King's Bounty II

The good: King’s Bounty 2 throws you into a ridiculous fantasy world as a noble who hoards the most dysfunctional army of demons, peasants, and mythical beasts like a hoarder on a shopping spree. The turn-based combat is better than average — lining up perfect spells and watching your troops mulch enemies never gets old. Quests are packed with dumb, fun choices and the whole thing has that charming “beer and pretzels” epic vibe that makes you forgive a lot. The bad: The main story is about as memorable as plain oatmeal, delivered by characters who sound like they’re reading their lines for the first time while half-asleep. Backtracking across giant maps becomes soul-crushing, and by the end you’re just spamming the same fights with slightly bigger numbers. It desperately needed more personality injections and fewer “walk over here for 8 minutes” segments. The ugly: Your troops have the pathfinding IQ of a concussed goldfish, often standing around politely while the enemy turns them into red paste. Animations are jankier than a three-legged horse, and balance occasionally has a full meltdown. It’s the kind of broken charm where you laugh at the bugs... until the fifth time …

I could gotten past the terrible voice acting, terrible horse riding, and terrible story if not for the horrendous combat. It's difficult to tell units apart since they're represented by many tiny, blurry, pixelated individual units instead of a single big one. It's rather simplified & boring, too (KB combat wasn't very complex to begin with). I don't even dislike the game because it's not the same as the first game. I dislike it because it just feels bad to play.

Since I recently replayed the original King's Bounty, I decided to revisit King's Bounty II. I completely disagree with most of the criticisms raised in negative reviews. This installment of the series is actually really good and, what I consider very important, it respects the player's time. I loved the first game when I was a kid, but today I feel it's a bit padded with filler encounters. King's Bounty II is much more well-thought-out in this regard. There are enough combat encounters and side activities to keep you from getting bored, but not so many that it becomes tedious at times. This is something previous installments suffer from, especially if you want to beat the game with every class. I think it retains the original atmosphere. There are far fewer units, but that didn't particularly bother me. At least almost every single one of them is useful, which can't be said about the previous games. The main storyline is decent, and a few side quests really stand out in terms of narrative. The alternative quest paths are also a nice touch. The horse riding is indeed terrible, but I simply ran everywhere instead of using the mount. This doesn't negatively impact the pacing of th…

great game

Don't waste money buying this unbalanced, getting stuck on pebbles, the worst riding experience and the NPCs with the same face everywhere game. It is not worth your time nor money.

Love it