The second game in the series. Unfortunately, it seems like the canonical victor of the four-way war in the first game was Boring McBoringson I mean Morglin Ironfist. It turns out that not only did he ravage the new land he found himself in for his own personal glory, he also left it with a succession crisis when he finally had the decency to die of boringness.

Morglin had two sons, Roland and Archibald. For some reason their ages are never mentioned…are they twins or something? Regardless, it seems that Morglin also introduced some weird succession rules, although honestly they’re a bit more progressive than the norm. Apparently, the royal seer is supposed to make the decision of who gets to be the next king. However, Archibald, being the evil brother, killed off the royal seer in a convenient “boating accident”, then proceeded to kill all of his successors. He accuses Roland of murdering the seers, forcing him to flee the castle and go into hiding. With him out of the way, Archibald manages to bribe/threaten the next royal seer into finally naming him king. Upon hearing this, Roland, being the good, saintly brother, has decided to rise up in rebellion, cutting a bloody swathe through the countryside to depose his brother and put himself on the throne.

You may have noticed that the game has an actual plot this time (with cutscenes and everything)! It’s still a fairly generic one, but that’s better than nothing. Unfortunately, I don’t feel that it meshes very well with the strategy gameplay – the maps still take forever (even longer than in the first game, actually, since they’re more complex), meaning the pacing is slow as molasses. Overall, I think the story is really just window dressing; it’s clear it’s not the main focus. Oh well.

Despite that, the story actually has a startling amount of interactivity. At the beginning of the campaign, you get to choose whether to serve Roland or Archibald. There are a few points where the campaign branches, too, with sidequest maps and even an outright fork at one point (though it later rejoins into a single path). In fact, at the halfway mark, you’re sent a betrayal offer from the opposing lord, allowing you to switch sides if you want. To be honest, though, I don’t really see the point in that. Switching sides really doesn’t gain you anything; at that point, you’ve committed so much, you may as well carry it through to the end. Their betrayal offers are also the most boring and generic speeches possible – Archibald offers you “riches Roland could only dream of”, while Roland does the whole moral-high-ground thing. (Although interestingly, he makes a point about how he can match Archibald in material rewards, subverting the “good is impoverished” idea.)

I actually think this could have had an impact if the story really gave the player a reason to consider betraying their lord – maybe Roland turns out to actually be a crazy end-justifies-the-means extremist, and you realize Archibald is actually the lesser of two evils, or Archibald, uh…I dunno, really does have legitimacy? It feels like Roland has too many things stacked in his favor – not only is he “good”, but he also has money and legitimacy, since Archibald had to kill off the seers since they were going to pick him. Archibald’s not just evil, he’s also an usurper. It’s the kind of aristocratic romanticism that A Song of Ice and Fire has made me too cynical about to take seriously anymore.

However, it has allowed me to read wildly alternative interpretations into the plot, which is always fun. The narrative constantly talks up Roland as being the good one, but it never really does anything to show it other than that he’s more polite to you than Archibald, which is really not a good indicator of morality at all. He orders you to do pretty much the exact same things as Archibald does – in fact, his very first mission revolves around forcing various lords to swear allegiance to him by swinging around military might. He says he orders it “with a heavy heart”, but if he was really so conflicted about attacking his own lords maybe he should have considered a more diplomatic route. All of his missions after that are practically the same – defeat all the other lords to secure the region, etc. etc. There’s one point where you’re given the choice to come to the aid of a bunch of dwarfs whose kingdom has been ravaged by Archibald’s forces, and I just sat there boggling at the screen. Oh yeah, ravaging the countryside, killing women and children…worried that Archibald’s stealing your job, Roland? Because you just spent the last few missions ordering me to slaughter peasants by the hundreds, I’m sure they aren’t considering calling for aid from the other guy. (Incidentally, in Archibald’s campaign, they do – or at least, the necromancers do. Weirdly, you never actually attack the necromancer’s guild in Roland’s campaign – I guess it’s a reactivity thing.)

And bizarrely enough, if he wins, Archibald’s treatment of Roland is actually nicer than Roland’s sentence for Archibald. Archibald just locks him up in a cell for the rest of his life, which is pretty horrible, yes, but Roland turns Archibald to stone. I don’t know which is worse, the fact he consigns him to such a fate in the first place or that he tries to spin it as proof that he’s ~so noble~. He makes a big deal about how it’s “a mercy you surely would not have shown me” (which is not true), and also gives Archibald a way out, saying that the curse can be undone if “future generations should take pity upon you and restore you to life. If they ever do.” I really like that last sentence. It’s just such a perfect little screw-you showing that Roland does not actually plan on allowing that to happen, ever. (Apparently it does in Might and Magic VII, but I never played that game and also Archibald turns good at the end anyway? Whatever.) Honestly, I’m getting serious Joffery Baratheon vibes here.

Oh, and also Archibald is a wizardy guy while Roland is a knight, because smart guys are evil and only exist to steal the throne from the rightful heir through trickery arghleblarghle stupid trope is stupid.

This game also introduces the necromancer faction, who will be the go-to guys for the rest of the series when it comes to flat villains, starting with the expansion pack, The Price of Loyalty.

Strangely, the expansion does not continue the main storyline. Instead, it adds four shorter campaigns about four standalone stories. The campaign that seems to be the centerpiece, the titular “Price of Loyalty”, is the most boring and generic story I’ve ever seen. You’re a random guy tasked by an emperor with hunting down another guy who is in open rebellion (and is also apparently your childhood friend). It turns out he was mindcontrolled by the EVIL NECROMANCERS because of course the villains are necromancers. Of course they are. However, even though he wasn’t in control of his actions in the slightest, he’s still sentenced to death because plot says so. Then you’re awarded with all his lands and titles, and the game tries to do an edgy title drop by ending with “such is the price of loyalty” and I neither understand nor care. I suppose it is kind of interesting to be fighting for the evil empire instead of against it for once, but it’s still an evil empire so the underlying issues I have with the idea (blind anti-authority stupidity) are still there.

The only one that’s even slightly interesting is “The Voyage Home”. It’s a bit of an Odyssey ripoff, but with an interesting twist. The main character has been stranded at sea and, through trials and tribulations, manages to return home. However, he finds out that his homeland has been thrown into civil war by THOSE EVIL NECROMANCERS, headed by his sister because as we all know power makes women crazy (and evil). It’s actually the only campaign with a truly forked ending – you can decide to be a nepotist and help your sister win the war, or you can be an aristocrat and help your lord fight off your sister (and, in fairness, he’s portrayed as a fairly nice guy). Come to think of it, though, I think this may be the only example of a prominent female necromancer character — in later games, all the plot-relevant necromancer characters are guys for some reason.

The other two campaigns are very very boring and just variants on “kill all the other guys”. Meh.

Get used to the “NECROMANCERS ARE THE EVILEST THINGS EVAR!!1!1!!” plot, because we’ll be seeing a lot of it in the next game.