Review – King’s Bounty II
The year is 365 A.D. and the kingdom of Nostria has been invaded by the Blight. It is the responsibility of a leader known as “the saviour” to prevent this evil from taking over these lands for good. This is the setting for King’s Bounty II, a 1C Entertainment and Prime Matter production, a fantasy style role-playing game with turn-based combat. It is both brutal and memorable, with the style of combat chosen that mirrors the difficulty of early XCOM titles and focuses on strategy from the start. The world of Nostria begs to be explored in between fighting and reclaiming territories and offers a storyline that must be experienced.
King’s Bounty II is a role-playing game at its core and includes much of the depth of that genre in this adventure. The story is delivered both in cutscene and written form throughout with book after book to discover in each area that deepens the lore even further from just the base storylines. Questing is a major part in how the world is discovered as well as being one of the main methods for gaining experience and gold to spend on equipment, magic scrolls, and armies to command in battle. The main character can add and equip armour and weapons to increase both the survivability and effectiveness of armies. Mana is used to both update the spell book with new spells and to use them in combat.
The turn-based combat style is delivered round by round, with an overhead camera view with hexagonal areas to put each set of armies. Before combat the player equips armies to bring into battle or places them into the reserves for the next battle. Phase one, the preparation phase, allows for the placement of armies before the beginning of combat. This phase is key to success because if the player places the wrong troops on the frontline, for instance healers or archers, then those armies may be easily wiped out. Line of sight as well as height advantages need to be considered as well during this phase. Once the battle begins each round will allow for one of four actions per army set in move, attack, wait and defend. The commander of the armies will have one of three archetypes in the mercenary, mage and paladin which will give specific advantages. The mercenary has extra warfare-based talents, mages spell effectiveness and paladins have excellent healing boosts. The commander can use the spell book to cast any scroll that they have collected prior to the battle once per round at the cost of mana. Combat in King’s Bounty II is very difficult both as a beginner and as an experienced fighter since the strategy at the start is key to the success of the battle. Practice does make perfect in this case.
Armies used in combat are either earned or purchased from vendors around Nostria. The number of armies that can be commanded is determined by the leadership skill of the main character. The armies attack types range from melee, long ranged, spell based and many more. Armies are based on four different types in Order, Power, Anarchy and Finesse. Different army types in the same battle do not work well together as the morale of the group will be less. Each army has different stats based on the main character’s leadership ability and the rank of the army. The more battles that they survive the stronger they become. Each army type also has passive and active skills that are used in combat each round that they are available.
The talent trees in King’s Bounty II are important to assign properly as each tree upgrades specific talents and spells available for the main character. The four trees available are Order, Power, Anarchy and Finesse. Order talents improve the balance, resiliency, and effectiveness of different armies in battle. Power talents help with units XP, resistance, armour, and warfare stats for the armies at the beginning and during a battle round. Anarchy talents focus on damage and reward increases for winning battles as well as counterattacks being highly effective. The Finesse tree is all about spells and being able to learn additional spells from the Spell Book. These are gamechangers for difficult encounters whether this is to damage or place and area of effect spell on a unit.
Nostria comes alive using sound throughout. For both exploration and fights the sound is top quality and provides deeper immersion into the world. The voice acting can be a bit lacking in some spots with emotion missing but it is not prevalent. Overall, the sound quality is amazing even with headphones on for a more private experience.
Graphically, King’s Bounty II would have benefited from the use of a performance mode with 60 FPS versus a strict 30 FPS quality mode as the only option. It presents like a few games from ten years ago and should have a higher resolution mode for next generation consoles as well.
This is a single player adventure with a myriad of quests and side quests to accomplish making the replay ability off the charts considering three main characters to choose from. With the violence and themes in this title it is not recommended for children. With the difficulty of some fights this will be a slight frustration for even the most experienced of players, but it gives the player a higher satisfaction on success. For parents, with the ability to save and quit often, it is the perfect title for a quick or long session even if interrupted with kid duties.
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Rob for One More Game
9 – Amazing – as near to a 10 as you are going to get without it being a 10. It’s an amazing experience that just requires that little something else to make it a masterpiece. Your hard earned cash and time would be well spent here.
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King’s Bounty II was reviewed on a Xbox Series X and is also available on Xbox One/Series S, PlayStation 4/5, Nintendo Switch and PC.
A digital code of King’s Bounty II was kindly provided by the Publisher. Our thoughts are ours and ours alone.