izigame.me

If you're looking for a polished version of Knights of Honor 1, play Knights of Honor 1. There are a few neat mechanics that could provide an enhanced immersion compared to the original, but everything else is clunky and straight punishing without any of the original joy. This feels like they tried to meet KoH 1 and CK3 in the middle and fell short on both ends.
The Positives first:
1) The knights skills have been revamped to offer "legacy" bonuses to your royal line, and non-marshalls benefit from the the new "leveling" system.
2) The tech tree for each building has a lot of neat addons and synergizes with goods in immersive ways.
3) More options were opened up to modify local villages/farms/monasteries, and castles have been added as an additional quirk.
4) KOH 2 fixed the auto-fight feature where you lost 1 unit at a time. you now have the opportunity to lose all units equally at the same time.
The Negatives:
1) The UI absolutely sucks and The Diplomatic View is worse than worthless (Edit: it isn't great. Poor first impression, not as bad after a brief hiatus, still not an improvement) The icons are tiny, Portraits somehow have less detail than before (but they age finally), You can't find an available wife to literally save your kingdom (no icon for prince/princess), no icon for war, or other diplomatic status, and The Diplomatic color scheme and lettering are horrid (Edit: again, not great). Text boxes overwhelm you window with useless info and semi-critical decision options are
right-clickable.
2) The tactical graphics take away from the experience in every situation. The marshall sprites are clunky with poor troop detail and the cities absolutely look worse than the original by a mile. There's next to 0 graphic representation for fortification level or development. (EDIT: In the world-tactical view, not the combat-tactical view)
3) There are no ports, you literally click on the water with your marshall and they just hop on a boat in the middle of nowhere after a brief pause.
4) There are no special/faction units, just a few different versions of peasants, light archers/swordsmen/spearmen, and heavy versions of the same.
(Correction) There are definitely special units in the game, they are simply tied directly to the province where their developed. I'm not seeing any "kingdom specials" that can be produced just anywhere, but i suppose that could be a reasonable trade off.
5) The available building slots per town is DRASTICALLY reduced (4 per city with an additional 4 that can be purchased for 2k, 4k, 6k, and 8k). No town is anywhere near functional without having to buy slots. Absolutely kills the immersion vibe compared to unlocking additional slots via any other method.
6) You actually lose available children slots, 6 to 4, and girls and boys share them. You get a halfhearted development card gimmick to tailor the kids' career path, but you just end up pigeon-holing yourself by picking a profession for them that they can't leave. You decide that they're going to be a merchant class a baby? they will be a merchant for the rest of their lives. Lack of male heirs still reigns supreme as your biggest bottleneck. Don't miss their birthday parties!
7) Your king gets old FAST on normal mode. Even when he has all 4 kids "young", he's "old" before the last 2 reach adulthood. maybe that's more realistic? honestly though, it just feels rushed and like a complete waste of 1,000 books.
8) The pacing is off. It cranked the dog-eat-dog easy war factor to 11, but introduced diplomatic functions that slogs everything down to a what feels like a x2 CK3 speed. The world doesn't have a start fresh early-medieval period with lots of loose provinces and it feels like the computer doesn't have same resource constraints for raising armies or dealing with fickle faction opinions.
9) (NEW) The marshall's lack of combat experience leveling is just lame. I really love the idea of being able to custom tailor the non-combat knights with books, but for marshalls it doesn't feel right.
Questions:
9) why does the game have a world wide, non-province specific army supply cap AND a rapidly deteriorating "tactical" army supply? Makes NO sense.
10) (NEW) Why have peasants take away 3 town population with a total squad size of 400, but every other unit, so far, only takes away 1 population with squad sizes of 300? Taking away building capacity due to low population could be a thing, but that isn't one of the mechanics in KOH 2, so I'm a little confused. Lesson, don't waste time with peasants if you can help it at all. the -3 population takes WAY more capacity from you compared to the 150-250 gold and 1 pop that each normal unit takes.
11) (NEW) Why is the Levy pop even a thing? you aren't calling your vassals to fight for you, you're already taking from the provinces overall population, but heavily de-populating a town doesn't lower the peasants' attitudes towards you... Just like the non-province specific food limit plus army supply, why even have it?
In all, KoH 2 technically "works" as its supposed to, but they really didn't fix any of the minor issues that the first one had, introduced a myriad of new "quirks" into the mix, added a couple "well that could have been neat" moments, and ended up trying to borrow too many elements of CK3 for it to really feel like KoH anymore. graphics are worse, everything feels bland, the UI isn't great, The male heir issue is somehow worse than before, unit stats still only kinda line up with what's required to build them (CORRECTION: Unit stats are quite a bit better), none of the UI is as good as the original (CORRECTION: some of the UI is beneficial, some of it is worse, overall its a mixed bag), city build slots are going to simultaneously intrigue you and piss you off, knight leveling is going to be both cooler and completely retarded since there's no experience required, The lack of harbors or paying for boats is completely at odds with the rest of the games' direction, and you aren't going to understand why you're receiving a text box every time a province changes hands or someone breaks a trade agreement. cities are slower to build, but rural areas come back before you're done pillaging a province, the new factions are fickle franks, you'll lose kingdom power for everything but can only buy it back, there's still no pause button in single player (CORRECTION: ok, yeah, that one's on me. there's definitely a pause button), and you won't be able to find a wife, convince the other nation to marry her to your king, have kids before he's adult/old, and is dead before the kids are grown. there are no easy-view province goods' windows (Edit: there are, but like the rest of the UI buttons they're tiny and the click boxes muddle up at times), kingdom conflict status icon, province quick-glance, or local/special units (CORRECTION: There definitely are local units, but no Kingdom-specific special units that can be produced out of province).
And there's no way to try and "reform" England, France, or Scotland by starting in a fractured Western Europe or Britannia... WHERE ARE MY DAD GUM PRINCESS AND CROSSED SWORDS ICONS!?
Edit as of 12/12/2022: The comments got me on a couple of key points, Namely the pause button (Yeah, that's my bad), Special units, and Marriageable bachelorettes icons (the crossed hashes for princesses, princes, and marriage links make sense once you dig into the map a bit, but a ready-view option isn't there for a quick glance. Like everything else, you have to dig a bit to find anything with tiny icons and poor contrast. The eye strain is real.)