Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees

Introduction

Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees continues Silver Lemur Games' tribute to the first-person, grid-based dungeon crawlers of the 1990s — Might & Magic, Wizardry, the Gold Box series — with a light, fairy-tale tone and a party of adventurers exploring towns and dungeons one square at a time. Developed and published by Silver Lemur Games, it released 5 December 2023 for NZ$28.99. Nearly three years on, it holds a small but strikingly consistent review base: 157 Steam reviews, Very Positive at roughly 96.8%. With a negative sample this small, this review reads all four of its English-language negative reviews in full, alongside a substantial share of the positive sample — completeness that's worth stating plainly, since it means this isn't a partial read standing in for the whole picture.

A genre homage that knows exactly what it's imitating

The clearest, most consistent praise in this review's sample is for how precisely The Song of Trees recreates its inspirations. Reviewers who grew up on the Xeen-era Might & Magic games specifically credit the aesthetic and music as authentic rather than a vague, generic pastiche, and the turn-based, tile-by-tile dungeon delving is described as brisk by the genre's own standards — some dungeons clearable in minutes, which keeps exploration from becoming the tedious crawl the genre is sometimes accused of. On harder difficulty settings, reviewers specifically credit the balance with forcing real tactical decisions about which fights to engage and which to avoid, rather than simply gating progress behind repetitive grinding.

An improvement on its own predecessor, and reviewers are specific about that framing

Here's the most interesting, most consistently repeated observation across this review's sample: almost every reviewer who compares The Song of Trees to the first Legends of Amberland describes it as a direct, meaningful improvement rather than a fresh direction — expanded town exploration, dexterity-based bow characters that weren't available before, and a reworked inventory and resistance system all draw specific, credited praise as real quality-of-life upgrades rather than cosmetic changes. But that same framing shows up as a mild, half-joking complaint just as often: one reviewer calls it "Legends of Amberland 1.1," and several others describe the sequel as feeling like the same game with a new map rather than a meaningfully different experience. This isn't a contradiction in this review's sample so much as a genuinely accurate description from two angles at once — reviewers who wanted the systems refined are satisfied, and reviewers hoping for real reinvention are shrugging rather than disappointed. Combat repetition compounds that observation in the back half of some playthroughs specifically, with more than one reviewer noting the fight-rest loop starts to drag once the early tactical tension of picking battles carefully eases off.

The rare complaint, read in full

With only five negative English reviews on the entire page, this review reads every one. Three are short and low-effort, offering little beyond a general "not for me." The fourth is more useful: a reviewer with just 51 minutes logged describes getting soft-locked into a punishing cycle early on — needing to grind enemies capable of one-shotting them just to earn enough gold to afford revives, which quickly turned frustrating enough to stop playing. It's a single data point rather than a pattern this review's sample corroborates elsewhere, but it's a specific, credible account of an early-game difficulty spike worth flagging for a newcomer picking their starting difficulty carefully.

Final Verdict

Legends of Amberland II: The Song of Trees is exactly what it sets out to be: a competent, affectionate homage to the grid-based dungeon crawlers of decades past, refined meaningfully over its own predecessor without trying to reinvent what it's imitating. Its review base — small, near-unanimous, and read here in full on the negative side — largely agrees on both the strength and the limitation in the same breath: real, welcome quality-of-life improvements wrapped around a formula that plays it safe rather than pushing the genre forward. For fans of Might & Magic, Wizardry and their contemporaries, that's a genuine recommendation. For anyone hoping the sequel would be a bigger leap, this review's own sample suggests tempering that expectation before buying.