This review is provided by The Gilded Maw - A Dungeon Crawling steam group, and this video game was purchased by the reviewer.

Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees is a first-person party-based open world grid/tile-based dungeon-rpg (DRPG) dungeon crawler with turn-based combat developed by Chris Koźmik of Silver Lemur Games, and is a sequel to Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown, however it is a standalone story. It draws heavy inspiration from classic blobbers from the 90s, such as Might and Magic 3-5. The game is verified by Valve to be Steam Deck compatible, having gamepad support as well; played primarily with mouse and keyboard, although a quick assessment was done on the Steam Deck, and I found it surprisingly robust, and viable option.

A wonderful quick and comfy game to pick up after a long day at work. It’s pleasant to look at, with well defined pixelated graphics that invokes the era which it is inspired from, with mechanical depth to match. It improves upon the original with better dungeon/overworld design, and explorable cities. There are few games of this variety with as much polish and charm on display, and wholly recommended!

Character Creation
For those wanting to quickly get into the game with a relatively balanced party with diverse skills and options, Quick Play is perfectly fine. For those who enjoy fine tuning their party of adventurers, there is quite a lot of customization, especially for those that enjoy the min/max process. I’ve found the system is quite robust, and works well, and provides the player with a lot of options.

For example, taking the standard male human warrior trope, in Amberland a Human (regardless of sex) gains an additional 5% increase to experience over standard, then choosing between the Subraces of Heartlander (+1 to Knowledge/Toughness/Dexterity every 8/15/16 levels), Highlander (+1 Strength/Dexterity every 9/14 levels and +1HP per level) or Nomad (+1 Toughness/Willpower every 8/15 levels and a flat +1 maximum encumbrance), and finally the warrior benefiting the most from Strength/Toughness, possesses an inate once-per-rest combat ability called Strike (guaranteed critical hit), possesses the talent Tactics (shared with Knight, Knowledge increases critical hit chance).

The downside being that it falters when increasing the difficulty because Warriors, Healers, and Wizards are an exceptionally powerful combination, deal lots of damage, and generally covers all the bases for what the game will throw at you with damage and debuffs. Some classes are just better than others, and while I like the idea and thematic flavor of the Troll Slayer, a dwarven only class, it doesn’t hold a candle to a base Warrior, because you’re missing out on a shield and an inventory slot in exchange for guaranteed critical hits on all trolls. I would’ve liked to see a way for players to adventure with smaller parties, but it’s not the intended experience.

Realms
From the forests of Astoria, to cold reaches of Northumbria, to the volcanic Southern Archipelago, Amberland is familiar. The game utilizes tiles to simulate the world and the environment, from the trees to the many, many caverns you’ll be delving into. Unlike the first game, every town has it’s own arrangement of shops, quest givers, trainers that can improve stats permanently or teach skills like navigation or griffins, inns with patrons to question, barging into people’s rooms wondering if they have any quests or items for sale. There’s enough variety even in the general cave textures to denote the elemental affects of the region they’re found in, nice touches of ice in frigid reaches or the deserts to the far south-east. It’s usually an issue with indie titles that a cave texture will be just a cave texture for all caves, but that’s not the case. There’s personality to all of the different biomes, even as most locations have a familiar flow, and even within the same biomes you can find different cave textures. Same with the music, it’s all consistent and appropriately utilized. The soundscape can get a bit repetitive with the combat noises, but you’ll be in and out it frequently enough for it to not be a bother.

Adventure
Amberland is fun to explore, and treacherous. Early on, unless you’re an achievement hunter, you can acquire a griffin taxi service that allows you to return to any tile that you’ve previously visited, barring specific restrictions the game informs you about like being on a boat. Speaking of boats, there’s a lot of water to travel, and based on your navigation skill, will determine where you can go. The game uses dark and darker waters to gate the player away from regions they shouldn’t necessarily be in. A savvy gamer with some foreknowledge can find the necessary trainers spread throughout the realms to get access to these higher level areas, with quest items for returning quick gold, experience, and improving the party’s skills. Areas are also often interlinked via cave systems, which can often have their own perils such as spike traps, magical barriers, as well as devious teleporting traps. Several of which act as temporary blockades until you can bypass safely, or burn through supplies and mana recovering from the damage. It’s solid stuff, and enabling Extra Secrets Notice in the options menu helps because the differences between a regular wall and an illusion are exceptionally subtle (more than usual), and without it, you’ll be either brushing up against every wall, or staring at the Eye icon on the UI.

Warfare
There’s an achievement for slaying 1000 monsters, and it’s very easy to obtain on a first playthrough without trying because of the sheer volume of enemies. Despite being wholly turn-based, it’s incredibly quick. You can expect to face all of the common fantasy staples such as goblins, orcs, and dragons of course. While there are some unique enemy types such as the walking eye, it’s the kind of fodder you’re used to facing. Their levels are fixed, and do not scale with the party, and I will always prefer it this way. It feels good stumbling upon missed enemies and one-hitting them.

Maximizing all of your party’s capabilities, knowing when to press on, retreat, and rest are important factors to juggle. On normal, you can be reckless, but hard, insane, or insane+, you’ll have to act tactically. Different weapons for melee-oriented fighters can help give them flavor, as they either melee or use the special combat ability, but since the player has little control over anything else, it leaves something to be desired. I hope in future titles we can see fighting classes getting abilities to use that use their own type of energy, maybe one that builds up as they engage in combat like a rage meter.

Loot
Rewards in Amberland can at times feel like a mixed bag. Common chests contains randomized loot per run, although thankfully you can’t cheese it by reloading. Grand chests sometimes contain better gear, and the occasional unique piece of loot, with quests sometimes rewarding really great gear as well. There is the standard affixes such as +1 to stats and +number to resistances, but you’ll regularly find loot with defining properties. Red properties deal with how the weapon deals additional damage, such as a chance to cleave, and Purple properties, such as Heroism which can prevent a death once per battle. These can shore up discrepancies in an adventurer’s shortcomings, along with different tiers of the same item improving them. Buying is currently the best method of acquisition, and I’d like to see something like Transmutation of taking affixes from one item and moving them to another as an example, balanced by destroying the item and costing gold or precious resources.