A cool enough little Total War lite type game. Not as good as the first game in the series - as usual with today's games they have 'streamlined and simplified' things - which means they dumbed it down and thus made it less interesting. Almost gone is the kingdom management aspect, and the battles aren't any better than the last iteration. I think the choose your own adventure aspects are somewhat simplified as well... But it has got prettier graphics. It crashes quite a bit (often on the opening menu for some reason) and runs fairly poorly on my medium powered rig. Also - it has a lot of typo spelling errors (Firblog, Avangers, etc). The typos are an incredibly minor things yes, but it is not a sign of good Quality Control! That said, I hear it was all way worse on first release, as it crashed almost all the time and was pretty unplayable - so I suppose they had better things to fix than typos! It is mostly stable now, for what that's worth - playable anyway.

In summary - pick it up if you liked the first, or if you like a simple wargame with fairly interesting choose your own adventure style storylets mixed in. But if you haven't yet played the first King Arthur - get that instead, it is much the same but without being 'dumbed-down'. Oh - wait for a good special though (for this one, not the first one, which is worth more money).

A good game, but in my opinion not that good as the first king arthur game. Demands a lot from your pc. But it is still stays original towards the bigger games in the market

I like the concept of mixing RP with strategy, and I found the story very entertaining. Rarely seen a King Arthur game so rich with hooks to the original epos (plus some other referals like Grendel from Beowulf). I particularly liked the riddle quest of the Red Knight.

The flaws for me were the battles, which I started to skip after some initial fights. Poor graphics (I don't know how old the game is, but there it looked at least 10 years old) and I just didn't get a "kick" out of them. It was a rush to the power points to perform some magics, afterwards just waiting for the enemy to come hurl itself at your walls. Also didn't like that some battles were obliged.

This game kicks off where the first one ends. With great graphics, which honestly may need to be optimized a little for performance issues, it looks amazing. The battles are big and eventfull and as the game almost forces you to capture certain points on the map for different bonuses it makes it a little more challenging and tactical. All and all this game is a good game, the roleplaying side of it is welcoming and exciting and the battleside of it is bloody and exciting.

This game is pratically similar to the first King Arthur game but the system requirement is quite tough. I barely have smooth graphics and gameplay with my 3 year-old pc system. Other than that, the game is fun and keep up to the standard of the first game. Thumbs up!

A disappointing game, especially compared to the first one. The magic system is now so bad that magic it's nearly useless, the AI is idiot, the quests (one of the best features of the prequel) has been simplified, a lot of elements (like some buildings, the landless factions or the crafting system) are nearly useless, the plot is too chaotic and superficial.

A good potential totally wasted and the developers are not patching anything.

This is a VERY good game, it takes on a completely new method of playing compared to the first King Arthur game, in the first game the campaign is more like the Total war series where you can auto battle all fights (and lose quite alot) and even where on casual gameplay you find yourself out of resources or struggling to hold off the massave crusader armies or protecters of wessex (who kept taking my counties). This game has taken a completely different turn and introduced a new way to play, the casual game setting on this actually is casual, you do not struggle in ANY way to fight off your enemies and you only get to auto-battle the unimportant battles so you dont find yourself moving around the map and auto fighting EVERYONE just to skip some time, i have only played this game on casual so far but the fights are very well done, although have been easy for me, the game practically forces you into taking victory locations as if you do not the enemy will spam you with countless numbers of spells and negative bonuses which are a pain to deal with. When you reach the final parts of the campaign where you need to pick an ally the game becomes instantly harder, to fight the saxon king who has use of angels it is near impossible as his angels take a massave beating and can kill your army in seconds, turning the game from a nice stroll in the park to being threw into a middle of a firefight in the army. However great game highly reccomend

A great game, but narrowly focused. You are forced into a set building design for your provinces, which is somewhat frustrating. It is fun, but I wish it had more of a sandbox premise instead of a set story.

Not a bad game but it cant compete with creative assembly's total war series.

It's pretty much the same as the first part of the series.

KA2 does everything KA1 did well. Beautiful graphic, from both technical standpoint and artistits standpoint, a totalwar-like gameplay but with a blend of RPG elements. However, it has not improved from the accomplishment of KA1 too much. While KA1 was quite a breakthrough success and set the basic of the series, KA2 should have been a more improved title building on the success of KA1, and push the KA series to a even higher standard. KA2 has not made that improvement. However, KA2 is still a great game. You should not miss it if you like KA1 and the Total War series.

I loved the original King Arthur wargame and expected this to be as good. I was a bit let down, especially with the lack of re-playability to it. I could run through multiple times making different moral and religious choices, which opens up a different set of units for each path.. but the difference isn't that huge. In the end each replay of the campaign will play out almost exactly the same with the same quests to do with very few exceptions and slightly different units in the battles.

It's not a bad game, but given the limitations others have already listed it's just not as good as the original.

I love the King Arthur series and this game carries on that tradition. While similar to the first there are several important differnces. First is less kingdom management. Second, is you don't get to control how many armies you have. These two things are regrettable in my opinion, but some may prefer the streamlining. The new ariel units are cool and provide for new tactical challenges. The battles are improved from the first, and I actually like the new magic system better.

I definetly recommend this game for anyone whol liked KA1, or if you are looking to get into a good RPG/Total War style game.

This game was a serious let-down for me. I was expecting a role-playing wargame but got a linear form of total-war with some items added in. The tactical battles are very cpu and graphic demanding and did not run very well on my 4 year old system. The graphics look great zoomed in, but when you zoom out in order to have some overview all the units look exactly the same and this makes it very hard to see what's going on.

Camera controls aren't very great either.

If you're looking for a real role playing wargame I'd recommend the Mount&Blade series.

The sequel to the fairly well received King Arthur: The Role-Playing Wargame was released January 27th 2012, and i've spent the last few days in it's beautiful world taking in all that the game has to offer. But let me begin in saying i havn't played a huge amount of the first game, something about it just didn't draw me in.

The first thing i noticed about the sequel is just how breathtaking the visuals are, especially considering this is a strategy title, i'd go as far as to say it leaves Shogun 2 in the dust in this department.

I'm not the most orthodox of reviewers and will tend to ramble like i was having a conversation with you. So things may seem scattered and i may not balance things well like your regular review, just thought i'd get that out there!

Anyway, i'll continue. First impressions can often count for everything, and in this respect King Arthur II

gives off very mixed signals. Like i said, this game is undoubtedly a gorgeous one. Both the turn based map and the battle map impress. It really adds to the immersion and feel of the game world and it's obvious a lot of work has gone into making this one a looker. However it has come at a cost, at time of review the game is very poorly optimised for many of it's players. I havn't even tried turning up all the graphics settings as the frame-rate is bad enough as it is. I've been told the developers are hard a work on fixing this issue along with the list of bugs which is commendable in this day and age as many larger developers leave their play-base waiting weeks or months to even begin seeing fixes. So i'm sure in the very near future i'll be seeing the 60fps i expect from than the 15-20 fps i'm getting. While it is a little frustrating, it's not as game-breaking as it would be if this was a FPS or Driving game.

Luckily i can see past this, this game does alot of things right. The story is magnificent, given how deep and mature the content is, i was left feeling like a little kid watching the giant battles take place and mass slaughter. Every quest has it's own voice-over which i believe the first game was missing and it really adds a special feeling to the game, making everything more epic. The narrative has a lot going on and the audio narration made it easier to digest. There's not much use in me in explaining the story, there's a lot of it and it's well executed, there's even a difficulty level especially for those that don't want to worry about losing battles and just want to concentrate on the story. But of course it's awesome, there's witches, dragons and medieval politics. Also adding to the story are the role-playing elements, which allow you to advance and gain new abilities, and along with the deep morality system developing your character makes the whole experience much more personal and you get a real feel that it's YOU sending these men/creatures into certain death to face other men/creatures in a battle to the death.

The detail of every element of the game is brilliant, zooming right in on the battle shows great detail on both the terrain and every single unit, this may be a lot to do with the current poor optimisation. So can you really blame them for these issues when it looks this stunning? If you've played the previous King Arthur title or one of the Total War game you'll feel right at home. While more accessible than it's predecessor, it manages to be deeper and more feature packed. There's a ton to see and do and the best part is you don't have to do most of it if you don't want to, and you won't be punished. This is all part of making King Arthur 2 more accessible all while giving the player the option to delve deeper into the experience. Oh and didn't i mention, this separates itself from other large scale battle strategy games in other ways, namely the fantasy elements. You're given the ability to use magic, that's right...fucking magic. And if there's anything Skyrim has taught us, magic isn't gay anymore, it's accepted in society as being just as mean and effective as brute force. This isn't your Harry Potter Wingardium Leviosa making things float and what-not, i'm talking striking the enemy troops with lightning burning dozens at a time to a crisp, that kind of thing. More can be unlocked as you progress and you, as part of the role-playing elements choose the type of magic you want to learn, both offensive and defensive. I heard someone else mention in their impressions something i'll have to steal, as they said it best. On the harder difficulties, if you do not effectively use magic you are screwed, as your opponents LOVE to use magic to wipe out your troops all while healing and making their units more powerful.

I did say i ramble, i like keeping my reviews on the shorter side and this is already turning into a drawn out essay. There's alot of things i'll forget to cover i know, i'm typing what i'm thinking, as i think it so it will read oddly, professional aye? There's just so much to this game and i'm never going to be able to do it justice, i should stick to reviews of games like Pong where i can really make it sound like i know what i'm talking about and can cover everything without a doubt. But hey, it's unique isn't it to review games like

this right? Right? Probably not, it's just a bit wrong isn't it. Anyway what else is there to say? Let's summarise.

There is plenty here for Strategy fans and those interested in getting into the genre, and even with the games current issues, it's clear the development team have improved on the the first title and created a very worthy alternative to the Total War games and given it a twist. And for a team of 30 to create something on this scale it goes without saying it doesn't take a team of 300 to create a game worthy of being a full-priced title.

Things that can be mentioned with the help of points? Yeah

- PC exclusive, a Steamworks title.

- Buy it here - http://store.steampowered.com/app/24480/

- I'm going back to play more in a minute.

- Developers hard at work fixing performance and bugs

- Looking forward to experiencing the awesome battles at 60fps

- My girlfriend would leave me if she saw the shit-eating grin on

my face as i watch the armies collide. Honestly she should be impressed

with some of the tactics this hunk has put into play...

- Thankyou Neocore for adding in the audio narration, hurts my brain less

and it all sounds epic and important.

Rating - 7.4/10

Who knows, once the game is fixed and i've played for longer i can go deeper into my thoughts.

Well done if you managed to read it all, i did warn you.

KA1 was very much a diamond in the rough. Its game mechanics were rough but beneath those was a great concept which, at times, really managed to shine through.

KA2 is less of the same. The concept is the same. You play a character who builds up an army and recruits more characters. The game mixes RPG and RTS to create a hybrid.

Unfortunately the 2nd iteration does not do as good a job as the first. KA2 doesnt really need a player, it would be far better as a graphic novel such is its linearity. Although you can still do research, assign skill points and build buildings the whole lot from top to bottom has been stripped bare leaving very little of interest for the player to do.

The units upgrade automatically at certain points in the game. They still level up giving you the choice of a single stat upgrade (and ocasionally a skill) but you dont really notice these in the battles.

Like wise you level up your heroes. They come in three flavours, a leader, a warrior and a mage (differently named) and if you have two of the same, then regardless of upgrades, they will perform similarly making the upgrades almost obselete.

The research is just a bunch of stat upgrades with a few nice things thrown in and the building is incredibly dumbed down. One nice touch is the morality meter which luckily hasnt changed. Infact its almost identical in every way to the first game.

The battles, similarly to the first, are ok, but do not compare to those of Rome or medieval 2 Total war which is their natural comparison.

The graphics are truly stunning from the interface and map to the battles. But with the battles you wont notice them because you will be looking from so high up they will appear as splodges on the screen with no easy way (apart from tiny banners) to tell your units (or enemy units) apart.

The text adventure parts of the game are fun but its often hard to know if the option you chose is actually what you intended to do.

All in all this game is incredibly average. Its fun, for short periods at a time, but the story its trying to tell (which is not bad) deserves a far better game to tell it. And this does not do the first game justice at all.

Given that this is quite a year for tactical and strategy games, i think i would advise avoiding this and waiting to see if the future games offer a deeper and more enjoyable experience.

If you are into large-scale tactic games then this is right up your alley. The game offers some of the most intense and also intriguing gameplay I´ve seen to this date, with an interesting rpg-element thrown into the mix. Well worth a buy if you like these kind of games!

I was eagerly waiting for a proper sequel to King Arthur 1, a game that I loved for the mix of kingdom management, rpg and tactic, unfortunately neocore chose to make this sequel a very simplified version, cutting most of the kingdom management part, units are no longer researchable but gets upgraded by questing.

Those are only 2 parts of the game but they were very important in the first game making this sequel very shallow even though the other aspects of the game are ok (battle system)/good(text quests).

In short this game was a disappointment for me and clearly a downgrade compared to the first game.