Played King’s Bounty II. A new look at the legendary tactical RPG – review addiction

Creating a world-class RPG is not a challenge for the faint of heart. Go and cope with a couple of hundred fully voiced characters, intricate cultural relationships and a fantasy kingdom that spans dozens of square kilometers. And when your game continues one of the most beloved franchises in the history of Russian gamedev, with all the expectations of the fans due, it is completely drawn to a heroic quest.

The fate of the kingdom is in the hands of three characters of different classes. The player immediately takes control of one of them, and the rest can meet during the story as an NPC

Old Man Berengaria’s Tales

The first and foremost fear of fans is that King’s Bounty II is not at all like its predecessor. This is partly true. The authors discarded the usual isometry in favor of a more modern third-person camera, the study of fairy lands vividly recalls the cycle Fable or “The Witcher”; however, adjusted for a more rigid design. All paths are clearly delineated, all battles (even with a random bear) are assigned to specific locations. It will not be possible to escape from fate.

However, despite its apparent simplicity, the spirit of King’s Bounty II is an old-school role-playing game. The fruit of the efforts not so much of directors and designers as of a large team of screenwriters who, in their youth, did not let go of the books of Tolkien and Jordan. There is a lot of text here: dialogues take up a good half of the game time, all kinds of notes and announcements are generously scattered throughout the cities and forests, and each quest is accompanied by a detailed chronicle in the diary. Even ordinary extras on the streets chat with each other or mutter something to themselves.

New information is constantly poured onto the player. At first, it can be difficult to understand the intricacies of the lore, but over time, a complex picture of a living, dynamic world full of contradictions and intrigues is formed from scattered fragments of the mosaic. For example, a simple side quest from a blacksmith can lead the hero to the artel of clay craftsmen, where a note about a group of missing workers hangs on the notice board. This puzzle has to do with the events of a completely different quest involving mysterious conspirators who have settled in the abandoned catacombs. And that plot, in turn, goes back to the global history of Nostria and its royal dynasty.

There are countless different factions in the game, and many of them are ready to send their representatives to help a friendly player

1C Entertainment did not forget about one more corporate trait. King’s Bounty – humor. And although the overall mood of the game is quite serious, here and there there are funny announcements (“For breakfast, it’s lunch, – bread and water, for dinner – soup with bread broth”), crazy quests and ridiculous characters in a good way. Do not miss the opportunity to further increase the degree of absurdity: one of the playable heroines, a paladin girl, talks about her great mission in almost every dialogue, and the poor castle grooms have to listen to all this.

Finally, turn-based tactical battles made it to the sequel safe and sound. Everything is the old-fashioned way: two commanders put squads of fighters against each other, move them around the arena broken into cells and provide support with powerful spells. In the interests of balance and realism, the scope of the armies had to be slightly reduced – no more endless dragon armadas. But each individual spearman is now directly displayed on the battlefield. And it is no coincidence that the recruitment of some units is tied to quests: you quickly become attached to subordinates and begin to cherish each war dog, patiently increasing its level and discovering new abilities. True, sooner or later the composition of the army will have to be changed for reasons of tactics. For example, in a battle with skeletons, archers are practically useless – which means that you have to stock up on a couple of sorcerers in advance or bargain with an old necromancer for your own squad of undead.

There are no random battles in the game: all enemies are placed in advance on the global map, and geography sets the course of the battle. City combat shooters will have a tough time!

General and immoral

The second big concern about King’s Bounty II is the linearity of the world. We hasten to please: in fact, Nostria does not seem like a “bellboy” at all. Yes, each location has its own main route, but literally every five to ten meters from the road tempting side paths depart. Some of them lead to new quests, others – just to picturesque edges, notes and hiding places. The only disappointing thing is the predictability of the awards. Noticing a cleverly hidden path behind the bushes, you hope to find at the end something more interesting than another nondescript chest with gold.

However, given the complexity of the battles and the extortionate prices of local merchants, even such gathering has a practical sense. As in completing optional quests, of which there are a great many in King’s Bounty II. Most of them boil down to two or three traditional mechanics (go and fetch, give it in the face to the insolent bandit), but the plot context creates a commendable variety. There are detective investigations here, and the hunt for escaped chickens for the royal table, and the clearing of the village from evil spirits, diluted with simple puzzles.

But the role-playing system, unfortunately, turned out to be rather limited. In the first few hours, we were unable to find a fundamental difference between the three playable characters. In fact, only their reactions in dialogues differ (the paladin is friendly, the warrior is pragmatic, the proud sorceress is insolent to everyone) and the starting set of abilities. One class is given the right to re-attack, the other – magic. At the same time, even a warrior, if desired, can be taught magic: you just need to buy scrolls with spells and pick up equipment with the necessary bonuses.

The world of Nostria is full of dangers and troubles: bandits bully peasants, the water in the aqueducts has dried up, mana reserves are not replenished, and a mysterious epidemic is approaching from distant borders

In fact, roleplaying does not depend on the choice of the character, but on the reputation system. Ethical decisions in King’s Bounty II are broken down into two pairs of opposing ideals – roughly like the dark and light sides in Star Wars… Nobility and helping the innocent increase the “Order” points; conversely, lack of principle and alliance with various villains favors “Anarchy”. The adepts of “Mastery” seek to establish contact between the real and the mystical world of Nostria, and the followers of the “Force” in negotiations with the spirits recognize only the language of the sword.

Slightly changing the course of character development can be through the distribution of points: for example, magic skills belong to “Mastery”, and protection and treatment – to “Order”. But the main source of reputation is still quests. Moreover, the choice must be made not during the dialogues (alas, they are completely non-interactive), but directly during the game. Would you like to receive a reward for hushing up the investigation of a mysterious incident in the old fortress? Give the evidence to the criminal and get the well-deserved Anarchy points. If truth and “Order” are dear to you, then you will have to go in search of witnesses. The morally correct path, as usual, will always be a little longer, but in the long run it will bring great rewards.

At the same time, each ideal has its own advantages. First of all, this manifests itself when recruiting units: ghouls and golems will gladly join a commander with a high rate of “Mastery”, but materialistic dwarves in such a company will only fight half-heartedly. Over time, the availability of some quests will depend on the reputation – the bandits simply will not talk to an overly decent hero. Therefore, in order to fully familiarize yourself with the world of Nostria, the game will need to be played at least twice.

The dialogues are well written, but the complexity of the direction does not differ. As a rule, the characters just stand and present important information to each other.

Start key

And finally, the main question: is King’s Bounty II ready for release? Such a large-scale and complex project, and even in a conditionally open world, is a huge risk even for large international companies. But by some miracle, 1C Entertainment calculated everything correctly. The game runs stably, loads quickly, items don’t disappear from inventory, and localization doesn’t crash. Although for some reason some of the sentences and nuances from the English voice-over are absent in the Russian text, but this seems to be an inevitable compromise of adaptation.

In ten hours of playing, we only encountered a couple of minor animation bugs. However, the developers are aware of this problem and are already preparing a large “first day patch” with a number of visual improvements. It seems that we should expect a significant increase in the quality of graphics: the preview version of King’s Bounty II takes not so much technological polish as the skill of the artists. Also, the studio promises some changes in the interface, which will also come in handy. Now the game is frankly overloaded with text, the quest log is not intuitive enough (it’s easier to navigate the map), and for some reason the book of magic is divided into separate pages for each type of spells – which during the passage you can not guess at all!

1C artists did a really worthy job: Nostria is designed in the spirit of medieval fantasy, but at the same time regularly surprises with its unusual architecture and design of creatures

The creators have yet to catch some burrs, but the main components of success in King’s Bounty II are already available: an immense world, a deep combat system, a well-thought-out lore, an abundance of interesting quests and moral dilemmas. Perhaps the project will alienate the younger generation of players with its “literary”, and the old people, on the contrary, will scare off the overly straightened character development. However, in general, 1C Entertainment surprisingly deftly manages to balance between modern trends and the canons of classic RPGs.

Is this enough to become a worthy successor to the famous King’s Bounty? We’ll find out in a month.