Knights of Pen & Paper 2 Preview

Tabletop games are big business. In 2000, D&D creators Wizards of the Coast released the most comprehensive pen-and-paper game survey ever, finding that 2.5 million Americans regularly played at least one type of tabletop game. Massive numbers, and yet momentum for the genre hasn't been slowing down; $40 million was made in 2013 off these games. So, why am I plying you with seemingly unrelated figures about another industry? Simple: it's very profitable, and Paradox Games decided that they wanted a slice of the pie. They released the tabletop-inspired Knights of Pen & Paper in 2012 – the expanded edition failed to cut much ice with us last month. However, now that the game is back for a second outing made by Kyy Games, I ask; have the Knights of Pen & Paper become mightier than the sword, or did they run out of ink halfway through?


Knights of Pen & Paper 2 uses an interesting framing device to anchor the story and gameplay. The game begins with a man sitting at a table, engaging you directly, ready to narrate your journey. That's right: he is the 'dungeon master' and you are quite literally playing through a tabletop RPG as one would in the real world. The dungeon master tells the story, and the fictional world fills up the room you sit in as if by magic. This may be the most realistic, grounded, and also interesting depiction of an RPG ever – Knights, as a whole, feels all the more interesting for it.

Aside from being a tribute to tabletop, Knights of Pen & Paper 2 is partially based on some of the most entertaining parts of RPG video games. The game allows you to build your own characters from scratch – with races like human and elf, classes like warrior, mage, thief and even personality types spanning jock to lab rat to hipster, there are many combinations here to make your characters (and the game) your own. Once you select what kind of characters you want, you can then take up quests and battles – here, quests are nothing more than a series of battles strung together with a bit of travelling in between. While that may sound dull and uninspired in other games; in this instance, this isn't the case. It keeps things simple to avoid getting bogged down in technical, over-written story nonsense, which ends up making for a much more mechanics-focused RPG experience.


Battling in this game is already quite well implemented, even if the game is still only in Early Access. Your party of up to 5 characters can take on pre-selected groups of enemies in the different locales of the world of Paperos, where your 'adventure' is set. You take them out using a range of upgradable attacks, either magic or melee, all of which can be strengthened to your liking – one of my characters was a human warrior, and I favoured the strong lunge overall. In truth, there's nothing groundbreaking about the turn-based battle system on offer here, but this game absolutely gets the fundamentals of battling right, where the action is slick and fluid to the point where even the easiest battles feel fun. Leveling up your party of five will soon become an obsession as the XP and the gold starts to roll in. Knights is not an innovative game by a long chalk, but the battling has been done so sharply that you'll have too much fun to care about any derivation.

Of course, you'll get your chance to explore dungeons, and these are perhaps the game's greatest appeal, as they offer a marathon battling experience in which you decimate every enemy, and plunder every bit of loot. This is unadulterated RPG action at its finest – bringing a dungeon to its knees will prove challenging for any seasoned gamer, but is immensely satisfying. I would wager that when this game finally sees the light of day, dungeon-crawling will be worth the price of admission alone.


Finally, as you may have noticed by looking at the pictures that punctuate this preview, Knights of Pen & Paper 2 looks gorgeous – the fun and carefree sense of adventure that the game offers is accentuated with the sumptuous cartoon-style aesthetic that makes Knights leap off the computer screen. It's a visual feast, and in playing this game, you'll find yourself gorging on deep, bright colours and cute, endearing little sprites. However, if that didn't whet your appetite, then you'll find yourself sated by the stellar soundtrack, which complements the game perfectly, conjuring up all the right emotions one would expect to feel while playing an RPG; fear, excitement, and joy. The artistic direction was one of the reasons why I was always so happy to get back to playing this game – Knights of Pen & Paper 2 is certainly very easy on the eyes and ears at this stage of development.

Knights of Pen & Paper 2 gets very few things wrong – if you have even the slightest interest in RPG games, look into this fun and refreshing title when it comes out. Also, do not mistake the basic approach of this game as lacking content – Knights keeps it simple in order to be a truly elegant and sophisticated game, and proof that you don't need a million and one gimmicks to make a great title.