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Imagine Heroes of Might and Magic, but where instead of it being turn-based, and instead of building up your city, and instead of everything being 2D sprites (or a bird’s eye view like in the less popular, later titles), you turn it into a real-time, third person RPG. So basically, the idea of you, a hero on horseback (or not), traveling through the land escorted by an army that isnt visible until combat starts, usually at a chokepoint on the map you need to get past, but said combat retaining the heroes of might and magic formula of being a hex-grid style, turn-based combat where the unit stacks you field, clash against enemy monster stacks, while being augmented by your spells.
That’s basically what King’s Bounty II is. A spiritual sequel to Heroes of Might and Magic. And viewing it in this lens, it really is a good game. The reason why this game received so many negative reviews is from a mixture of King’s Bounty I fans expecting a sequel to THEIR game, and finding out this looks and plays different, and people complaining about the (at release) triple A title pricetag when in reality, this game’s engine is clunky and outdated by at least a decade. For instance, the hero cant swing their sword. Or even jump. The hero cant even hop down a small ridge they find themselves standing on. Cant swim (or even enter a body of water). Instead, the game world’s pathfinding is as bad as an early 2000s PS2 game, full of invisible barriers. HOWEVER, to compensate, this has been coated over with beautiful graphics based on beautiful art design, a rich color palette, and traditional fantasy RPG tropes, all of it giving the illusion of a pretty game world, until you get reminded of the engine limitations. Think of it as Diablo: quest-givers stand frozen in place with an exclamation mark above their heads and don’t move around like NPCs. Same with merchants. Each settlement has a few that cater to your army and equipment needs. The NPCs that do move around, you cannot interact with, but they occasionally greet you or tell you off when you bump into them. So even though it is beautiful, even TES IV: Oblivion from 2006 had a far more interactive game world than King’s Bounty II.
That being said, if you once again put your Heroes of Might and Magic glasses on and view this game from that lens, and see it as a ground-level representation of a HOMM map, it will become a lot more familiar. You travel around the world picking up loot, some of which are gemstones but which arent required by any unit as they all only cost gold to recruit, and thus loot that you have to then sell for gold at NPCs called Vendors. These vendors also offer wargear like armor and weapons, that however are useless to you, the player character, as you don’t fight yourself, but instead, wearing them boosts the stats of your army units, just like the artefacts you find and equip on your hero in HOMM.
You can field 5 different units in your army, and the maximum amount of members a unit has, depends on your leadership skill, which increases as you level up. Each unit belongs to a faction: Order (good guys), Power (wild animals), Anarchy (outlaws and undead) and Finesse (magical creatures). Having all units from one faction gives a boost to their morale which can allow affected units to attack twice in the same turn, while the more varied factions your army is composed of, the harsher the morale penalty will be, to the point of affected units skipping their turn entirely. Units are also classed into quality "Levels". A level 2 unit is generally superior to a level 1 unit, and this isnt just reflected in their stats or special abilties that can be a bit confusing to compare, but also in the gold cost per member. You purchase these units from NPCs called Recruiters. If you purchase more than 5 different units, subsequent units get moved into your reserve.
After a battle, a partially damaged unit (that has lost some members) can be healed back up to full strength for a small amount of gold. But should you completely lose a unit in battle, the empty slot can, right after the battle, only be filled by one of the units you had in reserve. While traveling, you may not know where the next Recruiter is, so having 1 or 2 units in reserve can keep you going even after a tough battle. However, the game world isn't big, because there’s a new quest almost around every corner, and you often come across “town portals” that fast travel you back to the town where you can restock your units.
Let’s talk about the magic system next. Casting spells requires mana, a finite resource. Think of it as something like the premium currency in mobile games. You find small amounts of mana as loot, and larger amounts by touching a blue mana stone. To be able to cast spells, you need to first find them – usually in the form of spell scrolls. Each scroll is single use, but you can carry multiples of the same spell. Casting a single-use spell scroll doesn’t cost mana, but consumes it in the process. However, what you can instead do when outside of battle, is learn a spell from a scroll, so that you can cast it for some mana as often as you like. To learn a spell you need to be a mage of sorts, and this talent is represented by your Arcane Knowledge. The more powerful a spell, the higher the Arcane Knowledge (and one-time high mana cost) needed to learn it. Once learned, it can then be cast forever for smaller amounts of mana. So hold on to at least 1 spell scroll of each type of spell you find so you can study it later. Once per combat turn you can cast one spell.
During combat, next to moving up a certain amount of hex-tiles and/or attacking, you can also order a unit to wait and have the enemy come to them before moving up and attacking, or focus on defense and gain a bonus. Melee-oriented units project a “control zone” of 1 tile around them, so anyone moving too close to get past them gets auto-attacked once. Ranged units need line of sight to be able to fire at their target, so making good use of battlefield obstacles is key to success with/against ranged units, who are weak in melee. Then you have things like movement speed (in amounts of hex tiles) and initiative (when it's your unit's turn to do its thing) as well as armor (resistance to physical damage), Resistance (resistance to elemental damage), and HP (of each member of a unit, added up to a total unit HP, with the whole unit's total healthbar then divided into segments with each member making up one segment) - and thus, healing can only restore one such segment but not bring back those already dead and is thus more effective when used on high HP, but low squad member units. Many units also have a special attack that usually can only be done once per battle, but does extra damage and has some additional effect like bleeding or burn, and in turn, each unit has special rules some of which are passive abilities like skeletons & golems being immune to bleeding while zombies can’t be poisoned.
So as you can see, the combat sounds very familiar to old classics like the HOMM series, while the movement around the game world, talking to characters and doing quests for them is inspired by traditional RPGs like Witcher, The Elder Scrolls and Dragon Age. I understand though why King’s Bounty II has found itself stuck between a rock and a hard place for having tried to mix two popular genres that have nothing in common, save the fantasy setting, i.e. turn-based combat games that are fun only when played as “scenario maps” in short RTS-style sessions rather than as a continuous RPG, and traditional RPGs but where your hero is supposed to fight enemies on his own, but can’t here. Heck, you cant even go inside houses in a town and can only wander the streets. Still, I cant shake the feeling that this game will be a cult classic one day, and its title (numbered sequel of a franchise it has little in common with) is the only thing holding it back from reaching a much larger audience.