Knights of the Chalice 2

This game is... legitimately terrible! I don't say that lightly either. I bought it fully expecting an extremely challenging & unforgiving tactical CRPG, where you'd have to make full use of the mechanics and die often until you figure out optimal encounter strategies, etc. Difficulty is not the issue. It's just that the game makes no sense. The dialogue & narrative appear to have been written by a 10 year old. Everything is *really* janky. It's a mishmash of awful budget graphic assets, sound, music - I play many low-budget games but the way it's all put together here just feels really amateurish. The encounters (the meat & potatoes of the game) are just ridiculously gonzo grab bag affairs, with insanely overpowered enemies that make no sense in the game's context. Zero immersion, clearly no effort from the dev to balance anything or create a coherent experience. It's hard to even feel satisfied winning battles b/c they feel so arbitrary & lazily designed. Probably the most amateurish game I've purchased in quite a while.

If you really enjoy an unfair Tabletop experience, this game is for you. The second or third combat pits you against creatures with a DR of 20 with a single character who can deal damage... it took at least 5 tries to get an iniative count that did result in the NPCs going after that character first round, making the fight impossible. And that's literally within the first two combats. After first major combat, the 'DM' notes that "If you don't understand why you've won, go back and play the combat again", a combat, by the way, which sets 2 casters of level four, plus 5-6 CR 1 or 2 martial monsters against a party of 4 level 2s. Also, the dialogue is very "beginner DM meets C- Language Arts grade".

My true playtime is about 15 hrs. The game is good but I won't recommend it to anyone except 3.5e and tactics veterans looking for a challenge. In my opinion the first game is far superior to this sequel. Still, I got my money's worth and had a good time :)

Probably the worst game I've bought in a very, very long time. This claims to be a 3.5 D&D game, but if any DM had run campaigns like this back then, literally no one would play D&D. Over-priced garbage; absolute waste of money. Pitting 5 level 1 characters (that you don't get to design) against a level 4 Necromancer and 6 monsters is about the dumbest ♥♥♥♥ I've ever seen. You'd be better off paying someone the $50 to stomp on your hands repeatedly in steel-tipped stilettos. Less painful than trying to play whatever the f* this is supposed to be.

Reviewing at the 60 hour mark - what I've played so far is the "tutorial" (a campaign in its own right, took me 11 hours) and the free campaign Hearkenwold, for which the latter I have spent over 50 hours playing. On Hearkenwold, it is an open-ended world where you can basically go where you'd like, having to come back later to certain areas until you are stronger or until you have the correct key/item to continue progressing. Most party members will bring in their own flavour (or actually being useful e.g. the rogue picking a lock and not getting blasted by a trap) during the dialogue or item interaction. You need to take notes (I did via Steam overlay) as the game will not track side quests other than the main quest (and which I suggest you still take notes for), harking back to the older games with no quest log - this makes it all the more engaging as you need to be paying attention. PS: play this one with the tokens (scroll to the bottom to choose the Goldbox-y ones) rather than sprites. Great job to the developer, Dorateen, on this one! The KOTC2 engine brings with it a fantastic ruleset, incredibly tactical combat and probably the best in-game manual ever (every key wo…

half the time was spent in the character creator tbh also i "borrowed" a copy before i bought it here so double the expected hours, totally worth it if you like any dnd based game (rtwp or turn based) from the gold box games to baldurs gate 3, or if you like any mechanically complex and difficult SRPGs at all and are willing to jump into the deep end