Part 2: Kingsword: Castles & Kings II

Update 2: Kingsword: Castles & Kings II

When we left off, it was time to go in and kick some bandit ass.



The cave is pretty much a narrow maze of twisty corners.



There's a door off to the left, but this game is fond of dick moves like putting empty rooms with nothing in them to draw you into more random encounters.



While we're running around, Cupi continues his quest for power with some more zombie flesh. The bandit cave is actually a great place to find zombies, which will be handy when we need them a few more times.



Down a floor there's a large cavern with two doors. One's locked, leaving door number two for the "boss" fight.

I didn't say

about the girl!



He goes down in a single attack. As a phantom, Cupi has an attack called Chill which strikes at the boss's weakpoint. Rather than increased damage, hitting a weakness results in a chance of an instant kill.



The Bandit goes down, begging for mercy to the very last. Cupi is not impressed.




Now that the Bandit is dead we can raid his treasure room. The lizard walking around will result fighting a battle if you try to talk to it. The treasure isn't really impressive: a bronze shield, a potion, and a strength potion. One gets saved, one gets sold, and one gets saved for later.



The girl in question thanks us...



And somehow beats us to the castle. The king's a wordy little bastard, but he basically gives us his Armor as a reward. The King's Armor has a defense of 20, which is better than anything we can get around here.



Cupi changes once more. I'm thinking of doing a bonus update chronicling just its changes. I buy a few HP, strength, and agility potions and upgrade my characters. Here's a snapshot of my characters.




Fina is by far the most powerful, and is right now a teaching point about how mutants work. First off, look at her strength and defense statistics. She's wearing no armor, has never worn armor or used a shield, and still has a defense of 7. Her strength is also pretty high, which is a bit unusual since she's never used any weapon other than a rapier. Unfortunately for most people's sensibilities, mutant stat raises are not directly tied to what weapons and armor they use. Another thing to look at is the X - Fire in her abilities. Mutants can acquire weaknesses as a random "power." You just have to hope they go away.

I'm not bothering with armor for the humans, since the best defense in this game can often be a good offense. It's important to note that you can't have 100% specialization in strength for a character as AGI helps with hitting enemies. The hammer that Vyse is wielding is still his starting weapon, to give you an idea of how long I've been playing.



Next it's time to head to King Sword's castle. The pathway goes through a narrow forest filled corridor..



Across a river and around some mountains...



And finally to a castle in the middle of a forest in the middle of a desert. You fail geography.



This is a first in the game: multiple enemies in a single battle. Thankfully magical attacks hit multiple enemies in a stack.



King Sword's castle has guards rather like King Shield's, but instead of just throwing you out they'll attack you.



This is the only place in the area to get wererat meat, which you need for a couple of transformations.



Up on the second floor we can see a door to the south...



There's a closer stairway, but it is in fact a trap. There might be treasure up there, but there's also a ton of random encounters with karateka, a difficult enemy that comes in groups of 4 or 5.



As usual, the longest way around is the shortest way home.



He certainly looks intimidating enough.



Annnd he kills Fina with a critical hit. If you want to take the King Sword from him, you're going to have to pry it from his cold dead hands. It appears to be similar to Excalibur from Final Fantasy in that it hits all elemental weaknesses. That X-Fire came back to bite us in the ass.



Luckily the rest of the party is able to finish off King Sword and Fina is victorious, posthumously.



Replacing Fina at the top of the line, you can see that she only has two hearts while everybody else has three. If your characters die three times, they can't be brought back. New hearts can be bough for 10,000 gold, but let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Next time: What's King Shield up to?