Arthur's Knights 2 - the name of the game tells a lot. Anyone could guess that AK2 is about knights, takes place in Arthurian Britain and it's a sequel. Well, almost. It's not really a sequel, it's in fact second part of a game. But the rest is right on.

The hero of Arthur's Knights 2 is Bradwen, knight of the Round Table and king of the Atrebates, one of British tribes. You see, back then - we're talking approximately 500 AD - every tribe had its own king, but Arthur was the High King of entire Britain. These were troubled times, often called the Dark Ages. The Western Roman empire collapsed under the attacks of barbarian raiders just a short while ago and Romans left Britain. The Britons (who were Celts) were fighting off Saxon invasion (Saxons were of Germanic origin if you forgot your high school history lessons). Adding to the confusion were Picts, old enemies of the Britons.

And as if all that weren't enough, knight Bradwen has quite a few problems of his own. The game starts as Bradwen arrives at castle Uffington, returning from Camelot. After the deaths of his father Cadfanan and half-brother Morganor (the first Arthur's Knights game dealt with that part of the story) he is expected to be officially crowned as the king of the Atrebates. Unfortunately the royal crown is nowhere to be found. After Bradwen recovers it, the real trouble starts: there is an ancient curse afflicting all kings of the Atrebates. Unfortunately no one remembers anymore why this curse exists and who cast it. From that point on, Bradwen's quest is to lift the curse - but the road to this goal is long and indirect.

And now I come to what is undoubtedly the most interesting aspect of Arthur's Knights 2: it's actually two games in one. The two games are in fact two versions of the same story. One is the story of Bradwen the Celtic king, the other is the quest of Bradwen the Paladin king. The first version is Celtic, the second is Christian. Both are rooted in Arthurian legends and based on the fact that Arthurian legends have Celtic origins but have been substantially altered by strong Christian influence (Perhaps the legends were "Christianized" to be more politically correct? Who knows).

Two gameplay paths in one game is nothing new. I couldn't say which game first employed this concept but two adventures come to mind: the excellent Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis by LucasArts (offering three approaches to solving the game) and Innocent until Caught from Psygnosis (enabling you to play either as a thief or a cop). The good thing about AK2 is that the two versions are surprisingly different. In both, Bradwen has the same ultimate goal - lifting the curse - and both stories take place in the same environment for the most part, but that's where the similarity ends. The NPCs are often different and even when they're the same they usually behave very differently in the two versions. It's the same legend seen through Celtic and Christian eyes. This is reflected in the fact that some characters even have different names, for instance the Celtic goddess Rhiannon becomes Saint Epona in the Christian version.

This duality is sometimes a little tricky for the player. Some places are inaccessible and you can only enter them in the other game path. Worse, objects suddenly appear where there was nothing in the other version. This means that even the second time you must carefully search the environment. But for the most parts it's almost like getting two games for one money.

AK2 comes on 3 CDs and unfortunately doesn't offer an option to install everything on the harddrive. The good thing is that at least there is minimal CD swapping: you start at CD 1, then go on to CD 2 and finish with CD 3 with no jumping back and forth between them. This would be even better if the game didn't require the first CD at startup.

The user interface employed by Arthur's Knights 2 is a little unusual and took me a while to figure out (OK, admittedly I didn't look into the manual). All menus are controlled via mouse but Bradwen's movement surprisingly isn't. The good old keyboard must be used. I don't think that's old-fashioned or anything - I was just a little surprised. The controls are quite simple actually: arrows for movement, shift for running (or gallop when you're riding a horse - the king doesn't have to go everywhere on foot!) and spacebar for performing actions (opening doors, using objects, talking to people). Actually I did have one problem with this 'use' functionality. To perform an action, Bradwen has to face the object with very little tolerance. There is usually no indication that an object can be used and if you don't position Bradwen just right, it is frustratingly easy to miss something.

I mentioned riding a horse. There are two movement modes in the  game: the "normal" mode where Bradwen walks on foot and can pick up and use objects, talk to people etc. The other is the "travel" mode - Bradwen is riding a horse and can't do anything other than get from A to B. I must say that the horse and its rider are beautifully animated. Unfortunately, watching Bradwen ride gets pretty boring pretty soon - and there is a lot of riding.

And that is what I consider the weakest point of Arthur's Knights 2. Too many puzzles are of the type "visit all locations on the map until you find the one where something suddenly changed". It wouldn't be so bad if there was some fast way to travel, but there isn't. A map of each area is available (which is fortunate because some of the maps are fairly complicated) and shows Bradwen's present position, but there is no possibility to jump between locations.

But there are more compelling puzzles in the game as well. Many are inventory based and there are several riddles. There is even one labyrinth, but not a very large one. The difficulty of the puzzles seems to vary wildly, some I thought almost childishly easy but others impossible to fathom. Sometimes the clues were painfully obvious but sometimes there just didn't seem to be any. There are no action sequences in the game (which I firmly believe is the way adventure games should be). There are several instances where Bradwen can or must unsheath his sword (or occasionally some other weapon) and engage in combat, but the outcome is always predetermined. Either he wins which means it was the right thing to do, or he loses which means that Bradwen either can't defeat the opponent with sheer force and shouldn't fight at all or that he needs to do something else first.

The art in Arthur's Knights 2 is slightly above average. The graphics are a little unusual. The characters and most objects are 3D while the backgrounds are 2D (which is not so unusual) but the backgrounds are not static - the camera can pan around. Because the camera angle is changing quite often, it is sometimes easy to get lost even in relatively uncomplicated surroundings, especially the first time you enter the location. Most characters speak with noticeable accent; I could not identify it (I'm sure a Brit could), although I'm positive it was not authentic 6th century English because I understood every word.

There are two not quite usual features of AK2 worth mentioning - I thought they were rather neat. One is a "history book" providing information on Britain of the Arthurian times, contemporary religions, chivalry, origins of Arthurian times and so on. This information is slightly different depending on whether you play Bradwen the Celt or Bradwen the Paladin and concentrates more on the Celtic or Christian world view, respectively. This smells of edutainment but I for one appreciated the chance to learn about the real history - at least as far as it can be determined today.

The other useful feature is a storybook or quest log. Whenever something important happens in the game, an entry gets added into the book and there is a possibility to replay dialogues. The book starts with a recount of Bradwen's adventures in the first installment of Arthur's Knights (naturally there are two versions of that story) and goes on to record his exploits in AK2. This feature is especially useful if you have to interrupt playing AK2 for longer periods of time for any reason. After coming back you can quickly read the story so far and pick up where you left off. And after finishing each path through the game it is possible to read the book as a coherent story.

Overall, Arthur's Knights 2 is a mixture of good and not so good and my overall rating is B-. The art is nice enough and the story (or should I say stories) is not uninteresting. But the gameplay is nowhere near as strong as it should be. The feature of AK2 I liked most is the extremely high replayability - playing both the Celtic and Christian version of the story is highly recommended. It is very interesting and perhaps even educational to compare how similar and yet different they are.
 

Final Grade: B-

System Requirements:
WINDOWS® 95/98/ME/XP
Pentium® II 300 MHz
64 MB RAM
12X CD-ROM Drive
8 MB DirectX® Compatible Video Card
DirectX® Compatible Sound Card