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