Knights of Honor II: Sovereign is a complex and intriguing title. Every inch of the game is covered in exquisite detail and is a great deal of fun. Despite its intense difficulty and learning curve, the title has managed to be one of the best strategy games released this year.
The game offers three historic starts — 12th, 13th or 14th century — and allows people to choose any nation except for the Papal State. Additionally, you can mess around to start as a single province or make the game increase your historically small country to seven provinces. The map is fairly constrained, but it covers Europe, Middle East, and North Africa.
Most of the time in Knights of Honor II: Sovereign is spent on the real-time strategic map. Here is where you move armies, build improvements in your provinces, order around your noble knights, and conduct diplomacy. The game allows for up to 10x speed up, though you probably want to slow down a bit for war.
The developer of Knights of Honor II: Sovereign, Black Sea Games, put some effort into thinking about limitations that would prevent easy map painting. For example, the titular knights. They are the specialists of one of the six classes — marshals, clerics, merchants, etc. — that do all the real stuff in the kingdom. But you only get eight of the knights plus your king, so choosing the right mix is very important.
Similar limitations exist for unit recruitment (with a very Europa Universalis-esque recruitable population pool), collecting books to level up your characters, and even gold. Stockpile too much and face inflation! You better spend that money improving provinces.
Overall, Knights of Honor II: Sovereign gives you real-time Medieval campaigns akin to some of the best strategy games. It includes all the depth players desire while being the gateway game to the grand strategy genre, presenting the world as a living, breathing miniature, alive and ripe for the taking.
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