I have been playing this and it is great. At first it feels like a little more polished version of the last game, but it really is different enough and all the changes are very welcome additions. I could live with those roquelike elements of the last game but this shows how much it is NOT my genre. That is the biggest change and changes the whole game. I can't recommend this game enough.
To be fair, I love roguelikes and '
Kingdom: New Lands' is one of my favorite games. But I also think that 'Kingdom' is a game that works much better without roguelike elements.
For two reasons: because it's not a game that can include too much randomized elements to make each playthrough a completely different experience, if you don't want to break the balance.
And because each island takes an insane amount of time to complete, so the permadeath feels extremely punishing.
The permadeath and roguelike elements only have sense in the original 'Kingdom' classic, before the New Lands expansion. Because it was a game contained in a single island, with a survival nature in its approach.
But even with this, I loved 'Kingdom: New Lands' because in my opinion, it creates a concrete mood that I have only found in two other video games: '
Proteus' and '
Breath of the Wild'.
'Kingdom: New Lands', 'Proteus' and 'Breath of the Wild' were about how to express a natural environment, creating a spiritual connection with the player. They are the closest experience to the mysticism of filmmakers such as Andrei Tarkovsky, Aleksandr Sokúrov or of films like 'Old Joy' by Kelly Reichardt.
It also had one of the most gorgeous artistic designs that I have seen in a video game, not to talk of its sound design. I think that
Raw Fury is currently the better publisher in the industry, curating games with superb sound designs. As we can see with the fact that in the last years, they have monopolized all the categories in the sound department of the IGF Awards.
I'm really hyped to play this new 'Kingdom: Two Crowns', and I'm happy to see new people interested in the game, specially after the push of visibility of being included this month in Game Pass for the Xbox One, and in the
Winter of Arcade promotion, which is the best thing that Microsoft has done this generation to give visibility to indie titles.
The only thing that makes me sad is that I live in a small city, so it's really hard to find people interested in indie games in my area. But to enjoy this with local co-op should be an unforgettable experience. Giving that you need to defend the right and the left part of the isle, it's a very clever take to have each player defending a zone.