King Arthur: The Role-playing Wargame II Previews

There are two new hands-on previews of Neocore's King Arthur II to send you to this evening, including a 29-minute video preview prepared by the editors over at UnitLost.com, as well as a standard text piece from the guys over at Hooked Gamers. An excerpt from the latter:
After an introductory and for the series iconic '˜text adventure', you will find yourself looking at King Arthur's new campaign map, probably with your jaw flat on the floor. Features steep and foreboding looking mountains, lush, rolling hills and deep blue rivers that just make you want to grab a rod and fish for trout, the new map looks gorgeous. There is an incredible amount of geographical depth and detail and wherever you look, it is filled with all kinds of fantastical looking locations waiting to be discovered. Having seen the campaign map before, I was still left unprepared for just how rich and how much more organic it looks compared to King Arthur's already great looking map.

In battle, some of the terrain's surrounding features are brought along onto the combat map. If two armies clash in a hilly region, this is correctly reflected during combat and attacking an enemy army in or near a castle means you'll be breaching its walls before you can get to some or all of its units. The castle is a little further away? You will probably be able to see its contours in the background of the battle map. Like before, the battle maps are carefully designed to offer a variety of strategic challenges and as such are not randomly generated. There is an element of re-use, though it will take you a while to start recognizing the maps. Light and weather conditions will be throwing your '˜sense of recognition' off guard the first few times.