King Arthur II - The Role Playing Wargame Review

Few game titles are as descriptive as that of NeocoreGames' latest offering: King Arthur II – The Role Playing Wargame. Like its predecessor, King Arthur II combines RPG elements with both real-time and turn based strategy to create a hybrid of all three genres.

From the outset the setting of King Arthur II is dark and foreboding. The king has been struck down with a wound that will not heal, the Holy Grail has been shattered into pieces, the Knights of the Round Table have disbanded and Merlin the wizard has vanished from the realm and cannot be found.

The king and the land are one, and while the king suffers so does the kingdom of Britannia. Great portals to a dark realm have appeared across the countryside and evil beings known as Formorians have emerged from them to wreak havoc across the land. Surrounded on all sides by this evil threat and by the remains of Britannia's squabbling nobility, the dying Arthur sends out his son to seek a cure for both the king and the realm.

There is an awful lot to do in your quest to heal the king and the land, but the game can essentially be broken down into three distinct parts – the turn based campaign map, the real-time battles and the 'Choose Your Own Adventure' style RPG quests.

The campaign map is artistically solid, featuring dynamic weather with changing seasons, nice character models representing the various armies and well modelled and varied terrain types. During the turn based portion of the game there are a lot of possibilities to explore. You can move your armies, manage your territories and buildings, engage in diplomacy with nearby kingdoms, manage research, initiate battles or quests, manufacture potions and magical artifacts and much more. Not all of this is strictly necessary and you can get by without touching upon many of these elements, but it is nice to have so many options available to tailor your play style to your personal preferences.

Unlike most grand strategy titles your objectives are not so self-defined and progress throughout the game's five chapters follows a structured narrative based on the completion of various quests, which can involve winning a battle, completing an RPG quest or sometimes both. This can be restrictive at times – you may want to explore or conquer the areas to the north of your territory, or you may want to pitch your forces in battle against the army of giants just across your borders. Until the game decides the time is right, these options are pretty much closed off to you.

Even the number of armies you can field is strictly limited as you can only have one army per major hero in your forces. These heroes are only obtained during the course of the narrative and if you are undertaking every side mission and exploring a number of options it can be a good 6-7 hours before you get your second army. This means you must leave your territory undefended while pursuing quests and can often find yourself being forced to turn back halfway through a long journey in order to defend your land from an opportunistic invader.

As mentioned, the adventure quests take inspiration from the Choose Your Own Adventure books that some may remember from their childhood. These take the form of an interactive story where the decisions of the player impacts upon the narrative.

These adventures are presented in text form and read aloud by a single narrator who both tells the story and acts as the voices of all characters encountered during the quest. At first this narrative style can be somewhat endearing, reminiscent of an over-enthusiastic gamesmaster in a pen-and-paper roleplaying game. However, after completing several dozen quests the hammy acting, inconsistent voice work and the occasional jarring departure of the spoken word from the written text can become tiresome.

Despite this flaw the adventure quests can be extremely enjoyable and are the highlight of the game. Sometimes it may feel like your decisions make little difference to the outcome, but on other occasions your choices have a significant repercussion on rewards received and even on future battles fought and events occurring on the campaign map.

Unfortunately, the battle system is not nearly as enjoyable. An army is composed of up to 18 units which can consist of an army leader, up to two additional minor heroes and a mixture of cavalry, infantry and ranged soldiers as well as mythological creatures and flying units. Each unit has its own strengths, weaknesses, formation choices and unique abilities and heroes have a number of offensive and defensive spells to utilise.

Special units are available to players who have sufficiently advanced on the game's two tier morality system, which measures 'faith' and 'virtue' separately. A noble and Christian ruler can field angelic units in his army, whereas a tyrannical follower of the old faith can select from Unseelie Sidhe (evil fairy-folk).

A robust levelling system also comes into play and as units and heroes gain experience they unlock further abilities, spells and stat increases. The battle maps themselves feature several important strategic locations which, when captured by an army, provide access to additional spells and buffs to help swing the tide of the battle in their favour.

All of this sounds great on paper, opening up a huge amount of scope for clever strategic choices, considered army composition and detailed character customisation. In practice however, battles almost always degrade into a massive and uncontrolled brawl in the centre of the battlefield.

This is mainly due to the overly aggressive and not-too-bright AI. In the majority of battles the AI will send one or two units to capture strategic points and march the rest of its army straight towards your carefully assembled forces, then throw absolutely everything directly into your front line. In order to avoid your front units being overwhelmed in one area you have no choice but to throw everything of yours into the fray too. This leaves you with little to do apart from periodically cast spells until one side completely obliterates the other – which is your only option as no units on either side will ever route or retreat.

Most battles, with the exception of those that advance the story, can be resolved automatically and taking this option often results is significantly less casualties than fighting the battle personally. I noticed fairly early on that an army composed primarily of archers suffers virtually no casualties at all if resolved in this manner. This combined with the frustration of the battle gameplay makes the 'auto resolve' button very tempting - something that can never be a good sign for a product with "Wargame" in the title.

The interplay between genres that King Arthur II offers is fairly unique and given this the title may attract a cult following amongst niche gamers who have been waiting for a game that combines strategy wargaming with old-school style roleplaying. However, seriously frustrating battle mechanics and a lack of strategic freedom prove to be the biggest failings here and prevent King Arthur II from being enjoyable enough to recommend to a mainstream RPG or strategy gamer.