Barbarous 2: Tavern Wars. Sequel to the “Barbarous” and another time management game by SQRT3. One thing in terms of new features and gameplay mechanics there are none. I’m not sure that I have to say it ever time but just make sure. If you time management with some new features play SQRT3’s Delicious there are like two games from them. So what’s new in this game? Apart from the plot there are new scenes and characters.
Whatever, plot time. Sometime after Emyr stopped Rush’a’Doom news about his heroic deed spread like peanut butter on a toast. We see a cloaked woman takin newspaper about Emyr’s deeds from hands of a meek hobbit. There it is photo of Emyr, Orho and her daughter Gwen. Yep we finally can take look at Kintara and she looks like Red Sonia. Well Gwen’s ginger too so no surprise, same hair color even the same eyes color. Wonder what Gwen picked from her dad’s side? Stubbornness perhaps? Definitely it’s always stubbornness with those kinds of tomboys. But let’s take another look at the newspaper. Right, Gwen started her adventurer career, now that’s interesting.
Meanwhile at Emyr’s tavern. Lads are busy with their usual routine. Soup needs to cooked, floor needs to be cleaned. New character appears, he looks “shiny”. Big golden plate armor, golden hair, almost as big as Emyr. Who is he? His name is McArthus and he supposed to be one of the Emyr’s gang even though there isn’t any mention of him in the first game. Emyr recognizes him and they exchange friendly greeting and pleasantries after that McArthus asks couple of questions. Looks like the luminous paladin also put his glory days behind him and wants to start a business like Emyr. Orho isn’t pleased with McArthus presence and want to kick him out as soon as possible. Why? Well that’s because Orho is even more straightforward then Emyr. Orho says that McArthus is a sleazebag, slime and scammer. All because the paladin stole all of the Emyr’s heroic deeds by let’s say scratching Emyr’s name out of those heroic deeds. And as we all know dwarves do not forget every grudge goes in the big book of grudges. Emys though doesn’t really care about all of that. Sometime after Gwen returns from her first dungeon raid and meets McArthus. He’s even gifts her some high grade sword. But Emyr doesn’t approve of such act because in his opinion Gwen must find her own loot. Anyway long story short McArthus wants to start tavern/inn business in every city in the land. So he proposes to buy Emyr’s tavern. Emyr declines his offer and McArthus burns his tavern. And we also see an orc assassin who came to claim Emyr’s head.
After this tragic event Emyr and Orho crashed ad Orho’s relative steak house (former smithy) where they plan to go to McArthus big announcement event. While they prepare the disguises orc assassin appears again and tries to fight Emyr. He fails miserably and runs away. Later that orc came back and explained that it’s a custom among the orcs to avenge their fathers. And it’s not hard to guess that orc in the Rush’a’Doom’s son, his name is Rogz. He doesn’t really want to avenge his father and did it half assed just to make an attempt I guess. His real passion is music and he wants to be a famous bard. Anyway Orho and Emyr made a scene at McArthus event and challenged him to a competition. Competition is who the best at being a tavern master is. McArthus agrees but adds that they will be judged by a special critic. So McArthus going for quantity approach and Emyr goes for quality approach. Lads decided to travel to different location in order to get better experience in the arts of tavern mastery. And that’s where we stop with the plot.
I’ll skip the gameplay part because it is the same is the first game. So in the end I would like to say that story is still interesting as well as jokes. Our characters changed their costumes a little bit Emyr now looks like Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules, Gwen cut her hair and she still looks like Scottish princess from Brave though. If you liked the plot and relaxing gameplay of the first game you should also play the sequel.
Nothing new here either
