King's Bounty II Gamescom 2019 Preview

King's Bounty II was announced back in August, and apart from this rather negative Gamepressure preview, it did a pretty good job of flying under the radar. However, there's now also this RPG Watch preview that, while slightly more positive, doesn't exactly fill me with high hopes for the project. Here's an excerpt:

The King's Bounty games are open world games, but that doesn't mean I could go in any direction I wanted. I could go everywhere but was basically confined to the paths. If I tried to leave the path, I found myself blocked by natural objects, such as trees, rocks or a cliff that stopped me from going any further. On some occasions when i tried that, something odd happened, resulting in my character being shifted and rotated a bit, which was somewhat disorienting.

In the version I've played, I had no horse, but there will be one in the final game. The character sheet even showed my character with a horse.

At various spots there are also chests to be found that contain some goodies. The chests I saw all look the same, so you won't miss them. Next to the main story quests there are also side quests. The quest givers for these quests are marked with a question mark above them, which is something I personally hope you can turn off. But even if you could, just like in the previous games, the mini map shows quite a lot of information, like where you have to go for each of the quests you have received, quest givers and other points of interest.

From what I could try of the role-playing and exploration part, it resembles what I remember of the previous King's Bounty game, but with a very different look.