Knights of Honor II: Sovereign

 PC
Knights of Honor II: Sovereign Image
Metascore
75

Generally favorable reviews - based on 13 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
6.9

Mixed or average reviews- based on 16 Ratings

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  • Summary: Become the King and wrestle over control of Europe in this fresh take on medieval real-time grand strategy.

    Knights of Honor II: Sovereign includes all the depth players desire while being the gate-way game to the grand strategy genre, presenting the world as a living, breathing miniature,    Become the King and wrestle over control of Europe in this fresh take on medieval real-time grand strategy.

    Knights of Honor II: Sovereign includes all the depth players desire while being the gate-way game to the grand strategy genre, presenting the world as a living, breathing miniature, alive and ripe for the taking. Choose your royal court carefully and determine the destiny of your people, be it riches, conquest, intrigue, trade, or defeat! Raise armies to defend your lands or take war to the enemy - even jump into battle directly in action-packed RTS combat.

    The path is open: become the true Sovereign of your people.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 7 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 6 out of 13
  3. Negative: 0 out of 13
  1. Softpedia
    Dec 6, 2022
    90
    Knights of Honor II: Sovereign is a good historical strategy game. It gives players lots tools to affect their world and quickly produces results that bear little resemblance to the real past. Kingdoms fall in spectacular fashion and players need to carefully play their hand to gain new lands without attracting the attention of powerful neighbors. I do think the knights from the title should have more ways to interact with each other and the world around them. But the mix of interactions, classic development mechanics, and tactical battles offers a strong mix of ideas. Knights of Honor II: Sovereign will be fun both for long-term grand strategy fans and newcomers to this genre.
  2. Checkpoint Gaming
    Dec 13, 2022
    80
    As it stands, Knights of Honor II: Sovereign is a massively impressive feat that will delight many strategy fans. The medieval setting is beautiful and immersive, and the different paths to victory are a great mechanic keep players on their toes. Since some victory paths, like securing resources for a kingdom advantages victory, can take time and effort to achieve, this also adds a healthy dose of challenge and flexibility to the overall experience. You’ll often find yourself having to re-think a strategy mid-playthrough as wars break out and foes close trading deals. While this type of gameplay may not be everyone’s cup of tea, it will certainly be challenging and energising to those that don’t shy away from some statistics and resource management.
  3. Digitally Downloaded
    Dec 14, 2022
    80
    As accessible as I’ve ever seen serious strategy gaming, Knights of Honor is still strategically interesting, gorgeous to look at, and still offers plenty of challenge. It hasn’t been compromised in any significant way for the sake of accessibility, and really, this is just a very good example of a publisher finding a genuine and worthy niche to occupy within a very mature and saturated genre.
  4. PC Invasion
    Dec 5, 2022
    75
    Knights of Honor II: Sovereign does quite a few things right, though it could use more polish for many aspects of the game, starting with the voice lines that generals get.
  5. PLAY! Zine
    Feb 14, 2023
    70
    Knights of Honor II: Sovereign is a medieval real-time grand strategy that does something to perfection, but also fails to deliver in some other important aspects. While the game does feel fresh, it's also far too similar to its predecessor, that got released almost 20 years ago. As an older player, it feels good to play the game again, but it’s also disappointing that the studio didn't add many new features that were, and still are, missing.
  6. Games.cz
    Jan 19, 2023
    70
    Exactly what a sequel should look like. There are better graphics, sure, but also various changes and improvements. Nothing groundbreaking, no – but this solid strategy game doesn’t exactly need to reinvent the wheel.
  7. GameCritics
    Feb 28, 2023
    65
    See, as suboptimal as many of Knights of Honor II’s macro design choices are, they add up to a vision of the grand strategy genre that, at the very least, provides a much different rhythm and feel from its contemporaries. Instead of the player securing their family line for future generations, or expanding an empire from the stone age to the space age, the player is given a modest patch of land and tasked with developing and defending it at all costs from inscrutable opponents that often feel like a swarm of angry wasps buzzing at the player’s stoop. Its core systems could use some elaboration, perhaps, but fans of this genre who need this particular itch scratched could do a lot worse!

See all 14 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

Write a Review
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 2 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 5
  3. Negative: 2 out of 5
  1. ilicdjo
    Dec 9, 2022
    10
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I loved 2004. This one expands it in every way. Also, many things are sorted out like layouts, settings AI is better... I like everything. The only thing that is less compared to KoH 1 is music, IMO. As a musician myself, I have to say that Borisav nailed it in the first game, but now it lacks magic from 18 y ago. Everything else is perfect. 10- is my score… Expand
  2. ankancr1
    Dec 8, 2022
    10
    This is a classic game and i think the devs has done a great job. It was fun!
  4. GERULAS
    Dec 22, 2022
    5
    I just loved KoH1, so perfect for his time, one of my favourite strategy game of all time. I waited years for this sequel to come out and..iI just loved KoH1, so perfect for his time, one of my favourite strategy game of all time. I waited years for this sequel to come out and..i can tell you this: sadly, but I consider this game a mediocre one at most.

    They streamlined this game so much:
    -no more spies that can be recruited by the enemy as a general or a bishop

    -marshals, no longer will gain skills based on experience, even if he will fought 10000 battles. In the first one, the more you fight, the more exp and you gain levels. In this game? They just merged everything into books.

    -UI for buildings is a disaster, u don't know what you build where, just through some small circles that will eventually change their color, something like grey, greyed out and grey bluish

    -battles totally suck..its the same battle system from koH1 invented in 2004 in a game of 2022

    -The RTS camera is very bad one, you can’t zoom out enough to control your army well.
    ________
    Man...F this bs review, but i would tell you this,. If this game would came out as it is couple years after the first one 2008. 2010, 2012, ect, could be still considered a good game, but it came 18 years later with same old stuff, diplomacy for a 2022 game, totally suck, was good back then in 2004, but now, it's just bad.
    in 2004 KOH1 battles almost looked like a total war. I was playing this game in 2004 and Rome 1 in 2004 and I could decide who to love more. KoH2 battles in 2022, are identical with KoH1, nothing changed, nothing improved, all they did was to rearrange the icons
    Campaign map is looking good, needs a bit of polish, but the camera, like battles, are bad, again you can't zoom out enough like in KoH1

    Overall it's not a bad game, even if its just a design clone of the first one, but I expected way much more for a 2022 game. So for the nostalgia and HD graphics, I give him a 5    … Expand
  5. cvinja
    Dec 17, 2022
    0
    Quick battle doesn't exist, so forget about testing units on battlefield! Economy and diplomacy are broken, spies hunting ghosts all theQuick battle doesn't exist, so forget about testing units on battlefield! Economy and diplomacy are broken, spies hunting ghosts all the f...ng time and your queen will pop up 17 daughters like she is a pig. And now the best part: I was besieging a town and i was flanked by second enemy army. I split up my forces to hold them of and i was doing fine, but 10-15 enemy soldiers who escaped the slaughter suddenly felt alive and start fu..ng capturing my flag points (yeah, it is a capture the flag bloody game) and i lost battle because i couldn't send my whole unit to engage them because i would be flanked ( i was hardly outnumbered by two armies). And what the hell is this option to restart the battle? This is a RTS game? On top of that, they learn history from netflix it seems, i mean, map is so inaccurate and units are done so wrong that my brain start melting literally. For example, i'm from Serbia and i didn't know that we had a bloody Boyars!! Are the developers drugged? DO NOT BUY THIS GARBAGE… Expand
  6. aoetje
    Dec 11, 2022
    0
    Knights of Honor 1 is my favourite strategy game of all time. 18 years waiting and 5 years in the making and all we got is a mediocre KoH1 HDKnights of Honor 1 is my favourite strategy game of all time. 18 years waiting and 5 years in the making and all we got is a mediocre KoH1 HD remake. Some of the key issues are: cheating AI , horrible semi 3d graphics , broken diplomacy , no workshop integration , host of bugs and errors in MP , questionable design choices , ton of tiny bugs, errors, defects and QOL issues , lack of historical accuracy , no UI scaling options , garbage performance/optimisation.

    To add insult to injury devs and mods have been very dismissive to issues reported, initially game launched with cheating AI, when this was reported to devs they down right attacked players reporting these issues saying they are noobs and they don't know what they are doing - but first patch that came out 2-3 days after release changed guess what? AI behaviour on easy and normal...why deny a problem exists if you patch it 2 days later?

    Also devs claim is bigger and better but its not true, you can't even control taxes in this game, you could in KoH1, that feature is even in Lords of the Realms 2 from 1996! but not KoH2...its a joke.
    Music is a downgrade, not all songs are bad but KoH1 had more memorable ones. Lots of features added for no good reason just to be able to say game is bigger.

    Only one game mode in singleplayer ! in 2022 you can only play basically one mode on the big map, where are small scenarios like maybe map of british isles, Poland? Spain so we can play unification scenarios?
    Where are custom maps? Map editor? Workshop integration for mods? How can they justify the price for a bare bones game.

    Graphics are now semi 3d, extremely poorly optimised, blocking you from being to zoom out properly to get a good look of your kingdom and the situation. Why walk away from beautiful pixel art that didn't strain players computers? Devs have shot themselves in the foot blocking a lot of people with weak computers from playing it. They had time to implement ray tracing tech but not optimise or produce good graphics?

    My advice is: wait 6 months for this to be patched, check it then and buy on deep deep discount. Hopefully devs stop being toxic and actually listen to genuine player feedback and improve the game.

    Very sad that such a potential was wasted by an inexperienced team with no vision.    … Expand

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