Knights of the Chalice 2 Review - Page 4
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Article Index
According to the game's Kickstarter campaign, at least three official modules are already planned. A mid-level adventure, a high-level adventure, and an epic adventure.
But in the meantime, you should know that the game is shipped with a powerful editor that allows you to create your own adventures. It's too early to tell just how many of those will get made eventually, but already, you can find some unofficial modules online.
Unfortunately, the game's mod hub seems to be tied to Nexus Mods, a place where you have to register an account before you can download anything, as opposed to Mod DB, where you can just download what you need without too much hassle.
Among the currently available stuff, Hearkenwold deserves a separate mention because it's essentially a standalone game ported into the KotC2 engine. It not being a commercial project, it can be a bit rough around the edges, its journal entries are lacking, its difficulty curve is all over the place, and it can be confusing to navigate. But it exists, it's free, fun, and offers plenty of interesting encounters.
Technical Information
I've already mentioned the game's visuals, so now let's consider its audio design. The music is fine. I'm pretty sure most of the tracks were present in the original Knights of the Chalice. Audio effects are in a similar ballpark. But voice acting, if you can call it that, is down there with the visuals.
Once you get over the fact that the game's main menu for some inexplicable reason keeps talking to you as you click it, you'll be presented with a very robust options screen that lets you adjust and fine-tune a great many things when it comes to both the game's difficulty and what it displays to you.
Unfortunately, this doesn't extend to the resolution, where the only options you have are fullscreen or a tiny window.
On the other end of this are the game's animations. The default animation speed is already fast, but the game allows you to increase it past ludicrous and all the way to plaid.
But what is perhaps the game's biggest technical issue is the fact that it's more prone to crashing than a legally blind octogenarian driving an F1 car. Pretty much anything you do can cause the game to crash, reinforcing the age-old wisdom to save often and in different slots. Thankfully, all this crashing mostly happens outside of combat, so if you quicksave right after you're done fighting, you shouldn't lose your progress.
At least the game is pretty quick to save and load. Still, hopefully, some future patches will make it more stable.
One other annoying problem mostly plaguing the later parts of the game are all the slowdowns that occur when the AI tries to figure out what to do, or when you move the cursor around a bunch of enemies, triggering some calculations regarding potential attacks of opportunity.
Conclusion
The original Knights of the Chalice had a simplistic story, neat old-school visuals, barebones character development, and great combat design. Now Knights of the Chalice 2, and in particular its Augury of Chaos module, trades in the first game's pleasant aesthetics for a greatly expanded list of character-building options.
The end result is an engaging fantasy adventure that feels like both a faithful adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons and a fresh system at the same time. If you like CRPGs and can get over the visuals, there's no reason for you not to pick this up.
