King Arthur 2 Prologue Campaign Pre release (PC)

[BunnyPoopCereal]

Hi, I have bought and played King Arthur I and Fallen champions, and King Arthur II. All games I played because I liked the artistic feel and as a long time Total War gamer it was easy to pick up this game.

I can tell the developers put their very best efforts at producing this game, and you can tell just by looking at it in every aspect the spectrum, the game looks and sounds breathtaking but there is one big eyesore that really takes it back and almost overwhelms all the good things about it. I will try to explain to the best of my abilities what this big eyesore really is and why I was drawn to the forums to tell you (the developer) what I thought about it and why you should take it upon yourself to improve on what has been done.

Now before I get straight to it I would like to point something out first.

The sound is beautiful, in fact it might have been too well done and in doing so it makes you concentrate on just how perfect it is instead of immersing you into the story.

Sometimes the music was excellent but other times it felt that the music was unfitting to my tastes. It's almost as if the music was produced by two different people, one with tremendous skill and the other lacking in said skills.

The art style is something to admire, one can honestly say that Neo core has one of the most talented artists in the gaming industry. Any visual space was carefully considered and taken as high priority.

I will say that while I can tell that meticulous care has been undertaken in all aspects of the game to make sure that everything has been working smoothly there is one part that while enjoyable for some has been lacking to many players. Including but not limited to my friends on steam who have bought the previous KA games including the new one KA2.

The big eyesore of which I speak of are the battles, they feel mechanical and awkward. Now how to further explain this... For instance the grass only looks good when you're zoomed in up close but as you start zooming out the grass begins to disappear until you are left with a vast plane of nothingness, just the color of dull greenish/brown. I want to be able to see the grass even when zoomed out. If you must need a reference look at medieval 2 total war.

The problems with the camera dont end here, when you are pressing WASD to navigate and you want to go faster towards one direction I am used to pressing shift, but nothing happens, and I have to settle with having to wait to get the camera to go to where I want it to go.

Despite the considerable drawbacks to the camera system that are some positive aspects worth mentioning such as the middle mouse button which allows you to look in all directions, this little feature proves immensely helpful when the other flaws are taken into account.

And yet the camera was not really the big eyesore which I keep rambling on about, my biased disappointment comes from the feel of the battles themselves. The give me a headache quite literally. If you played any total war game including the first game, Shogun Total war released in the year 2000, seems like a lifetime ago in game development you will notice that the camera is smooth and simple just what King Arthur lacks. That camera was easily understood and was user friendly while at the same time serving the needs of the battlefield commander.

The problems of the camera are further enhanced by the lack of admiration of the fighting in battle, when it comes down to it you want to look at your units and see them fight the enemy for a few precious seconds before semi zooming out again and going about the maneuvering of units. you never get the satisfaction or that Whoa! feeling from seeing the fighting. I never feel that I am in control of the battle, it feels like I'm always a step behind because I'm too busy fooling around with the camera and this is after more than 70+ hours of playtime so its not a matter of "getting used to the camera".

When you give a unit an order you are left wondering whether or not that unit is obeying your command, many times do you have to double click to make sure the unit or units go where they need to go. By contrast in Total war you always knew when your units carried out a task.

For now gamers like myself have always dreamed of seeing a game like King Arthur 2 in a total war style setting. Open box game-play with some RPG elements to engulf the complete experience into what we know can be done.

If you have spent the time to read all of this then I thank you and hope that you understand how I feel about this game and that I write this only because I am aware of its potential. To truly be called a AAA title it needs to overcome its battle system which right now is crippling the game experience by a long shot.

Paradox Forum: Discuss this Post

[leviath]

I remember in the first King Arthur, the camera was also my biggest problem. Especially scrolling the camera with the middle mouse because for some reason, they made it reversed. You had to scroll up to zoom out and scroll down to zoom it. I was really confused and I never figured out how to change it.

[Narf]

The Units are also alike in each regiment. Thats what annoys me the most.

[Furiam]

I really did enjoy the first King Arthur. I loved the magic for the most part since each one had to be wisely used and there were a lot of different spells and ways to counter powerful spells. Although the combat was kind of lame, it's not like you spend a lot of time just watching each troop swing a weapon (or at least you shouldn't be if you don't want to take casualties).