First Reviews: King's Bounty 2 - Tactical but Laborious
King's Bounty II lived to see the first reviews. Journalists appreciated the tactical dimension of the game, but some elements met with criticism.
The first installment of King's Bounty was a precursor to the genre that was later made famous by the Heroes of Might and Magic series. Many years later, King's Bounty: Legend and its sequel became nice alternatives to the HoMM series. Will the new game, which we'll see seven years after the launch of the previous installment, also turn out to be a treat for fans of turn-based strategy games? The first King's Bounty II reviews answer the question.
King's Bounty II - selected review scores
- Gamer's Heroes - 90/100
- DualShockers - 8.5/10
- God is a Geek - 8/10
- COG Connected - 71/100
- PC Invasion - 6.5/10
- Push Square - 5/10
- XboxEra - 5/10
- Cultured Vultures - 4/10
So far, few critics have rated King's Bounty II, but already after these notes, you can say that we are not getting a masterpiece but at most a good title. The game's biggest attraction is the combat system, which is surprisingly deep for larger skirmishes thanks to a rich repertoire of units and spells, abilities, and a variety of battlefields. However, even here there are some limitations, for example, the characters' equipment supposedly has little bearing on gameplay. The same is true of the visuals, which are nice but, on closer inspection, you can see that the textures aren't the best and that there is a variety of visual flaws, and the location designs, while full of detail, are - according to some reviewers - a little too bland. Some also mention a general lack of polishing, visible for example in the character progression system.
The most common flaw pointed out by reviewers are not problems with the combat system, but the limited number of skirmishes. King's Bounty II has a world that far too often turns out to be too vast for what it offers. As a result, a lot of time is spent traversing the huge map, talking to NPCs, and performing activities that are often less than thrilling. At least according to some critics, because there are also those who liked the varied tasks offered by the game. Nevertheless, the activities certainly make the gameplay longer, which is all the more problematic given that King's Bounty II includes a system of unit permadeath, and each loss may force us to seek new recruits for the hero's army before we can continue exploring the story.
At this point there are too few opinions to unequivocally assess King's Bounty II. However, it should be recognized that we received a game that is at least decent, although not free of certain shortcomings (which may be removed in the future). Doubts should be dispelled by the release, which will take place tomorrow on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, as well as on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S as part of backward compatibility. For PC, we recommend checking the system requirements in advance.
