King Arthur II: The Role-Playing Wargame

Sound: 8
Graphics: 7
Story: 7
Gameplay: 4
Commands: 4
Fun: 5
Time to load / lag: 7
Bugs / Problems: 9
Final score: 6

The camera and mechanics might feel a little dated, it is still quite a bit of fun to play a game like this in Arthurian Britain.

I... I don't why I let my self see this entire thing through.

King Arthur II is a barely functioning Total War like RTS with a light sprinkling of RPG elements. The game runs horribly and physically hurts too play (if you can get that far), along with graphics looking like they were created on a fancy potato. But while I do wish to never play this play again, that is not to say that this game didn't have promise. The story isn't half bad and a lot mechanics could've been fun; I reckon if this was given a hell of a lot polish and a graphical upgrade, it might been decently good.

But with how it turned out, I don't recommend playing it and even if you do, get it on sale (the DLC was probably the best of it, ghost romans were at least a fun thing to play as).

Couldn't finish the game because of constant crashes during one particular battle.

VERY captivating story and i highly recommend this game if you are starting out in total war type strategy games

A great game

story and music is awesome .

This is a fantastical wargame with much of the Arthurian lore on a grander scale. Whereas the first game retold the classic legends, the second begins to mold its own tales with more welcomed narration. There are a few changes and many enhancements to what was already a great game.

Much of the first game's elements and systems are familiar here with improvements. The world map is easier to navigate, and the army screen is immediately shown for better management, along with reserve forces and the ability to recruit units outside of settlements. The map has expanded combat options to enhance the battles and combat feels quicker. The hero screens are better organized, with more equipment slots and skill trees for abilities and passives, and units have more options when leveling.

Additions include new units, especially mythical ones. Diplomacy plays a greater role and is reworked with more options. Each building in a region has its own growth and management; development happens simultaneously, and the building benefits are changed. Lore replaces research, and the tree was trimmed down; it is simpler, and lore can be spent during diplomacy.

The games are a bit rough; however, it is a great sequel to the first game, a legendary epic worth the ride and serves to influence Neocore's later titles.

Sure, some of the formatting can be clumsy, some of the gameplay can get a little frustrating, and there are some grammatical errors in the text...BUT, this has an interesting story, a great amount of different units to use and play with, and an enemy AI system that funnily enough actually makes sense to me.
There's upgrades for absolutely every unit in your army, and I couldn't help but become obsessed with trying to find and win enough battles to upgrade my troops to unstoppable killing machines, while at the same time finding artifacts to make all my heroes so much stronger. That's without the great D&D lite story, that follows an old school text adventure on top of classic RTS and strategy features. All in all, 8/10. Main gripe? It's too short!

While this game is fun, its a very poorly executed RTS. This game is so easy that you can mass archers with little or no resistance on the highest difficulty. This games number one flaw is that its proned to crashing in the middle of the battle, wiping all progress made in it. This game is not stable anymore.

The game looks like the Total War series however the battles are the weakest point. The game manages to remove all the need for tactics by having every battle turned into a race to capture the control points (which give spells). A race where units move like sleepy turtles and the camera might or might not show your units. The camera makes most battles almost unplayable and the units do not go where you would expect them. Some battles can be auto played but some are mandatory which makes it tedious.
The story is ok and this could have been a decent game if the battles part would have been polished a bit. The game just seems unfinished.It is very buggy and randomly crashes.

If you played and liked the first one, don't get this one. It feels like an odd mix of a more polished, yet unfinished, simplified version. The battle interface feels better and the addition of flying units brings a lot more strategy options, but that's about it. The beast men are fairly available for recruitment along the progression of the game, but one side of morality/religion based units take forever to get. If you go Christian, great. You get tons of the required buildings through the first and second chapter. I'm almost through the third chapter, (there are five) and I JUST got 1 building for the Unseelie. (the Tyrant, Old Faith route) I only got the Righteous, Old Faith building too. AND the units are even more restricted. Last game, you needed "leadership points" to recruit special faction units. This game keeps the leadership point restrictions BUT adds the building requirements which only let you recruit ONE OR TWO UNITS A BUILDING.

No more round table. You don't get to pick any of your knights. They no long have morality bonuses and penalties. You can't even split armies until your more than a third through the story mode, which is on HARD RAILS. The power creep sucks. All it does is prevent you from going places the story doesn't want you to.

If you like the idea of an RTS game mixed with cool RPG features, giving you control over how your leaders develop, BUY THE FIRST GAME. It's finished with a bunch of DLC that adds great stuff to the game. If you liked the first game, you MIGHT like this game, if you're okay with A LOT less freedom and way easier city management. I'm very disappointed. I loved the first game. Hoped this one would take the good from that one, and reduce the bad from it. It doesn't. Removes a lot of good, adds a lot of bad. The first game is gold, this one is a waste of $10.

Game play is alright but there is zero optimization. This game is nearly a decade old and even today's PCs struggle to run it at what might be considered an acceptable speed.

Tried to get into this game because it seemed so promising but somehow was left un-interested. Miles off the Medieval 2 Total War which came out 5 years earlier. Seemed unrefined and clunky in comparison.

The game used to run like trash, but it runs great now. I don't know when they fixed it, but it runs good now. (November 2020)

Anyways, I love the narration and story telling in this game. Truly unique, and I'd happily pay top dollar for another sequel, as long as the bring back the same narrator and story-writers.

3 years Two PC's and 3 different Video Cards and I still can't get the game to load past the menu. I can't get a refund but maybe I can dissuade others from wasting their money on this game. If you buy it your gambling your money on wether it will run on your system. Save yourself some time and money and buy something else.

I don't know why so many people hate on this game i haven't had a single problem with the game no bugs or crashes.To me the game is like the total war series with fantasy elements to it and the rpg/storytelling pulls you in if you take it for it's worth and for the price of 10$ its worth checking out but i got this on sale for 2.50$ and i feel like it was well worth it.I recommend this game to anyone who likes the total war series but wants more a fantasy side to it.

This game had the potential to be amazing. Instead, we were given an untuned and buggy catastrophy. I LOVED the first King Arthur and sunk 100+ hours into it. I had to force myself to finished this game despite the numerous fatal errors and poor graphic performance. In the end the game fails and is not worth the price.

This is a pretty cool game. The game could have been very enjoyable if the devs decided to actually polish it and fix the thousands of issues that will cause the game to crash for absolutely no reason. It's unplayable, my loading screens give me an error for no reason, whether its after a battle or after trying to load a save it will crash whenever it feels like it. Even moving units makes it spazz out and crash. Im glad i got this for only 6 bucks. I don't know who in their right mind would charge 40 dollars for an unfinished beta of a game.

After a certain point, the game becomes buggy and crashes often, and the battles become the same formula over and over. And before you think the total war association means it's good, there is no management at all. You get gold from battles that you then spend on units, no management or province development at all. Overall, fun in the beginning, but boring when you reach the max upgrade on units.

Quite good, this game is a mishmash of several other genres:

Real-time battles ala Total War
Turn Based strategy
Text Adventure
Multi-hero RPG

Overall I quite enjoyed it and am looking forward to another; that being said there are some issues with the game, I encontered a few bugs that resulted in me having to reload another save back a few hours but I beleive that was patched out later.

This game has a great mix of Total war style rts combat WITH PAUSE and RPG elements something like the HOMM series.The Art style is pleasing and the voice actors do a nice job. The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic and adds to the immersion. Throw in some text based quests for spice and you have a very satisfying experience. The city management and crafting systems are basic but do have an effect on gameplay. The heroes advancement and marrige systems are interesting.
The game is not without flaws, including some graphical glitches especially around flying units. The overall pace is very slow, I have about 300 hours into beating the game twice. All the problems for me were minor compared to the great joy I got from playing this game.
Tips:
Sell unwanted artifacts to trader
Dont uprgrade buildings in lands that do not have lords
Take leadership when its offered at leveling up to get the better units
eventually you will get 3 armies so look to upgrade the reserve unit castle capacity
in diplomatic exchanges that injur a heroe, you can choose a heroe in the reserve units
its better to have an ally land than to capture it in most cases
Ressurect in the righteous line is VERY handy

*also, I played this game first, shared from a friends library on steam, so it was free...I loved it and have since purchased it, but I do think that steam and my friend deserve thanks. I never would have played it with the 66 metascore and many poor reviews, but it has become one of my favorite all time games.

Whilst I really enjoyed the beginning of the game, about halfway through there is a quest that unfortuately breaks the game.
I emailed Neocore and was politely pointed in the direction of "The developers". I emailed the developers and Pardox Interactive pointed me in the direction of the developers (yes, you read that correctly). Unfortunately [email protected] forwards to Paradox without their knowledge. So they politely pointed me in the direction of.....you guessed it.... Neocore Support. One month - no reply.
So long as this game is and remains broken, I can only recommend that you do not spend your time or money playing what should be and could be a phenomenally enjoyable game.

A mix between RPG and RTS, this game shines with its immersive adventure quests, yet technical problems spoil the fun.

This review was written February 8, 2012. It is based on about 20+ hours in the main campaign, and 20+ hours in the prologue (dead legion DLC). I will update this review when I beat the game if it changes anything.

THE GOOD

- Text adventures make a welcome come back; they are pretty well done and are the main element that gives KA its flavor and uniqueness.
- Voice acting has improved since KA1, at least this voice seems deeper and better at reading the text without rushing it. Sometimes however the voice acting becomes very bad, especially when the same actor tries to voice other characters (women, monsters) while telling a story.
- Big improvement on the graphics, especially on the campaign map which is a lot more detailed, believable, and immersive. (Especially in the prologue DLC.)
- New spell protection system is a welcome addition, no more having multiple stacks getting decimated in a blink because of one well-placed spell. Addition of a casting delay to spells helps by giving you a chance to react.
- New diplomacy system with other factions. It adds some welcome depth to the game.
- Pacing seems better than in the original. At least I didn't see any enemy going into an army spawning frenzy, or what the community called the "whack the mole" mechanic in the first game.
- Estimated play time seems decent. It should take you about 40-50 hours on a challenging difficulty, maybe less if you auto resolve a lot of the battles. There is some replay value since you can do the text quests again with different decisions to see what happens.


THE BAD

- Horrible performance even on beast machines. I was getting 9-12 FPS on high settings (on a 6 core 3.2gh), and finally managed to get 20-25 with everything on lowest possible. At lowest settings problems surface like being unable to see clearly which units are selected, winter time turns into a white light mess, and so on. This might be a deal breaker for a lot of people.
- Loss of the province management aspect. No more management of gold and food incomes. In fact there is no more food in the game, and you only gain gold from quests and battle loot. Other elements like natural disasters (floods, plagues, etc.), and all the laws and decrees are gone too. As a result the whole "kingdom management" aspect of the game is mostly gone and reduces the depth of the game.

REVIEW

King Arthur makes a comeback, and the result is overall "good enough" by being neither great nor bad. The text adventures are still fun as ever, adding a wild card to the gameplay which puts you in a wide variety of situations, and gives a unique flavor to the story telling in this game.

The biggest change seems to be the simplification of many aspect of the game, which results in a clear loss of depth and replayability, but at the same time makes the game more accessible to casual players. The first King Arthur was a trinity of battle, management, and text adventures. King Arthur 2 is a duality of battle and text adventure only since the management aspect is mostly gone.

Even if regrettable, this change isn't all bad. The campaign seemed to have more "flow" to it than in the previous game. You will find yourself passing the turns faster since you don't have to take as many decisions, the game is now more comparable to a relaxing read of a book than a struggle to expand your realm, fight the enemy, and deal with the random events and quest spawning frenzy. In other words, the kingdom management is gone but the game is now a more refined adventure game.

Unfortunately some of the more serious technical shortcomings present in the first King Arthur are still present. The random crashes seem to be mostly gone; thankfully I only crashed a couple of times so far. But the extremely low performance and framerate problem is still here. I also found quite a few bugs, like having the narrator reading the wrong text for a quest, campaign map objects flickering, reserve units disappearing, and archer upgrades from buildings affecting their melee damage instead of ranged damage, etc. Also I encountered 2 game stopping bugs myself, and other players reported half a dozen game breaking bugs just days after release.

CONCLUSION

Your experience with the game will vary wildly depending on the performance you get. If the game runs well, you will probably enjoy it as it is a very charming game, and even if it has lost some of its depth I feel the game gives enough entertainment value for its pricetag.

On the other hand, if you are getting bad to horrible performance, the game will be near unplayable and it might be a deal breaker for you. I highly recommend you try the demo to see how the game runs on your machine. The first KA still gets 12 FPS on my machines after 7 patches, so if history repeats itself as usual a quick fix to the performance problem is not going to happen. However it is worth mentioning that the Neocore team is active on the forums and seems to be working actively on fixing bugs.

Of course if you consider yourself a fan of the series, you will probably want to buy the game and play it even with the bad performance and the buggy release. I know a number of people will do this, as I did myself since the game is somewhat playable for me (25fps) on minimal settings.

So the bottom line is:

1) If you are a fan of the series you will want to buy it and be patient while bugs get fixed.
2) If this is your first King Arthur game you might want to wait for a couple of patches or a sale.
3) In all cases trying the demo first is highly recommended since the performance issue is probably a big, if not the biggest factor in your purchase decision.

To begin with, it is not King Arthur 2, it's rather King Arthur 1.5 or something. It's not completely bad, however I would recommendt it only to fans of the dual strategy genre (turn-based strategic level and realtime battles).
Pros:
1. It's beautiful, both on the strategy maps (the daylight changes!) and during battles.
2. There is an enormous number of units types, particuarly including the expansion.
3. It has all the great things from King Arthur 1 and its expansions in one game....
Cons:
1. ...but nothing more - and in fact, less.
2. Where is a proper economy?
3. Why can't I create armies when I want to?
4. Why the adventures are still a series of dialog choices? (in fact - more limited, as the characters attributes are stripped down)
And if you want a challenge, play at a higher difficulty level.

Medieval: TOTAL WAR meets Heroes of Might and Magic(s).

I have fixed a common FPS problem by ensuring all .exe files in steamapps>common>kingarthurii are marked "run as administrator."

After solving this issue, running the .exe through Kingarthur's game folder (NOT STEAM), the game runs great! The graphics are an improvement from King Arthur 1, and the campaign-map gameplay has changed significantly.

The ambiance is pleasant and the battles challenging (if you want them to be) enough to keep my interest for much longer than anticipated. After 20 hours of gameplay, I have not yet completed the third of four acts, so expect to invest a good (estimated) 30 hours into completing the game.