Although the game involves role-playing, the talent system in King’s Bounty II is built in such a way that you almost always get some kind of hybrid build. I played as a mage and calmly learned the primary skills more suitable for a warrior or paladin. True, it is unlikely that it will be possible to completely pump from one class to another, and there are doubts about the advisability of this venture.

There are four types of talents in the game: Order, Strength, Anarchy, and Mastery. In the “Order” branch, you can pump morale, leadership, duration of buffs, and even the ability to resurrect units. The “Strength” skills increase the combat characteristics of the army – they increase the damage and armor of warriors, as well as the resistance to debuffs. In Anarchy, initiative, trade, treasure hunting and vampirism are swinging, and the Mastery branch is entirely devoted to magic, the study of spells, increasing their power and reducing their cost. In general, the field for experimental builds is quite extensive.

In past games in the series, to level up talents, you had to collect multi-colored stones. In King’s Bounty II, the developers abandoned this mechanic in order to more closely tie the acquisition of skills to role-playing. Each talent, in addition to the talent points themselves, which are given for gaining a level, also requires reputation points. You can earn them for completing quests, solving the problems of the inhabitants of the kingdom in one way or another.

For example, in one of the starting tasks, the villagers and the guards from the castle did not share something between themselves. Depending on which side you take, the corresponding reputation branch will be pumped. If you want to pacify the guards in battle, you will pump Strength. Persuade the peasants to calm down and lay down their arms – you will earn the reputation of “Order”. Usually such quests are tied solely to the moral choice of the player. There are no deliberately correct or incorrect answers here, and the task cannot be failed at all. After each mission, in any case, you will receive a reward and some kind of end result that will affect your reputation and the overall storyline. If you want to be a wise and strong magician, you will have to try to solve problems peacefully and save wizards from trouble. You will need a reputation for the “Anarchy” branch – be prepared to run on orders from various robbers and participate in dubious scams.

In addition to the new talent and reputation system, King’s Bounty II has finally made a convenient inventory that now shows all available items and scrolls on one page. Usually, equipment increases the parameters of secret knowledge, the power of magic or military affairs. The first is responsible for the amount of mana, while the other two are responsible for the power of spells and the attack power of your troops. There are also parameters of armor and resistance – they are responsible for protecting units from physical and magical attacks. Some artifacts can also increase the speed of units, health level, initiative, leadership and other characteristics of the hero or controlled units. It’s nice that when you change clothes, the appearance of the character also changes. Just like in a classic RPG.

It’s easy to figure out all this wardrobe. As the game progresses, you just try to find and put on more and more powerful equipment with parameters for the main class, and sell old or unnecessary clothes in the store. The coolest items can be obtained for completing quests or bought from the master in the forge, and some artifacts can be assembled into whole sets. A separate beauty is that there is no weight limit or cells in the inventory, which means that you can store a lot of all kinds of junk for sale there.

The section with the army has also been slightly changed. As before, no more than five units can be put into battle, but now they do not look like a warrior with a number under their feet, but as a group that grows depending on the number of units. Another interesting nuance of the second part is the individual pumping of units. In King’s Bounty II, experience for the battle is received not only by your hero, but also by all the soldiers in the army. Due to experience, their rank is pumped, their characteristics increase and active skills are added. You should be careful, because if the squad is completely destroyed, then you will have to download it again.

Back in King’s Bounty II, the limit on reserve troops was removed. Now you can take with you as many reserve units as you like, adding or excluding them from the main army if necessary. If during the quest some warriors want to join your army, then you will not need to free up space for them – they will automatically fall into the reserve. Then you will figure out how to deal with them.

Traditionally, for a series, the number of units in a squad depends on the hero’s leadership. The higher this parameter, the more people you can hire into the squad. Warriors also have a belonging to one or another reputation. If you collect an army from only one faction, then it will have better morale, which means more chances of getting an extra move or delivering a critical hit in battle.

Witch’s trail

I must say that from the very first minutes King’s Bounty II literally baffled me. I thought I had confused the game, because the second part, at first glance, had nothing to do with the original series. The developers were not cunning when they said that the game “matured”, became more realistic and serious. And it really is very different from anything that Katauri Interactive previously developed. I cannot say that this is good or bad. You just expect to see one game, but you get a completely different, no less interesting, but different. My personal feeling is that King’s Bounty II is more like DLC for The Witcher 3 than Crossroads of Worlds or Princess in Armor. The series has made such a big step away from the previous game that at first you don’t even know whether to be happy about it or not.

The resemblance of King’s Bounty II to the CD Projekt RED game is literally striking, and some elements are borrowed almost completely. For example, when traveling around the world, you can call a horse at any time using a whistle to move around the map faster. Even during the campaign, you have to constantly collect various “loot” – to ransack other people’s houses, carts and all the bushes, where the geodata allows you to go, for hiding places and treasures with treasures. True, if in The Witcher 3 the found trash can be used to create elixirs, weapons or armor, then in King’s Bounty II it is just the equivalent of gold. Yes, sometimes you come across spell scrolls or some kind of clothing, but most of the time you have to collect trash. The trade menu even has a “Sell All Trash” button. By the way, it is very convenient – you will never sell anything superfluous.

In CD Projekt RED, the witcher is teleported across the map using road signs, and in Nostria, this function is performed by magical obelisks. Hidden “places of power” and totems are scattered around the map, which, when activated, increase some characteristic. Also in both games there are very lively cities: the locals do not stand idols, but go about their business, swear, drink, argue with someone and share rumors. Walking the streets, you can overhear other people’s conversations and secrets, learn about someone’s love affairs, gangster agreements and much more.

The names of NPCs in both games are also very similar, as well as their manner of communication – in all this, some Old Slavic ethnic motives are also easily guessed. The main character is not deprived of humor, he can sarcastically in dialogues and gracefully resent his difficult fate. Doesn’t it look like anything? By the way, I forgot to say that if you start a campaign for the warrior Ivor, then he will speak in the voice of Geralt of Rivia – in Russian, the character is voiced by the dubbing actor Vsevolod Kuznetsov. I wouldn’t be surprised if other lines in both games were read by the same actors.

And in Nostria they read no less than in Novigrad. During the passage, you can find many different books, notes and letters. Some of them are directly related to quests, while others are designed to acquaint the player in more detail with lore or some local residents. Walking through the cities and villages, you can find boards with announcements, but there are no witcher orders there – sometimes you can find some tasks on them, but most often with their help the developers practiced humor. For me personally, the elaboration of such nuances evokes extremely warm feelings. It can be seen that the authors of the game got confused over the little things, tried to entertain the user with content.

Locations in King’s Bounty II are filled with animals and birds, and dynamic weather, wind and rustle of foliage convey the atmosphere of a real walk in nature. The artists did a great job creating a beautiful and detailed world. The developers say that, among other things, they were inspired by the world of Middle-earth from “The Lord of the Rings”, and I must admit that this is also striking. Each house, each new village is not made as a blueprint, as is often the case, but created according to an individual layout, subject to the laws of logic and everyday functionality. Looking at the carefully designed biomes, sometimes you can immediately tell what kind of people live here, what kind of craft they do, where they store supplies for the winter, near which house do young people gather in the evenings and which side streets it is better not to walk on at night. All details have been worked out in the smallest detail. Rest assured, if flies are swarming over the rural toilet, it is not just that.

The creators of King’s Bounty II also play great with the height of the landscape. Often the player has to climb mountains or hills, from where simply stunning views of the surrounding world, waterfalls, rivers, mountains and valleys open up. Walking in such places is a pleasure. The only pity is that the character cannot jump, otherwise it would be possible to climb higher for a better view, as in Assassin’s Creed.

All these beautiful views and locations have one interesting side effect – they completely distract from the passing of the game. I can’t say that the past parts of King’s Bounty were appreciated by me because of the main story missions. I would definitely not call them the strength of the series or the main feature of the game. Here is the second part in this regard, while following the example of the original. Here I will make an important digression and clarify that I have not yet managed to complete the game and draw conclusions only on the first 20+ hours that I spent in it before the release. The developers stated that it will take up to 25 hours to complete the story, but, according to my feelings, it will take me all 50. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the game has such a pleasant atmosphere that you just don’t want to rush anywhere. Well, who needs that king and the main storyline, when you can run around the wonderful world, collect two dozen side quests and rummage through all the bushes in search of hiding places? Secondly, King’s Bounty II cannot be passed like this on the move. Very quickly you will run into barriers on the roads, which will not be so easy to break through – you will have to pump up, collect an army and artifacts, and also practice well to fight. The most difficult battles (of those that I managed to win) took me 10-15 attempts.

The tasks, by the way, are very different: find food for the refugee camp, find the missing artifact for the awakened dead man, save the girl from the bandit camp, correct the student’s grade in the magical academy magazine, and so on. Often these tasks are from the category “give / find / bring”, but sometimes there are situations when a fight cannot be avoided and you have to take up an ax.

The essence of many tasks lies precisely in the moral choice, because you can save refugees from hunger both with the help of farmers and by agreeing on food supplies with smugglers, you can negotiate with robbers, and an ignorant student can be handed over to the teacher. I will not say that all the tasks are equally funny and interesting (even the hero himself does not want to take on some of them), but sometimes the plot circumstances turn out to be stronger than personal interests.

Play within the game

By the way, about the battles and their features. The battle phase is one of the few things that has remained in King’s Bounty II from the original series, although it has undergone several major changes. I must say right away that you will have to engage in battle much less often than you expect (because you will have to run around the world more often, completing quests). It will take you a while to get used to the new battles, and they can be a serious headache at first, but if you adapt and take into account all the tactical nuances, you may even like them.

The main feature of the new battles is the relief of the battlefields. In King’s Bounty II, magic faded into the background, giving way to tactics and the correct placement of troops. Ranged units now have bonuses and penalties based on how high they are relative to the target. At the same time, melee units can hide behind cover and fight in the blind zone for enemy shooters. To some extent, the battles have now become more reminiscent of the battles in XCOM.