfortable. I'd really recommend this series as an entry point (or a re-entry point) for anyone who's curious about these old dungeon crawlers, and doesn't want to devote a hundred hours into figuring out how to get the old ones to run.
Steam User 3
It's Amberland 1, but with substantially more.
All the sprites have been upcycled, but the underlying game is more interesting. You shouldn't just 3 warrior 2 healer 2 wizard sandbag the party composition, and fights sometimes involve a little thinking. Enemies do more stuff and have proper levels so you're not just guessing at strength based on their hp bar. Dungeons can have secret walls and teleporters and they're not all meant to be cleared the moment you run into them. Convenience features like quest tracking and the map are better and the writing feels a little more self assured.
It's good.
Coming directly from Amberland 1 I did have a moment of hesitation like "is this an asset flip?" but I don't think a developer should have to redo all their visuals for each game, and the game under the visuals is so much better in 2. It's clear that a lot of passion went into this.
If you're just starting the series, this isn't a bad place to start. If you do eventually want to play 1, you should probably play it first since it'll feel really plain if you pick it up after 2.
Edit: Boy howdy they've sure introduced some ways to softlock yourself. Likewise, if you did your party composition wrong (you should not do 2 healer, 2 wizard, 2 warrior, 1 knight like in the first game) there's parts of the game that get way more annoying and you've already invested a chunk of time into your incorrect party by the time you reach them. What's funny about this is that... this is all just stuff that other games in the genre did. Amberland is taking the same evolutionary path as Might And Magic. It's not a huge problem if you're used to the genre and do some planning in advance, but if you rush in blind it might be tilting.
2nd Edit: Rolled credits. I don't think I did absolutely everything, and I do think there's some elements of the design that fall a little flat (secret walls that do not detect as such, so you need to ram yourself against every wall anyway,) but it's a good throwback. I'll be checking out the third game when it releases.
Steam User 2
Pretty fun game. Sort of like a beginners first person dungeon crawler. Pretty straightforward. Some quests are a bit obtuse but nothing outside of the genre norm.
If you're looking for a roughly 20 hour game you'll enjoy it.
Without knowing that there was a day limit achievement on beating the game, I was a few days too long. Had I known I could have easily done it. You can probably get all of the achievements except for one in one playthrough.
I would recommend for most RPG fans.
Steam User 1
The game is a lot of fun. Retro graphics and styling don't impair enjoyment.
The interface and experience are well polished.
Controler support is quite effective. I'm playing with Xbox controller.
Highly recommend to fans of classic RPGs like Wizardry and Eye of the Beholder or those who've played Legends of Grimrock and want more party adventure and less puzzle.