The Lost Heir 2: Forging a Kingdom

The Lost Heir 2 is probably the "easiest" game in the series in that it is difficult to get an unambiguously bad ending or die for real. (Spoiler - click to show)In fact, "losing" the final battle is the only way to save a certain character. Most character builds that did well in the first game will work well here.

I like the sense of progression in the game: you go from being an exiled heir, to taking over a city through politicking, and then leading an army on a quest to retake your kingdom. There are management mechanics in the city and army portions of the game; you can either increase the citizens' respect or their fear, and in the army portion you have to balance the army's size, strength, food supplies, and delays. In addition, there are still the choices of which party member to support in their conflicts. There are interesting trade-offs to be made here. However, there is somewhat of a conflict between min-maxing and role-playing; since there are no benefits to increasing relationships above 100, it is always advantageous to support the character with the lower relationship, even if the other character is your love interest or is actually correct in the conflict.

As before, the plot here is a somewhat typical high fantasy story: you are still the titular "lost heir" and your goal is to re-conquer your kingdom. The world is a bit more fleshed out; there is the requisite high fantasy "gathering the races" segment which introduces the friendly non-human species, and there are some indications of why the people who usurped the protagonist are bad (besides the fact that they usurped the protagonist). There is a new romance option introduced, and some opportunities to develop previously constructed relationships. Personally I really enjoyed the story despite it not being extremely unique; I managed to become invested in the characters and relationships.

(Spoiler - click to show)In the end, however, it basically doesn't matter how your army performed in the final battle or all the battles leading up to it; all that matters is your skill in the final climactic fight. The final fight is against a former party member who was captured brainwashed in the first game. If you lose that fight, your army is defeated but the party member survives. If you win, the party member dies but your army is victorious. This choice kind of left a bad taste, even though everything leading up to it was good.