Knights of the Chalice 2 Review - Page 2
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What's great about all this is that while the game is undeniably old-school, it uses the popular these days hyperlink system that allows you to click most of the stuff you see on your screen and get immediately directed to a detailed in-game explanation for what a feat does, which bonuses a particular race gets, or how a class works.
Now, the original Knights of the Chalice had this dated but charming top-down aesthetic reminiscent of Ultima VII. KotC2, on the other hand, looks like one of those websites you go to when you want to play some D&D online, complete with flat maps, mismatched assets, sudden perspective changes, and sprites that bear only a passing resemblance to what they're supposed to represent.
And the scary thing is, this is actually an improvement compared to what the game was originally supposed to look like, where character and monster models were portrayed as these circular tokens. You can still use these tokens as an option, and I did try using them, and I have to tell you that watching a bunch of pucks sliding across a flat surface is just as pathetic and disorienting as you would expect.
Thankfully, we now have proper sprites, even if they don't always fit. As in your Centaurs will still look like regular bipedal humanoids. But at least there, you can pretend that this is just like when you played pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons with your friends, and because you weren't insane to actually buy official D&D figurines, you were using a collection of Warhammer miniatures, Lego dudes, and Monopoly pieces for your characters.
So in the end, even though this is without a doubt one of the ugliest games ever made, when you're actually playing it, it feels surprisingly close to the original Knights of the Chalice, and that was very much a pleasant experience. I still would've preferred if this game simply iterated on the original's art style, but I guess it just wasn't in the cards.
Augury of Chaos
The main way to play the game right now is to boot up the Augury of Chaos module. It's a complete fantasy adventure for a party of six characters (and up to two NPCs) that will take you from level 1 all the way to around 20.
The story is pretty simple. Your party of adventurers rolls into a village beset on all sides by various forces of evil. You do battle with those forces of evil and in the process uncover a bigger conspiracy of evil. You confront the big bad before you're actually ready, and in accordance with his Villains Anonymous playbook instead of crushing you, he teleports you into a hostile environment. This gives you a chance to become stronger and come back later to settle the score.
Along the way, you'll deal with squabbling goblin tribes, explore ancient tombs, and battle all sorts of demons, beholders, and necromancers. You know, your standard fantasy dungeon crawler fare. But in a pleasant turn of events, the game actually gives you a lot of agency when dealing with those threats.
At times you can reach an understanding with some of the subterranean denizens, which allows you to trade or rest within their territory. Occasionally, you can use your skills to take out an enemy leader before manually dispatching the remaining rabble. There's even an encounter where you can recruit a former foe to become one of your companions.
The game is split into several self-contained chapters, each represented by what is essentially an expansive dungeon. There's a village and its surrounding areas, a sewer, a bigger sewer, and a stronghold captured by the forces of evil.
