Knights of Honor 2 – Sovereign Test – Europe’s dark ages, trial makes sense, ruler and general in real time

The first Knights of Honour was given some advance praise in the mid-nineties, as it was considered a beacon of hope for the anno-Makers of Sunflowers. In fact, it finally won over the critics – but not so much the audience. Commercial success has been mediocre at best, and the mix of genres has scarcely left its mark online despite its once-active modding community. In fact, I can barely remember the 18-year-old original.

The epoch-making orchestral accompaniment (the soundtrack of the now-released sequel is also really worth listening to) and the chain-smoking chief developer stuck in my memory Vesselin Handjiev, whom I was allowed to interview in his studio in Sofia. Lo and behold: The veteran, who was active for Crytek in the meantime, is also moving to the official successor Knights of Honor 2 – Sovereign the threads again. The best conditions for a sequel that does justice to the model.

Like its predecessor, Knights of Honor 2 takes you back to the Middle Ages. You start either in the twelfth, thirteenth or fourteenth century. The map ranges from Europe to North Africa to Arabia and is divided into several dozen principalities, sultanates, and kingdoms, which in turn include a few hundred smaller provinces. There are different cultural zones as well as religions. For example, the Novgorod Republic belongs to the East Slavic sphere and to the Orthodox Church, while in the Almohad Caliphate, the Berbers set the tone and follow the Sunni school of Islam. Depending on the nation you choose, special game mechanics await you. The Pope regularly demands church taxes from Catholic princes and repeatedly calls for crusades against the infidels, while you as a pagan tribal chief in Finland or Lithuania can let the God of the Israelites be a good man, but you have to deal with impertinent missionaries.

You set your game goals yourself before the start of the game. A great victory is achieved by being elected world ruler (by subduing all rivals or gaining their support) or by earning all royal achievements (by leading in research, trade, and other fields). For a small victory you have to either control a certain number of areas or dominate a certain cultural or economic area. There is also the option to conquer a competitive empire – but this is different than in recent ones total war-Play not chosen to match your own faction, but is determined randomly according to the tooltip. Either way: A campaign in Knights of Honor 2 takes some time; Depending on the requirements and game speed, you will be challenged for as long as a game civilization.

The fact that Knights of Honor 2 – Sovereign sees itself as a strategy game of classic design is already clear from the first few minutes of the game. The introduction is not based on a classic tutorial, but on dozens of text explanations and information windows. With each new action, in each additional menu, further explanations interrupt the flow of the game. So I turned it off after a short time, annoyed, and just threw myself straight into the fray. After a while, this approach also bore fruit, because at least the basic functions were soon understood after spending some time with comparable genre representatives. At least there are tool tips and a reference work in the game, which is not as comprehensive as the famous Civilopedia and lacks a search function, but at least explains the most important game mechanics and keywords.

I learned the intricacies of warfare, diplomacy, and other areas of action through simple experimentation. The initially intimidating, because small-scale menu navigation, which distributes buttons and important action options across half the screen, loses its fright after a while and allows me to manage my empire reasonably efficiently. At least up to a certain size; with really huge empires, it gets a bit tedious to shimmy through from one province to the next.

Like the Total War series or the direct competition Field of Glory Sovereign is divided into a strategic part, in which you administrate your empire and direct armies across the map, and a tactical part, in which you fight battles. You fulfill both tasks in real time, but the game on the overview map feels more like turn-based strategy because you can freely vary the speed.

The battlefield is also rarely hectic, because you can even give orders in pause mode. You spend most of your time with the Reich administration. You can also completely ignore the real-time battles and have the results of the encounters calculated automatically instead. However, if you are in command personally, you can often get better results and, above all, resolve the conflicts more quickly. But I will come back to the tactical skirmishes later, first I would like to explain to you the more important strategic part.