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.