King's Bounty II

King's Bounty II is a faithful yet innovative successor to a classic strategy CRPG, set in a high fantasy world with unique lore, characters and battle system. Command your own personal army and exploit the varying nuanced battle mechanics as you explore, solve environmental puzzles and loot your way across Nostria. Is this the game for you?

Developer: 1C Entertainment

Publisher: Deep Silver

Reviewed on: Nintendo Switch

Review Code Provided

"King’s Bounty II is the long-awaited sequel to the legendary King’s Bounty video games franchise, one of the most iconic representatives of the turn-based RPG genre. Expanding on this legacy with an entirely new epic story, fractions, enemies, and new features to forge an open and breaking fantasy world Antara. With the kingdoms in disarray, counties demanding independence, bandits prowl the roads, all the overseas nations have denied the King’s authority over them, and blighted creatures lie in wait for the unwary, new accidental heroes emerge as a last hope."

What makes a good RPG? I think we’d all agree when I say immersion is at the heart and soul of the genre, losing yourself in fantasy worlds, questing through unknown lands and most importantly escaping from the mundanity of life. King’s Bounty II focuses heavily on the immersion of the player by letting them traverse a fairly open world in a slightly linear but directed fashion, each map can essentially be broken down into various intertwining paths for you to explore with plenty of environmental puzzles and chests to find which really rewards the player for exploring. Visit bustling towns and citadels full of life, each feeling unique and distinct in their own way, with so many townsfolk to interact with you’ll be sure to find plenty of side quests to keep you busy. You’ll constantly be learning more about the world around you, there’s plenty of really interesting lore and an abundance of sub quest storylines to delve into so don’t be shy to stop, look around and visit the various shops and inhabitants of these truly awe inspiring towns.

As you journey through this beautiful open world full of personality and charm you’ll routinely be presented with quests that let you decide how you want to approach them, these choices will shape your hero's ideals and will greatly affect how later scenarios play out, these choices are broken down into four distinct categories: Order; Anarchy; Power and Finesse. This also dictates what “Talents” you’ll be able to unlock in the skill tree, so be sure to consider which is the right decision for you and what skill tree you want to invest in moving forward. It can sometimes be hard to go against your own morality for the benefit of skills, occasionally you’ll want to make what you consider to be the ethically correct decision in that circumstance but you’ll find yourself hesitant or even apprehensive for the possibility of hindering your progression for your chosen “Talents” or skills. Before you’re free to explore Nostria you’ll have the choice of 3 heroes to pick from, each with their own backstories and 5 unique Talents/skills, it’s worth noting that your characters visual appearance will change upon equipping new armour etc, adding individuality and a sense of progress and you get better loot and discover more extravagant armour sets and weapons. Visually the art style is absolutely gorgeous, Nostria is stunning to look at and explore, from the highly detailed set pieces, to the large open vistas and backgrounds. It’s easy to be impressed by the high level of detail and care that has gone into creating such a polished world to explore.

The battles take place from an isometric perspective, using Hexagonal grid based combat which oddly enough has inverted camera controls by default which you aren’t currently able to change without changing the overworld camera, which isn't inverted by default so you have to choose one or the other. I'm sure this can easily be fixed with a patch post launch though. Camera controls aside the combat is absolutely brilliant, fans of the original and new comers will be glad to hear that it still plays as a tactical RPG and one of the finest at that. You hire units that each have unique traits, a unit takes up one Hexagon on the battle map and you can only take 5 units into battle at a time. However, you can keep plenty in your reserve so don't be afraid to swap them around outside of battle but when doing so keep in mind that the units also follow the previously mentioned: Order; Anarchy; Power and Finesse ideals which affects the units directly depending on their ideals, so don’t go paring up the wrong units, unless you’re a sociopath but don’t worry I wont judge. Interestingly enough battles actually take place in the environment so once the battle commences you’ll actually be seeing the area you’re in from above, I actually spotted a few chests this way, it’s a small detail to note but one that really adds to the immersion and charm of the game overall. Also your hero won’t directly take action on the battlefield rather they act more as a support from the sidelines by casting spells or adding buffs/debuffs etc. I really enjoy the fact that your hero is controlling and giving orders to their army rather than actually fighting themselves, it really reinforces the sense of leading an army into battle and strategically taking out the enemy.

Now it might sound like I’m constantly praising the game thus far but now comes the bad news, currently at the time of writing this the Switch port does not run very well, admittedly I had very high hopes from the initial tutorial area which takes place in a snowy area known as the Albian Highlands because it was mostly keeping at a sturdy 30fps. However, the game is visually very blurry to look at, possibly running a very low resolution or maybe there’s an issue with the anti-aliasing I'm not sure, although when playing from a distance it’s not nearly as noticeable. I was actually in favour of playing in a lower resolution with dialled back graphics in favour of a more consistent frame rate. Sadly this didn’t last long, once you leave the Albian Highlands the frame rate starts to drop frequently and as the areas become larger and more detailed, although visually stunning and technically impressive considering the hardware limitations. It’s disappointing to be playing with blurry graphics and a poor frame rate. However, it’s well worth noting that I played a pre-release build of the game which might be subject to future patches, possibly even on release. That being said, if you can look past the blurry graphics and inconsistent frame rate you can still have a very enjoyable time, especially considering it’s not a game that relies heavily on a consistent frame rate like other genres. Audio wise, it’s perfect, the soundtrack is brilliant and really compliments the high fantasy setting along with fully voiced dialog and cutscenes, overall it’s a very premium experience. To keep things brief I’ve only mentioned the details and aspects of the game that I consider to be worth discussing, I’m sure there is more praise to be sung and bugs to point out but I hope that this has given you a better insight into what to expect. If you’re a fan of tactical RPGs with high budget gameplay and plenty of content then this game will be perfect for you, I’d fully recommend buying it for a different platform if performance is going to be an issue. However if you're willing to look past the performance issues the Switch port is very playable and will hopefully get better in time.

Conclusion

King’s Bounty II is an impressive and long awaited sequel that delivers on every promise, offering a huge, seemingly expansive world to explore. Deep storylines to engross you, an enjoyable and refined combat system and best of all, plenty of player customisation. This is a must play for any RPG enthusiast and a good recommendation for most gamers.

2/3

Good game, worth your time and money

Pros

Amazing Battle System

Gorgeous Graphics

Enjoyable Story

Brilliant Game Design

Cons

Poor performance on the Switch

Minor Bugs

Author: Gabriel Sewell

Published: 23/08/2021 - 17:00