Kingdom Two Crowns: Norse Lands – Test, Taktik & Strategie

Everything stays different?

Of course, Raw Fury and the responsible development team at Stumpy Squid haven’t turned the playful foundation of Kingdoms upside down in the last six years. With Two Crowns, a useful and well-functioning co-op mode was added, while the win options and the general scope of the series were tweaked. But also the free expansions Deadlands and Shogun have refined rather than turning content or mechanics upside down. And that is no different with the now paid detour to the Viking worlds of Norse Lands. Even after six years, this approach of a two-dimensional building strategy, which is still interesting, is still in the process of building a settlement with a monarch. The ultimate goal is to acquire the six mysterious islands on which you hang around and ultimately travel largely freely between them. But the only way to get there is through building, moving the village boundary and exploring.

The fact remains that one has very few possibilities of influence, which are essentially limited to collecting coins and spending them in designated places. At a camp you can hire nomads for money and make them residents of your settlement. There they are assigned jobs (such as hunters, farmers, house builders) or they are made soldiers who defend the village. Because as usual there is every night

Attacks by “greed”, gloomy monsters that can not only destroy the expensive barricades and thus possibly also reduce the area of ​​the settlement again, but above all seek the coins and especially the monarch’s crown. And quite clearly: without coins there is no progress, no more extensions can be arranged and residents who are frightened by greed cannot be persuaded to take up their work again. Good for those who sent the traveling merchant off the day before to sell their goods and return to the main building with their winnings. And when they steal the crown, it is as simple as mercilessly “Game Over”.

A lot to do. Only what?

In order to survive in the beautiful pixel world of Norse Lands, not only money is required for the construction, but above all patience on the part of the player in front of the screen – especially for newcomers to the world of minimalist construction strategy. Because another Kingdom tradition was upheld: you have to work out and acquire everything yourself. “Learning by doing” in its purest form. in the

Compared to the early series offshoots, however, the level of requirements does not rise quite as quickly, so that one can make one or the other mistake without having to worry about virtual existence. Later, however, wrong decisions are quickly punished. Kingdom doesn’t take you by the hand. There are a few rudimentary comments at the beginning, but no tutorial or further explanations. That may be off-putting. But with every discovery that you make, with every mechanism that opens up and thus explains the logical connections in the background, you are drawn deeper into this world full of secrets.

But with each death and the subsequent renewed attempt not to let the Kingdom world get you down, you learn. Even after ten or 20 times you can still find something new – such as the different seasons, which change every 16 days and are initiated with a blood moon that seems to inspire the attacking greed monsters. And with every new start you have ideas on how to approach things a little differently. One has no idea how to counteract the population’s occasional AI weaknesses. Sometimes it seems that the orders given by coins are being ignored,

At other times it can happen that unnecessarily long distances are taken, so that the planned barricade to protect the village is not ready before nightfall. But none of this turns out to be a total brake on motivation. Very nice: Many of the improvements that were generally introduced to the game mechanics with Norse Lands are available to all Kingdom: Two Crowns players with the free “Conquest Update”, which was released at the same time – regardless of whether they own the expansion or not. But the fresh puzzle elements and, last but not least, the again atmospheric pixel art backdrop and the grandiose dynamic soundtrack justify the purchase. If one were cynical, one could say that in detail only figures were exchanged in order to do justice to the Nordic culture or mythology – if you used to see deer, for example, it is now moose. But with a keen sense for subtle, but necessary design changes, such as slightly denser forests in the background, the Norse Lands get an unmistakable character.