For The King II was a game I was really looking forward too, one I really gave a chance too. When it first came out, I saw the reviews pour in, "mixed", the game ran like crap and was terribly balanced. So I held off, I gave things over a year to grow and be patched. I bought it on sale, played things even more safe. Finally I was able to play the game, and it pains me to say it was a let down. I was a huge fan of For The King I, I have over 120 hours into it between Switch and PC. I adored FTK1's cutesy toy box characters and the interesting 3v3 gameplay in a DnD esque style. For The King II did away with that iconic look to do a bland, generic RPG style with more realistic looking models. While this may work for some, I was really let down by this departure. Not only that, but all of the games environments and maps look bland, unsaturated and boring. This certainly is made worse by the fact they reused the exact world map from FTK1, but that's understandable as it's a direct sequel. They did do better with world generation however, so the layout will vary largely from each chapter to the next. The music had some nice upgrades and remakes from the original game that I actually liked, and the battle theme was stuck in my head a lot, so the music was well done, but I still wanted more original tunes. The story was run of the mill and generic, not to mention the story seemed to be built completely around setting up a sequel. There were times where main characters were told things by others I knew weren't going to be resolved in this game. This is hard to explain without spoilers, but I hope you get what I'm trying to say. The ending was total poopoo and wasn't satisfying at all, having the **SPOILER** Queen be "mind controlled". **END SPOILERS** I feel overall that it wasn't even these ideas that were bad, but the poor writing and execution of them that made it bad. The whole story felt loosely tied together, and each chapter had only the queen in common, but narratively it was jumping from one place to another. Lastly is probably my most mixed part, the gameplay. There are a lot of things I like, loadouts, the 6 square battle area, and some of the new classes. I really enjoyed the Friar, and it was great to see that Hunter and Herbalist are still as OP as ever! The 6 panel battle area started off a little too cumbersome for my liking, and I felt made battles longer and more annoying, and they did, but they were a step in the right direction. I can't imagine how much else they could have innovated on the grid battle idea. The problems though stem from balance issues and difficulty. I am a baby when I try new games, so I usually start on the lowest difficulty to get a feel for the gameplay. But this time I went ahead and played on hard because of my experience with the first game. DEAR GOD. I ended up lowering it to APPRENTICE, the lowest difficulty and I still had to end up using all of my lives and then some to keep my party going. Now this could have been 100% my fault, skill issue ya know? So I played the game again, and no, it wasn't me, it's just not balanced well. The game is a huge difficulty boost from FTK1, almost in a negative way. The progression is slow as it takes FOREVER to get your party equipped and going, which by the time you finally do, the chapter is over and YOU HAVE TO MAKE A NEW PARTY?!? Every time you start a new chapter, it's a new party. Now I get it from a thematic POV, the resistance is big and there's a lot of people who fight for it, but I don't want to make and relevel an entirely new party for 5 chapters straight. In conclusion, I am absolutely sure that compared to where the game was at launch, it is significantly better, I mean the studio has been nominated for a "Labor of Love" Award at the Steam awards this year (2024) so it's been doing well. Despite this however, I was still greatly disappointed from a sequel to one of my favorite games of all time. It was a huge let down with poorly balanced enemies and pacing to generic design and story. The battle system made leaps and bounds forward in many ways, but also a lot of steps back from how poorly implemented things were. When I finished my second playthrough, I wasn't motivated to slog through it again for different endings or to unlock lore store items like I was in the first game, I just uninstalled. I gave this game over year and it still didn't live up to the legacy of the first game. Maybe I can revisit this game in a future of sequels where it's a "black sheep" but honestly, I doubt it. Here's to trying though, final score - 3/5 stars. Completed - 11/27/24