King Arthur: The Role-playing Wargame II Reviews

We have rounded up yet another batch of, mostly mixed, reviews for Paradox and Neocore’s strategy/RPG hybrid King Arthur: The Role-playing Wargame II, the first of which being a piece from GameSpy, 2/5.

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.

zConnection, 85%.

King Arthur II is a game with great intentions and, for the most part, it succeeds in those intentions. With the occasional let-down (the loading times really are incredible in this day and age), you can mainly look the other way and see this for what it is: a game that’s going to be nearly perfect after a few patches. For now, nearly perfect is still damn good, and if you’re starving for some quality strategy gaming, look no further. Limitations of the genre mean that more action-focussed gamers will find this adventure slow, and their passive role in the battles frustrating, but if you’ve ever played a Total War, and enjoyed it, and felt you wanted more of a personal role in the development of your troops and the direction in which your country goes, don’t even hesitate: boot up Steam and buy this now.

Piki Geek, 3/5.

As a sum of all its parts, however, King Arthur II: The Role-Playing Wargame actually does accomplish what it intended to do. It creates both an accessible wargame, as well as a somewhat enchanting roleplaying experience. Though it may not be perfect, it is well suited for players who find Total War games too overwhelming, or those looking for some light roleplaying without all the trekking around in person. This is not a bad game, by any stretch of the imagination, but for what it gave up in depth it did not gain back in features or polish.

GameFront, 40/100.

A cursory look at the game’s forums suggests that the voice-acting and morale problems will be eliminated in some future patch, which can’t come a moment too soon. In general, King Arthur II is riddled with bugs, not unlike another recent medieval warfare game, Firefly Studios’ disappointing Stronghold 3. Purchasers should expect to contend with frequent crashes to desktop, low frame-rates, and at least one quest that gets stuck in an infinite loop, allowing no progression.

Though the game will no doubt improve with time, gamers would be wise to avoid King Arthur II. Despite some bright spots, this (Role-playing Wargame) delivers on only half of its promise the less important half.