Lovely day for a stroll. Which is good, because there's nothing else to do here.
More Like Prince William
Arthur himself spends the entire game laid out on a slab, gravely and incurably wounded by some magical affliction. It falls to his son, William Pendragon, to reunite the realm and heal the king through a combination of battles and adventures. Along the way he meets most of the myth's most famous characters, which is useful because young Pendragon is not so much a character as he is a pile of stats and abilities. Lancelot and Galahad have memorable subplots, but Pendragon's story never concludes so much as KA2 just stops telling it, ending on a final cutscene that doesn't even have narration, just a series of cryptic pictures that give way to credits. After 27 hours of play, and a significant choice that sets up the endgame, the finale should be a lot more rewarding than this.
The grand strategic map of
England is clearly copied from Total War, but there's nothing to do on
this one.
For that matter, everything about KA2
should have greater payoff. For instance, the grand strategic map of
England is clearly copied from Total War, but there's nothing to do on
this one. Oh, you can upgrade buildings, but all they really do is
provide miniscule buffs to the characters who are liege lords over the
province. Unit production isn't tied to any specific locations: you can
recruit any type of unit so long as you are within your territory. KA2
showers you with money, and diplomacy is only possible with small
kingdoms as a way of getting bonuses, so there's no actual kingdom
management to worry about. Enemy armies mostly stay at home, and you
can't even think about fighting them until you're at the right point in
the story, so forget about a Total War-style territorial struggle.Alright then, what's this about a sword in a stone?
This Must Be the Place
See, KA2's map is really a series of missions, not a true grand strategy game. There really is no point in marching an army west to seize Glastonbury, or south to link up with London. About 90 percent of what happens on the "strategic" map consists of walking from one quest to the next.
I particularly enjoyed a shape-shifting
battle. I had to shape-shift to the appropriate
creature to counter Nimue's new form in each new setting.
Those quests are a mix of battles and
the more interesting and novel choose-your-own-adventures, where a
narrator describes a scene, and then you decide how you react. Most of
these encounters end peacefully and unlock another quest, but some
trigger a battle. Depending on how you acted, you sometimes suffer
penalties on your hero, or you change moral alignment, which has
effects on what kind of units you have access to. Be a just and
Christian king, and you get high-level Christian units like Holy
Warriors; be an evil pagan, and you can find yourself with some dark
fairy units. Don't expect too much, however -- most of these units are
standard cavalry or swordsmen with better stats and slightly cooler
outfits. What's that written on the dragon's skull? "Dovahkiin wuz here."
I particularly enjoyed a shape-shifting fairy-battle between the sorceress Nimue, who had kidnapped Merlin, and Morgana Le Fay. The two sorceresses face off inside a Fading Tower -- a fairy building that warps randomly through different environments -- and I had to shape-shift to the appropriate creature in order to counter Nimue's new form in each new setting. KA2 has a few good quests like this, but most are ultimately one-trick ponies.
Take the Field
Things get a little better on the real-time tactical battlefield. Arthurian England is a smoldering wasteland torn apart by magical disasters and invasions from other planes of existence, and the landscapes and unit artwork do a beautiful job reflecting that. You might find yourself fighting colossi along the walls of an old Roman fortress one day, and the next you're fighting in a twisted valley with spikes and thorns sticking out of the ground, while bat-winged monsters do battle with shining seraphim overhead.
You
can never, ever be sure your troops are going at the speed you
want them to.
Unfortunately, the battles are nowhere
near as fun to play as look at, and a few minutes with them is enough
to drive a general to drinking. Take something as
simple as moving your troops: In
KA2, you can never, ever be sure your troops are going at the speed you
want them to. Sometimes double-clicking seems to work, other times
you'll find that unit crawling along at their glacial default pace.
Worse yet, it's just not clear what is going on once the battle
commences. Units in melee just blur together into an impenetrable mosh
pit, and poor camera controls exacerbate the problem.Wait, who's... where's my... what's that... oh nevermind.
I'm Rubber, You're... Also Rubber
Of
course you're going to cast that fireball, even
though it won't get through. But you've got to do it, or
you'll lose.
The use of magic and heroes in the
battles is a great concept, but King Arthur 2 again runs into trouble
pulling it off. Each army has a magic shield that protects it from
hostile spells, and every hostile spell erodes the magic shield a bit.
That might be a fine system in theory, but here is how it works in
practice: one hero continually buffs the magic shield, and most spells
just fizzle out against it. Eventually, someone gets the upper hand and
breaks through, and now the victorious wizards act almost as a win
button, slaughtering soldiers by the hundreds with fireball spells. It
doesn't feel so much like wizards are part of the battle so much as
they are simply battering at these shields.The big problem is that you don't really have any decisions to make here. Of course you're going to boost that magic shield. Of course you're going to cast that fireball, even though it won't get through. But you've got to do it, or you'll lose. It's a whole lot of input required for something that could basically run on auto-pilot.
I won't deny it: I like a good beheading.
Actually, the same could probably be said of the battles. I played the entire campaign on normal difficulty and lost exactly one engagement. The rest were easy victories, even when my plans fell apart. Past the midway point in the game, my troops were so experienced that it didn't really matter what I did. They were statistically unbeatable, making the second half of the game a really boring victory lap.
Toyland, Toyland
It's
neat and satisfying to
periodically take all your loot and condense it into a smaller set of
far more powerful items.
That said, you do get the odd battle
where magic and heroes play incredible roles, and that's when King
Arthur 2 is at its best. Sages (wizards) sit behind the lines,
vaporizing entire units with fireballs, or putting blessings on
friendly units that immediately start laying waste to the enemy with
200 percent extra damage. Champions charge into combat, single-handedly
butchering scores of enemy soldiers with their combat powers. Lightning
strikes blast into rows of archers. This is where the fun item-crafting
and combining minigame comes into play. By going to item forges and throwing together your various magical equipment, you can get new and more powerful items for your heroes. It's neat and satisfying to periodically take all your loot and condense it into a smaller set of far more powerful items. The payoff -- one of KA2's few -- is watching your geared-up heroes causing even greater havoc. It hits a great mix of Total War and Arthurian myth, with space reserved for smart tactics, heroism, and magic.
It's easy to see the potential for King Arthur 2 to have been a good game rather than "not bad." But it never gets there, mostly because it's doing a half-dozen unrelated things at once, and none of them very well. True, it's definitely improved since release: the framerate has gone from stuttery and borderline-unplayable to a decent 30fps or higher, for example. But its problems go deeper into the design than patches can fix. With the campaign behind me, King Arthur 2 hasn't left me wanting more -- it's left me longing to reinstall Total War: Shogun 2.