Genre: Role Playing Game, retro, Dungeons & Dragons

Release Date: 2015 

Developer: Kyy Games

Publisher: Paradox Interactive

Story:

Knights of Pen & Paper 2 harks back to the heydays of mighty Dungeons & Dragons crawl where real people gathered around a table to roll dice and imagine together incredible stories. The rules were complicated and the copious amount of statistics made D&D ideal for number lovers. But the imagination was the limit. Knights of Pen & Paper 2 respectfully makes fun of D&D, promising a casual recipe of expurgated tropes: gather a party of humans, elves or dwarves, turn them into mages, warriors, paladins, clerics, hunters, rogues, and pit them against whacky giant toads, slightly deranged mushrooms and other zany monsters.

Playability: Click and easy

Knights of Pen & Paper 2 is beginner gentle. Its user friendly touch screen controls translate well into a regular PC. The roll of polyhedral dices is quickly simulated with little explanation, but it doesn’t really matter anyway. Click on your usual set of special skills (chain lightning, fireball, healing and so forth) click again on your targets, wait for your turn, repeat, win the fight, loot and move onto to the next quest. Eat a slice of pizza (for real). Level up, get stronger, buy better equipment. Crafting items is a breeze as the game will conveniently show what you can transmute with your current inventory and what ingredients are missing.

Annoyance: Endless fighting and looting

Knights of Pen & Paper 2 is a charming game that looks casual on the surface. It’s easy to get in and the banter of the Dungeon Master is droll… at first. After the first dozen quests and few hours of gameplay wondering and wandering around the land, your party of hardy adventurers will be scratching their heads as to the whole meaning of these endless shenanigans. Knights of Pen & Paper 2 has a loose storyline and struggles to keep the plot going. The whole point of the story seems to be to level up your party’s statistics towards an ultimate confrontation. But to get there, your adventures will be filled with countless penultimate encounters and incessant blabber.

Beauty: Colourful retro pixels 

Knights of Pen and Paper 2 features old school pixel art with cute colours and imaginative backgrounds. On larger screen though, the graphics look a little barren and finishing touches lean towards the sloppy side. The limited sound effects (worthy of early Atari consoles) are played in a loop of endless fights, and soon amalgamate into a music track of their own.

The Old Video Gamer’s Prattle: Humorous but pointless quests 6/10

Knights of Pen and Paper 2 is an entertaining commute, and has the quick fun and easy appeal of casual role playing on a whim. Repetitive gameplay and copious amount of banter gradually numbs the adventure to the point of skimming through dialogues. Galloping across the same landscapes and cities eventually dulls an initially promising gaming experience.