14 DAY TRIAL // There’s a lot of text in King Arthur II – The Role-playing Wargame, clearly more than in the first title in the series, and the abundance of written and spoken information and action in a strategy game might just be what makes it a must-play for the gamer of early 2012.
As the game progresses and the quest of re-uniting Britannia and eliminating the advancing Fomorians evolves, the gamer will find that, as hard as the tactical challenges of the battles can be, he might find that it is much more of a challenge to read and internalize all the text the video game throws at him during the adventure quests.
The simplest of these are linked to the diplomacy screen and simply challenge the player to balance the loss of some resources with some short- or long-term advantages. These are fairly easy to get through and remain somewhat interesting as the game progresses.
The more complex are side-quests that can lead to either a peaceful resolution or to a battle and these are mainly engaging at the start of the game when the pressure is on to keep your forces as intact as possible and use the money obtained from questing to upgrade their abilities.
The developers at Neocore Games are truly courageous for putting adventures (I emphasize their text quality, but they also feature some impressive and atmospheric voice acting) at the core of some of the quests on the main story path.
They often involve light puzzles and seem to have quite a few branching options, allowing the gamer to truly role play their favorite kind of fantasy hero, from the bustling champion who believes force and swords can solve anything to the sage who understand the game world and uses clues to decipher all puzzles.
There are some points when the wall of text becomes a little bit annoying, but taken in small doses, adventures might be one of the best things to happen to strategy gaming in some time.