https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/stels-plotva-i-neobychnyi-balans-pervyi-vzglyad-na-king-s-bounty-ii

The first thing I want to draw your attention to in the sequel King’s Bounty is the changed tone and approach to the game. If the first part of the remake still followed the spirit and mechanics of the original, then in the new one the developers decided to radically revise many aspects. The fairy tale was replaced by a more realistic fantasy, not devoid, however, of magic and its own face.

The player can choose from three preset characters: the warrior Aivar, the magician Katarina or the paladin Elsa. From which hero you prefer, both the character’s behavior in the dialogues and the starting skills change, but the general plot outline will be the same for everyone. Regardless of whether you are Aivar or Katarina, the start of the game begins in a dungeon, from where the hero is released by order of the prince of the kingdom.

Now, instead of an isometric camera, you have to explore the world with a classic third-person view. Exploration of the world is furnished in the spirit of RPGs like The Witcher or Elex: characters are scattered here and there with whom you can engage in dialogues or engage in battles, and moving away from the main road will help you discover both additional tasks and some secrets. Some secrets are literally hidden in plain sight: in the very first location, for example, you can find an armless statue. After finding the limbs for her, the hero can open a special cache of gold and useful items.

There will be no shortage of side quests either: at the very beginning you can find about five quests, and not every one of them will have an obvious solution. Usually, the game offers several different solutions to the situation: for example, the golems blocking the path can be defeated in a fair battle, or you can find the mage who created them and persuade him to recall the magic constructs. At the same time, the choice of the path affects the hero’s worldview: a separate training window warns that over time the character will be able to make decisions on his own, relying on the player’s previous choices.

Interestingly, the promised “gray morality” is generally in place. In one of the quests, you can meet a talking undead, which in fact turns out to be not a fiend of evil, but a local magician who is ready to sacrifice everything for the kingdom, including his own humanity. And in another, a dispute between miners and hunters needs to be resolved, in which both sides have quite weighty arguments in favor of their innocence – the player will have to choose, starting only from their own feelings.

Of course, the third person view changes to isometric as you move into combat. The locations for battles, as before, remained rather small, and the sequence of actions is determined based on the speed of the units. In addition to simple attacks, the player can use special warrior skills or spells (if any).

An important feature of the original with the correct combination of units remained in place. Troops here belong to one of four types – order, anarchy, strength, or mastery – and, as expected, conflict with each other, reducing characteristics and influencing each other. The wrong choice of army can hurt almost more than a formidable enemy: a crippled morale leads to a decrease in attack power and other penalties, while a correct composition can guarantee additional attacks and critical damage.

The main thing in battle now is not to lose the squad completely. Partially destroyed warriors can be instantly restored for money, but the destroyed stack, alas, will be lost forever. This gives the battles extra depth: sometimes, in losing situations, it is much better to tactically retreat and save the squad than to fight to the last. On this score, the developers also have something to say: in most cases, retreating is attacked if possible – automatic damage from those enemies who are nearby. This also must not be forgotten: if you gape and try to take away half-dead warriors, they will simply be killed in the back.

The game ceases to stand on ceremony soon after training: at the first level, you can find battles with marks “difficult” and “deadly” – in such cases the enemy is many times superior to the player’s army in strength. You can fight this with tactical tricks, the correct combination of spells, pumping the army, or a banal retreat. Yes, many battles in the game can be simply avoided if you don’t run into quite frankly.

“King’s Bounty: Legend of the Knight” was remembered by many for the atmosphere and dialogues full of humor. The authors of the sequel immediately announced a more serious tone, but the question of how this came out remained open. It is worth mentioning that we are not talking about the “earthiness” of the setting: from the first minutes the gamer is faced with golems, talking skeletons and portals to other dimensions. Dialogues in the first hours of the game are not too many, but they are written pretty well. Especially memorable was the necromancer mage, ready to cooperate with ghouls and other evil spirits for the development of progress. It’s too early to talk about the plot: the game clearly did not have an introductory cut-scene, so the player immediately found himself in the midst of events, poorly understanding what was really happening. From the dialogues it became clear that the chosen hero was accused of regicide, but the king’s son, for some reason, vouches for the prisoner and demands an audience with him.

Speaking of bugs, I would like to note exactly one, which gave a zest to the entire passage. At the very beginning of the game, the hero is given his own horse, thanks to which you can quickly move around the map. But you can’t start a dialogue while sitting on a horse, so you have to dismount, and if the horse is somewhere nearby, then at the end of the dialogue it … simply disappears. A mark on the radar indicates the place where the player left the horse, but it is not possible to find it there. This is very easy to fix: there is a separate key to summon the local Roach, but over and over again watching the horse disappear steeper than any Sam Fisher was in its own way hilarious.

Of course, it is premature to draw any conclusions on the approximately two-hour fragment of the game, but even from what you see, it becomes clear that King’s Bounty II has something to show to gamers – the main thing is that they can accept the changes. True, it is impossible to abandon the idea that the game would have been received warmer without a recognizable title. Understanding the publisher is not difficult: a big name has always attracted much better than any successful gameplay.