Kingdom Two Crowns (2018)

I have a love/hate relationship with this game. It's easily one of my favorites both as a solo and multiplayer experience (it is much easier playing with a friend) but it is a flawed title that can lead to situations of failure that feel preventable.

Kingdom: Two Crowns is the third entry in the Kingdom series but really it's basically a beefed up two-player version of the first two so you can start here especially since it's the only version that's still receiving content updates of which there are several, mostly in the form of paid DLC.

You play as a king or queen. The game used to assign a random character sprite but the developers have updated it so you can now choose which sprite you'd like to play as with additional sprites being added pretty regularly. Gameplay consists of conquering the land during the day while surviving hordes of violent creatures known as the Greed during the night (unless you piss them off during the day). The goal is to clear the island of the Greed while earning money, employing workers for various job roles, and building your base outward while strengthening it when new technology is unlocked.

At heart this is a tower defense game but the vibes are incredibly cozy. The pixel art is lovely and features beautiful side-scrolling landscapes, quiet rivers, and seasonal changes. The music varies between upbeat and peaceful tunes. These cozy moments can quickly change to fear and stress and death. The duality of vibes makes for an interesting experience, for sure.

I would recommend this game to those looking for a cozy but strategic co-op experience. Just be prepared to learn via game overs.

Intro

The Kingdom games are 2D strategy games similar to Settlers 2. You assign roles, items to be used and defensive positions. Your troops automatically defend and attack only when given a special order. The goal is to survive monster attacks coming from portals before leaving the island on a ship. You can also destroy the portals with some effort, though some apparently get restored.

The Good

Kingdom 2C has gorgeous pixel art and introduces some new concepts.

The Bad

The problem with Settlers 2 was that you had no direct control over your troops. Sometimes a high-level soldier would be just out of range. Sometimes your troops attacked in a way you didn't want to. Kingdom has the same problem, except on top of that the AI is deeply, deeply stupid.

On the third island i activated some berry bushes in a few places, not knowing what it did. It turns out your farmers can only farm those due to the snow. So now my expensive farmers were walking to the most distant bushes, far from my defenses. And they all got demoted (people lose their tool first, then their "recruited" status) which set me back considerably. In the same vein workers will often stand around doing nothing while objects can be built nearby, because a worker on the other side of the map has been assigned to it. Oh yeah, and if you permanently destroy all portals on one side your troops will happily stay there instead of moving to the other side. Except for the random movement between sides, of course, because sometimes troops just decide to slowly walk to the other side for no discernable reason.

The game also still lacks automove which gets more frustrating each game.

Another problem is the gem system. First you find objects that require gems. The game doesn't tell you this, but there are actually no gems on the first island, which is needlessly confusing. Then you get gems, which take up space in your inventory - another pointless annoyance. On the third island you get so many with no place to dump them that they filled up half the space. And if you want to activate stuff on the first island (like the griffon mount) you have to grind building a ship twice - once to get there, once to leave (yes, you destroy your ship for some reason).

Conclusion

I played this for over 7 hours and it just gets more and more frustrating. Fuck this shit.

Rating

• If you've played Kingdom or New Lands: 1 star
• If you haven't played either Kingdom: 2 stars

Having played the demo of the upcoming Norse Lands expansion recently, I am somewhat stoked for what's to come for this Kingdom title.

The Norse civilization system refreshes the gameplay, altering the approach you take to expand your settlement. The dev team also managed to capture viking Scandinavian atmosphere so well, thanks to the landscape design, the soundtrack that takes in the northern folk influences and implementing the Norse mythology where creatures and idols change up your gameplay style.

My only concern is whether it's going to change up the campaign mode or not, because I've been merely content playing through the original campaign once or twice because the goal is the same.

Of all this, I'm looking forward to this big update.

Kingdom is a 2d-sidescroller in beautiful pixelart. It's not a platformer, but a rts tower defense with some economical aspects making it almost feeling like a city builder. The mix of genres feels very peculiar and the minimalistic controls (just the four arrows) makes it perfect to play on a more relaxed session. The best way to enjoy this game is in local coop, because even if the scenery is quite beautiful, it gets tedious after a while.

Kingdom would be a way better game, if it didn't artificially prolong the length by bringing you constantly into situations where you literally can't do anything for half an hour. This can be because of the lack of some resource you have no access to, but it's often not even a punishment for playing badly beforehand.

This is a good game for couch-coop, but don't have the ambition to beat it or else you will become bored by the lack of possibilities.

The successful indie ground-breaker keeps expanding itself with its third outing, which holds the same gameplay core but diversifies with new contents including the Shogun civilization, additional mounts, game modes and even a new endgame! The latter ensures that there is a goal to reach when expanding and reinforcing your realm across the islands.

One would think that releasing the same product with some additional gameplay cores and extra features for the same price is a common practice for the makers of Kingdom. However, Two Crowns got a major spring update "Dead Lands" in 2020 that adds in characters from Bloodstained, new island sceneries and new mounts. The substantial difference is that every character you play and unlock (from their cages) have special abilities that can affect your workflow and enemy encounters. Playing and actively switching between those monarchs have me thinking and executing new strategies, which yielded a refresher for gameplay. Though I have come upon a few bugs, none were large enough to ruin the experience.

Although I haven't tried the multiplayer mode of its namesake, there are contents enough to warrant a fresh experience as a single player, too. Two Crowns is what I consider an enhanced version of its predecessor New Lands and if you are new to the Kingdom franchise, this latest release provides the best value.