King's Bounty 2 dev diary shows off 3D combat

King's Bounty 2 is taking the venerable turn-based strategy series somewhere new, which is bound to be divisive. But fans will always have the previous, unnumbered sequels Crossworlds, Armored Princess, Warriors of the North, and Dark Side to play if they want more of the same. King's Bounty 2, with its third-person camera and focus on the RPG side of things, is aiming for something different.

This most recent developer blog shows off its 3D arenas, which unlike the flat battlemaps of yore make use of varying height to create advantages for attackers on high ground as well as fully blocking line of sight. This video also explains changes like the ability to level up units so you don't have to replace starter troops if you grow fond of them, although elites will still exist—they'll just be more specialized.

Although this video is mainly about humans and undead, noting their resistance to ranged attacks makes the undead likely to win in an archer-versus-archer fight, there are glimpses of other units like fighting dogs, celestial warriors, and elementals. No sign of other factions, though. Magic gets touched on briefly but more detail will apparently come in a later video.

We don't have a release date beyond "2020" for King's Bounty 2 at this stage.

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.

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