This game has a great mix of Total war style rts combat WITH PAUSE and RPG elements something like the HOMM series.The Art style is pleasing and the voice actors do a nice job. The soundtrack is absolutely fantastic and adds to the immersion. Throw in some text based quests for spice and you have a very satisfying experience. The city management and crafting systems are basic but do have an effect on gameplay. The heroes advancement and marrige systems are interesting.
The game is not without flaws, including some graphical glitches especially around flying units. The overall pace is very slow, I have about 300 hours into beating the game twice. All the problems for me were minor compared to the great joy I got from playing this game.
Tips:
Sell unwanted artifacts to trader
Dont uprgrade buildings in lands that do not have lords
Take leadership when its offered at leveling up to get the better units
eventually you will get 3 armies so look to upgrade the reserve unit castle capacity
in diplomatic exchanges that injur a heroe, you can choose a heroe in the reserve units
its better to have an ally land than to capture it in most cases
Ressurect in the righteous line is VERY handy

*also, I played this game first, shared from a friends library on steam, so it was free...I loved it and have since purchased it, but I do think that steam and my friend deserve thanks. I never would have played it with the 66 metascore and many poor reviews, but it has become one of my favorite all time games.

Cant recomend it, has very good vision and good feeling to it. But for me as an total war fan cant realy get e feel to the battles.

-No moral, so cant make enemies break and run
-Archers have ulimited arrows so they are kinda op if you can protec em properly
-The fighting seems like they just stressed it together, no rel feel with units formation and controlling the army.

They have a good vision hope they continue with this kind of game but approv alot on battle cause it's a big part of the game. Many other small thing like no settlement controll, only gain gold from battle and loot.

Well I hade my hopes up and it didn't live up to my hopes, if your not a total war fan you might like it

Quite good, this game is a mishmash of several other genres:

Real-time battles ala Total War
Turn Based strategy
Text Adventure
Multi-hero RPG

Overall I quite enjoyed it and am looking forward to another; that being said there are some issues with the game, I encontered a few bugs that resulted in me having to reload another save back a few hours but I beleive that was patched out later.

A mix between RPG and RTS, this game shines with its immersive adventure quests, yet technical problems spoil the fun.

This review was written February 8, 2012. It is based on about 20+ hours in the main campaign, and 20+ hours in the prologue (dead legion DLC). I will update this review when I beat the game if it changes anything.

THE GOOD

- Text adventures make a welcome come back; they are pretty well done and are the main element that gives KA its flavor and uniqueness.
- Voice acting has improved since KA1, at least this voice seems deeper and better at reading the text without rushing it. Sometimes however the voice acting becomes very bad, especially when the same actor tries to voice other characters (women, monsters) while telling a story.
- Big improvement on the graphics, especially on the campaign map which is a lot more detailed, believable, and immersive. (Especially in the prologue DLC.)
- New spell protection system is a welcome addition, no more having multiple stacks getting decimated in a blink because of one well-placed spell. Addition of a casting delay to spells helps by giving you a chance to react.
- New diplomacy system with other factions. It adds some welcome depth to the game.
- Pacing seems better than in the original. At least I didn't see any enemy going into an army spawning frenzy, or what the community called the "whack the mole" mechanic in the first game.
- Estimated play time seems decent. It should take you about 40-50 hours on a challenging difficulty, maybe less if you auto resolve a lot of the battles. There is some replay value since you can do the text quests again with different decisions to see what happens.


THE BAD

- Horrible performance even on beast machines. I was getting 9-12 FPS on high settings (on a 6 core 3.2gh), and finally managed to get 20-25 with everything on lowest possible. At lowest settings problems surface like being unable to see clearly which units are selected, winter time turns into a white light mess, and so on. This might be a deal breaker for a lot of people.
- Loss of the province management aspect. No more management of gold and food incomes. In fact there is no more food in the game, and you only gain gold from quests and battle loot. Other elements like natural disasters (floods, plagues, etc.), and all the laws and decrees are gone too. As a result the whole "kingdom management" aspect of the game is mostly gone and reduces the depth of the game.

REVIEW

King Arthur makes a comeback, and the result is overall "good enough" by being neither great nor bad. The text adventures are still fun as ever, adding a wild card to the gameplay which puts you in a wide variety of situations, and gives a unique flavor to the story telling in this game.

The biggest change seems to be the simplification of many aspect of the game, which results in a clear loss of depth and replayability, but at the same time makes the game more accessible to casual players. The first King Arthur was a trinity of battle, management, and text adventures. King Arthur 2 is a duality of battle and text adventure only since the management aspect is mostly gone.

Even if regrettable, this change isn't all bad. The campaign seemed to have more "flow" to it than in the previous game. You will find yourself passing the turns faster since you don't have to take as many decisions, the game is now more comparable to a relaxing read of a book than a struggle to expand your realm, fight the enemy, and deal with the random events and quest spawning frenzy. In other words, the kingdom management is gone but the game is now a more refined adventure game.

Unfortunately some of the more serious technical shortcomings present in the first King Arthur are still present. The random crashes seem to be mostly gone; thankfully I only crashed a couple of times so far. But the extremely low performance and framerate problem is still here. I also found quite a few bugs, like having the narrator reading the wrong text for a quest, campaign map objects flickering, reserve units disappearing, and archer upgrades from buildings affecting their melee damage instead of ranged damage, etc. Also I encountered 2 game stopping bugs myself, and other players reported half a dozen game breaking bugs just days after release.

CONCLUSION

Your experience with the game will vary wildly depending on the performance you get. If the game runs well, you will probably enjoy it as it is a very charming game, and even if it has lost some of its depth I feel the game gives enough entertainment value for its pricetag.

On the other hand, if you are getting bad to horrible performance, the game will be near unplayable and it might be a deal breaker for you. I highly recommend you try the demo to see how the game runs on your machine. The first KA still gets 12 FPS on my machines after 7 patches, so if history repeats itself as usual a quick fix to the performance problem is not going to happen. However it is worth mentioning that the Neocore team is active on the forums and seems to be working actively on fixing bugs.

Of course if you consider yourself a fan of the series, you will probably want to buy the game and play it even with the bad performance and the buggy release. I know a number of people will do this, as I did myself since the game is somewhat playable for me (25fps) on minimal settings.

So the bottom line is:

1) If you are a fan of the series you will want to buy it and be patient while bugs get fixed.
2) If this is your first King Arthur game you might want to wait for a couple of patches or a sale.
3) In all cases trying the demo first is highly recommended since the performance issue is probably a big, if not the biggest factor in your purchase decision.

King arthur 2 is a Turn-based Strategy rpg. It takes place (as is obvious from the title) During the mythical time of king arthur and his knights of the round table. This aspect adds alot of fantasy elements into the game and is a nice change of pace from all the historical strategy games on the market today.

The story and narration in king arthur are very well done. Quests feel fun to do with multiple ways to complete many of them.The only let down with the questing is that it generally falls into 2 types of quests: text based and combat quests meaning you either have to read tons of text or go to a set area with your army and kill something,Thats all you really do.

The fantasy elements come at a high price: Basic human units feel weak and lackluster when compared to high fantasy golems, dragons and shape shifting warriors.Therefore by games end you will have replaced the majority of your army with fantasy units rather than human infantry and archers.

The addition of magic into the game adds more depth to the way you fight battles, But sadly magic in both King arthur games feels overpowered to the extreme.It is possible to win battles without ever firing a single arrow or engaging in hand-to-hand combat.The enemy AI in the game also has to capability to decimate your entire army with magic.

Lastly heroes in the game are capable of winning entire battles almost single handedly.As a result the rest of your army is reverted to a support role,Taking damage so your hero can close the range to engage with melee or magic attacks.

All these things mean that you will be forced to fill your armies with as many overpowered fantasy units as possible. Because you can rest assured that the Ai armies wiil be packed with them.

overall unless you find this game on sale i would say avoid it.The game constantly nudges you in the way it wants you to play rather than allowing you free reign to go where you want and attack whoever you want.

An underatted game I feel - this games has loads of features that are good fun to play around with. Definitely get it if your rig can run it and especially when on sale

Medieval: TOTAL WAR meets Heroes of Might and Magic(s).

I have fixed a common FPS problem by ensuring all .exe files in steamapps>common>kingarthurii are marked "run as administrator."

After solving this issue, running the .exe through Kingarthur's game folder (NOT STEAM), the game runs great! The graphics are an improvement from King Arthur 1, and the campaign-map gameplay has changed significantly.

The ambiance is pleasant and the battles challenging (if you want them to be) enough to keep my interest for much longer than anticipated. After 20 hours of gameplay, I have not yet completed the third of four acts, so expect to invest a good (estimated) 30 hours into completing the game.

To begin with, it is not King Arthur 2, it's rather King Arthur 1.5 or something. It's not completely bad, however I would recommendt it only to fans of the dual strategy genre (turn-based strategic level and realtime battles).
Pros:
1. It's beautiful, both on the strategy maps (the daylight changes!) and during battles.
2. There is an enormous number of units types, particuarly including the expansion.
3. It has all the great things from King Arthur 1 and its expansions in one game....
Cons:
1. ...but nothing more - and in fact, less.
2. Where is a proper economy?
3. Why can't I create armies when I want to?
4. Why the adventures are still a series of dialog choices? (in fact - more limited, as the characters attributes are stripped down)
And if you want a challenge, play at a higher difficulty level.

The best way to describe this game is how the title describes it, the role playing wargame, that essentially boils down to a Total War game with RPG elements. Unfortunately the units and battles are not very balanced at all, there is no incentive to having cheaper units as there is no upkeep or economy, so there is no point in not just stacking your armies with the best most expensive units. The rpg elements in the game are pretty good though. You essentially start out by choosing a class which gives you a bonus to either leadership, magic, or combat and gives you different spells to learn. You choose how to level up your character and units by choosing different spells and stats to upgrade. You then go out and fight armies and complete "quests" to gain new items and bonuses. Your decisions effect your morality (akin to Medieval 2 total war) moving from tyrant to rightful or christian to pagan ruler. A decent game for strategy/rpg fans but i would wait for a sale to get it.

An intresting game, I personally like the first one better in the army mechanics and how you ran your lands, but the story in king arthur 2 is an intresting enough for a play though. I think the magic works better than in the KA1 and it pretty epic to watch a whole group of spearmen get taken out by a lighting bolt. So if you see it on sale pick it up.

As of a couple of hours in I think a few things need to be pointed out for fans of the original.
One, archers are no longer the godly force they were in the first game.
Second the army strength bar is gone, so if you're enemy is still hiding forces in forests you will have no guess as to how many there are.
Third, I am not sure if this is a coding issue, but the game chews a lot of system resources, and my PC isn't slow, but without being on max settings the game glitches if I try to alt+tab, shift-tab or do anything else that involves leaving it. Also the loading times are pretty unpleasant.

Otherwise it's the first game all over again with a graphics touch-up, some redesigned features from the first and actual voice-acted RPG sections. Good? Yes. Worth buying right now? Probably not. Wait for some patches or prepare for horrific loading times.

Sadly, there were too many bugs for me to enjoy King Arthur 2.

I really liked the presentation. (The artwork was outstanding. Really, very fun.)

I really liked the idea of playing in this magical, medieval world.

I liked most of the combat.

I didn't like how the cities were managed, but I dealt with that.

I didn't like how I could only control one or two armies (maybe later there will be more, I don't know), but I suffered through that.

I didn't like how players were herded towards attacking certain territories instead of where they wanted, but I went along with it, because I knew the developers were trying to tell a linear story.

However, the few quest-breaking bugs, few poor design decisions (seriously, heavy cavalry charging in dense forest??), and random crashes destroyed the experience for me.

I tried. I played for nearly forty hours and got to the point in the story where Arthur is closing the Roman gates.

But, after refighting one of those "invincible" armies and having the game bug on me, because I didn't close a window in time for the AI to attack my other army... nope, done.

If the next game can get rid of these issues, I'm sure I'll buy it, but I'm done with this one.

Even though the game has many flaws and is not supported anymore it is still a good game with a good story and nice lore.

It is like Total War but in Albion. Graphic isn't great, but gameplay and this atmosphere of those times are great.

Possibly the best Total War style game i've ever played, really needs a multiplayer element though, for now its more of a one time play through thing.

Highly recommended for ppl that loves RPG games, the whole game has an beautiful history, and involving characters. Have been playing that masterpiece for a while and i can truly call that a good game ;D

good graphics, intense fights. Just right up my street.

King Arthur II is basically the same game as the first except there are ton of new units. A ton of new choices, epic new fights and an improvement in literally every aspect of the game save two.

The first one is building.

In the first one, you got one city where you would build all your upgrades. In this game, you have multiple "villages" or "forges" scattered around everywhere. An enemy can walk over one and grab it easily because you can only have up to three armies and that's at the very end of the game. Nothing is centralized and it just makes you do a lot of extra button clicks to do the same thing.

The second part is story:

The Story is VERY forcefully linear. You can't attack or use diplomacy with neighbors until you enter a certain part of the story and by that time. Your own empire is so huge they are almost no consequence. You don't have a single challenge outside of one fight which is just stupid because of the restrictions they added to it.

If you like that building style and story method. By all means, buy this game but otherwise, I'd just replay the first one.

Great art, great atmosphere, brutal optimization. Unplayable unless you run it outside of Steam. Neocore, like many, push broken proudcts out the door and then move on to crap DLC instead of fixing their property. Stay away from their titles.

This game is broken. Latest version, played from start, bug prevents game completion.