Thoughts on coming back to King's Bounty

[Zhuangzi]

I was lucky enough to hear about King's Bounty at the ideal time, just before the release of The Legend in 2008. I remember downloading the demo (which only allowed you to play through Greenwort) and playing that at least 5-6 times. Then when the game was released, I completed the campaign five times within a few months, which added up to more than 300 hours of game play. Twice on hard, three times on impossible (I still have the save files).

When I was waiting for Armored Princess to come out, I discovered that the game was already out in Russian, so I ended up downloading that. You wouldn't think you could play a game through to completion in a language you don't read, but I played the AP campaign through to the end on medium in Russian. True story :) Then I bought AP when it came out in English and I must have completed that at least three times. AP was the best KB game for me. Even though I liked TL, I preferred the shorter campaign in AP and the increased number of levels (50) for the smaller number of fights (about 300). AP is also much more non-linear than TL. I got into the 'no losses' craze in AP and managed to complete all three classes with no losses on Impossible, but that did get tedious eventually. It's really just Paladin + Phantom x infinity when you get down to it. :-P

Crossworlds was okay, but because I'd played AP so much I couldn't be bothered playing Orcs of the Marsh (which is 90% the same as the AP campaign). The other short campaigns were nice but I couldn't help but feel we'd been a little short changed. I think there must have been at least a year or perhaps two between Crossworlds and Warriors of the North, and I stopped playing KB altogether during this time. Warriors of the North turned out to be a big disappointment to me and I only played it once through (93 hours according to Steam just for one play through!). The campaign was long and tedious, the quests dull and the locations the same as in The Legend.

Another year went past and I didn't expect to play KB again, at least not until a new game came out. Recently I tried the free KB: Legions and was utterly horrified at the new low that KB had sunk to. I played the game for about 20 mins then uninstalled. But I had six weeks off of work recently so I got out my TL DVD and re-installed it. To my surprise, I found that I really liked the Darion component of the campaign. Those first four areas were the best in that game, in my opinion. Freedom Islands was okay but somewhat grinding, and I ended up getting bored by the beginning of the Kordar section. The problem with TL now is the huge number of fights (500+) and the small number of levels (30), making the game very grinding. Plus there's no medals and the rune trees aren't as good as they were in later games, making the game ultimately a bit tedious. Despite this, I felt strongly that the quest design and level design was much better in TL than in the later games (especially when compared to WoTN). For example, Marshan Swamp, the location we were so disappointed not to be able to play through in WoTN, is very well designed and fun to play through.

So then I heard that a new WoTN expansion was coming (more than a year after the initial game) and like others here I was very skeptical. I was having fun at that time with TL and I didn't want to grind through WoTN again just to play another 20 hours of content. But the DLC came out and it was only $9 on steam and I thought 'what the hell?' I'm glad I got it. I've only just completed Nordlig now but I liked the new creature xp concept and some of the new units like the Mystic. So far I think they have definitely improved on the original WoTN, but we'll see...

So there you have it, my thoughts on the series. I still think AP is the best overall campaign (not too grinding, quite non-linear, varied units) whereas TL had the best attention to detail and level design. WoTN, I think we can all agree, was inferior to either TL or AP, but I'm hopeful that with the later refinements to the series (improved rune trees, medals, spells, and now creature xp) the Ice and Fire expansion might be worthwhile after all. I bought TL once, AP twice, CW once, WoTN once and Ice and Fire once and overall they were the best gaming purchases I ever made. I expect I've played a combined total of around 1000 hours of King's Bounty... :cool:

[sethmage]

Just to put some numbers here:

The original WotN had 150 fights possible (not counting upgrades and suppressions) before Spider, with Fire and Ice (I wonder if that is referral to Game of Thrones books?) it’s 132.

[impy]

Thoughts on coming back to KB?

I never finished original WOTN, and that is a strong statement from person who spent countless hours playing former KB. Unless I hear from people like DG Dobrev, CKDamascus, FattShade and other dinosaurs of the forums it is worth it, I will not touch the DLC even if it was free. Saaad.

[travelingoz]

Yep, I'm the same as Impy. Wotn was just too buggy and the game breaking bugs requiring a restart just seemed to be never-ending! :evil:
So, i too would like to hear from some more 'old hands' b4 i consider re-installing and purchasing the new DLC.

[camelotcrusade]

In that case, definitely give them some time to fix the bugs we're finding first. Just today I heard back from 1C support and I'm corresponding with them on my bug report. Hopefully this will result in a decent list of fixes.

Once those are ironed out it will be a matter of whether you like the new style of game play or not. It's not worlds apart from the first version, so if you disliked it strongly then stay away because you're not getting a new game. That said, I think the changes make it more interesting and also easier (which some players, not necessarily you grognards, will appreciate). Playing a game myself and comparing it to my friend's game has shown me just how different your start can be depending on your supply of level 4's -- which is a key feature it wasn't leveraging in the original early game.

A new downside is that without your flying horse the fedex quests are especially aggravating as sometimes "go here, report back, repeat" is a long ways away.

[Zhuangzi]

Yep, I'm the same as Impy. Wotn was just too buggy and the game breaking bugs requiring a restart just seemed to be never-ending! :evil:
So, i too would like to hear from some more 'old hands' b4 i consider re-installing and purchasing the new DLC.

I am enjoying the game to some extent, but it's still no AP/CW.

[BB Shockwave]

Five times in a few months? It always amazes me how fast some people can play... or how much time they have. I usually only get home around 18:00 after work, and barely have time to play 1-2 hours apart from weekends, plus playing KB no-loss is arduous - you have to redo battles every once in a while - so playing the games just once took me many months. I have played the Legend with all three classes (using different army setups), and AP/Crossworlds about 4 times, but it was a long process (am still finishing my CW gameplay with Mage/Demons).

But yeah, I recall how I replayed the demo over and over again when that was released. :D KB has taken the place as my favourite TBS for me - granted it lacks the major overworld strategy aspect of HOMM, but in the tactical battles part it outclasses the newest HOMM games. Especially after the disappointment that franchise has turned into ever since Ubi has taken over.

And yeah, I also played AP first in russian... found out you can easily put the text files in Google Translate and copy them back, and understand things despite the mangled english. :D

With the Legend, on my playthrough as a Mage I decided to go "Necromancer" and have an all-undead army. This was not easy until I got to the Elven lands, but you can get by surprisingly well with the lower level undead units + werewolves too. I ended up creating a new spell with a mod to reanimate undead troops like in HOMMIII, though, to make no-loss possible.

Thoughts on coming back to KB?

I never finished original WOTN, and that is a strong statement from person who spent countless hours playing former KB. Unless I hear from people like DG Dobrev, CKDamascus, FattShade and other dinosaurs of the forums it is worth it, I will not touch the DLC even if it was free. Saaad.

Same here. I put together a nice army (Jotuns, Ice dragons, viking units) by the time I stopped playing, but I still stopped because the bugs were annoying - the only valkyrie I found had an ability that did not work due to bugs (Christa's gift), many spells and skills crashed the game or did not work at all, or not properly, and overall the main problem was the "boringness" of the levels - none of the funny quests or clever maps of the other KB games was there. I played for 3 weeks maybe, trying to make myself to like the game, then gave up - and I rarely do that, mostly I finish all games I start (eventually, it might take years).

[Zhuangzi]

Five times in a few months? It always amazes me how fast some people can play... or how much time they have. I usually only get home around 18:00 after work, and barely have time to play 1-2 hours apart from weekends, plus playing KB no-loss is arduous - you have to redo battles every once in a while - so playing the games just once took me many months. I have played the Legend with all three classes (using different army setups), and AP/Crossworlds about 4 times, but it was a long process (am still finishing my CW gameplay with Mage/Demons).

But yeah, I recall how I replayed the demo over and over again when that was released. :D KB has taken the place as my favourite TBS for me - granted it lacks the major overworld strategy aspect of HOMM, but in the tactical battles part it outclasses the newest HOMM games. Especially after the disappointment that franchise has turned into ever since Ubi has taken over.

And yeah, I also played AP first in russian... found out you can easily put the text files in Google Translate and copy them back, and understand things despite the mangled english. :D

With the Legend, on my playthrough as a Mage I decided to go "Necromancer" and have an all-undead army. This was not easy until I got to the Elven lands, but you can get by surprisingly well with the lower level undead units + werewolves too. I ended up creating a new spell with a mod to reanimate undead troops like in HOMMIII, though, to make no-loss possible.



Same here. I put together a nice army (Jotuns, Ice dragons, viking units) by the time I stopped playing, but I still stopped because the bugs were annoying - the only valkyrie I found had an ability that did not work due to bugs (Christa's gift), many spells and skills crashed the game or did not work at all, or not properly, and overall the main problem was the "boringness" of the levels - none of the funny quests or clever maps of the other KB games was there. I played for 3 weeks maybe, trying to make myself to like the game, then gave up - and I rarely do that, mostly I finish all games I start (eventually, it might take years).

Yeah, five play throughs of TL was pretty crazy. 300 hours in maybe 3-4 months. Something like that. I wasn't playing no-losses on TL though. I found no losses much easier in AP with the Paladin + Phantom trick, and again in WoTN I found it too hard (those bosses on the first island) so I gave up on that forever.

[Zhuangzi]

It's worth repeating that although KB might not be perfect, and while sadly there's been little improvement since Armored Princess came out in 2009 (?), KB has the best turn based tactical battle system I've ever played. I also enjoy the general idea of the real time strategic layer with no castle management required. KB might not make a lot of sense in many ways (I have to run around picking up flags so that I can recruit more soldiers to my team? Okaaay) but it's always been fun.

I was never a fan of HoMM (never played HoMM III that people always say is the best) but I tried HoMM V a few years ago and didn't like it. 3-4 months ago I tried HoMM VI when it was on a Steam special and I actually played about 50 hours of it. At first I thought it was reasonable but after a while I got tired of the tedious castle management and the repetitive enemy hero attacks on my cities and resources. Worse, I soon realised that I'd basically be using the EXACT SAME troops in every battle and the exact same spells. It's just grind, grind, grind away forever. I finished the first campaign and then re-installed KB The Legend. I won't be going back to HoMM VI.

Unfortunately, the WoTN campaign has some similarities in that in the initial islands we seem to be fighting 90% undead troops, which gets boring. Worse, I'm practically forced to use Viking units. Don't get me wrong, the Vikings are okay (I especially like the Mystic) but how about some diversity? I'm level 9 and up to the start of Istering now. I'm a mage so the stacks are listed as Very Hard or Deadly. That's okay, I can deal with that, but I'll have to keep going back to Vestlig to replenish my troops just so I can grind my way through Istering, which is a very linear island. Why, why, why did the devs construct the WoTN campaign like this? Compare this to the fun you have in The Legend in the first four areas (before Freedom Islands) and you can see the problem.

Future KB games, if there's ever going to be more, need to learn this lesson. We want options and diversity, dammit!

[impy]

You MUST give HMM3 a try, you MUST. I actually play it a bit these days, (map Uprising) I still got my original scratched discs. Get yourself Heroes 3 Complete and play at least Shadow of Death Camapign to get a feel.

[MattCaspermeyer]

I did not play the original King's Bounty, but did play HoMM1-3 and I have never played HoMM4-6.

I think my brother got me HoMM4&5 on GoG, but I have not even tried to play them, yet.

The first HoMM trilogy is just fun and awesome with 3 being the pinnacle of the series! 4 changed things to be quite a bit different from 3 and so I'm not surprised you didn't care for 4 because it turned a lot of people away from the series.

I enjoyed 3 so much that when I played King's Bounty - The Legend (my favorite in the series) that I created a whole mod (HoMM3 Babies) to weave aspects of it into King's Bounty.

The hero system was so rich - each hero had their own brief story (I alluded to some aspects of their story with keywords when you look at their description in my mod) and naturally you develop your favorites (kind of like playing Warrax in Master of Magic for those who played that game) and you hope you can recruit them instead of the computer.

With King's Bounty, the graphics are simply gorgeous and the hexagonal-based gameplay for me is an optimization problem with respect to minimizing losses. That's why I find it so addictive. Plus, with my mod and TL there is a desire to get a wife and see what HoMM3 heroes you and your wife will have so I find that as long as there are mini goals (like 10 battles to your next child or getting one of those artifacts that give you runes after 50 fights or the medals somewhat) then that helps reduce the grinding feel.

I think it has been widely discussed that the WotN battles were too much Undead. I hope I&F has changed this because once I got to the Dwarven area and had to fight more Undead I was really tired of fighting The Undead at that point and didn't want to fight them any more. I ended up finishing WotN, but I went weeks without playing it before I'd come back and slog through more Undead battles and will probably not play it again until I (if ever) mod it. I&F gives me some hope, but one thing I've learned (I was late playing TL - 2 years after it came out) is that you have to wait 6 months to a year after a new KB game comes out for it to be playable because they are so buggy. As a modder, I know how hard it is to squish bugs because I still find bugs in my HoMM3 Babies mod to this day so you really have to be on top of going through your code and checking it to ensure that you've covered all different scenarios and sometimes it's not practical to imagine all the different ways this spell or that ability may be used.

WotN should have been Undead Vikings, Undead Humans, Undead Elves, Undead Dwarves, etc. so that each race had their Undead variant (like Red Sands' Undead Lizards) so that when you went into the area you were facing Undead variants of the normal units. This would have made it much more fun, because playing the whole game against the Undead was tiresome. But if I would have had to fight Undead Peasants, Bowmen, Swordsmen, Priests, Miners, Dwarves, Giants, Sprites, Fairies, Dryads, Ents (think Tree of Death in TL), Wolves, Black Dragons, etc., etc. you can see how varied and awesome a game it could have been. That would have been a neat way to dramatically increase the number of units with very minor changes to their appearance (plus I bet the developers would have had a lot of fun making different units into Undead variants) and it would have been fun thinking of anti-talents (imagine Undead Inquisitors with Rage Drain).

AP / CW were fun because you got to fight varied enemies throughout the entire game as has been mentioned and TL is the same way and so I think the point is that it is okay to have a theme (i.e. Undead), but you've got to carry out that theme such that the game still has variety of battles - especially if there are 500 of them!

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

@impy s for your advice for Zhuangzi to try out HoMM3, it`s hard in today time for some1 to accept game that old and passed over in every aspect by modern standards. I was and still am fan of that series but only play it 2-3/year when arrange internet play with some friends, and almost never finish it because each one is time consuming.

@Matt Nice ideas for undead parallels for each race to play in WotN, but your comment that developer wold have fun making undead elves (Drow`s) undead dwarves etc you forgot that this game was made with least possible effort for highest achiavable gold coins inflow. Proof for this is easy to find in many game mechanics that were 100% functional in the Legend and Ap/Cw but didnt work in WotN. Only possible explanation is that devs were lazy to even copy/paste old functional game files, but instead made their own halfassed not-functional.
Release of Ice&Fire before full working WotN, only shows that certain developing studios want to drain last possible drop of profit from this franchise before throwing it in trash :-(
Their selling points for this DLS were :
1) NEW creature skill system
2) NEW Necro lizards
3) Over 20 NEW creatures
4) NEW items
All this is over 3 years old news from Red sands mod, and they sell it for 9,99 as NEW ???
Play 100 hours of old material to have 20% of new locations.

This Ice&Fire is NOT EXPANSION, it`s simply mod for WotN. And they charge for it. In that case every moder should ask some % of price as compensation for their own work done from love toward this game and not profit.
I deleted WotN before finishing it, and i think i never will so i`m not fammiliar for size of I&F dls, but Red sands mod had 160MB installation, and 350MB of working files and it was FREE no charge and had all this material in it (new race, locations, items, creature skill system and more) 3 YEARS AGO. 3 years is ancient in digital era, and they had nerve to sell it as NEW. Pardon me but what a load of s..t.
I`m not impressed and am sorry to see great game as Kings Bounty butchered by bad decisions from developers :-(

[travelingoz]

In that case, definitely give them some time to fix the bugs we're finding first. Just today I heard back from 1C support and I'm corresponding with them on my bug report. Hopefully this will result in a decent list of fixes.

Once those are ironed out it will be a matter of whether you like the new style of game play or not. It's not worlds apart from the first version, so if you disliked it strongly then stay away because you're not getting a new game. That said, I think the changes make it more interesting and also easier (which some players, not necessarily you grognards, will appreciate). Playing a game myself and comparing it to my friend's game has shown me just how different your start can be depending on your supply of level 4's -- which is a key feature it wasn't leveraging in the original early game.

A new downside is that without your flying horse the fedex quests are especially aggravating as sometimes "go here, report back, repeat" is a long ways away.

Gameplay was never the problem. The rage that comes after the joy of finding super cool/rare artifacts/units/spells early in the game (you all know the kinda stuff i'm talking about!;)), then coming across a game breaking bug that required a restart and never finding those items again :x was what killed it for me. :(

[Zhuangzi]

Sigh. Up to level 13 in Ice and Fire now and I am getting frustrated, sadly. The game is JUST fun enough for me to play, but only because I'm cruising through pretty easily on Impossible Mage. Not no losses.

The main problem of WoTN, tedium, is NOT fixed in the early stages of Ice and Fire. Nordlig is actually quite fun but Vestlig not so much and Fastland is even worse. Fastland is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with WoTN. The island is almost completely linear and without a flying horse you basically just have to grind your way through it. Then when you're finished with that you can start grinding your way through Istering. Oh, and all the enemy stacks are undead. WTF!

To make matters even more frustrating, I'm finding it hard to find more supplies of certain high level troops, such as Warrior Maidens and Mystics. I'm nearly out of Soothsayers too. I thought I was going to have to use Slingers until I found more Berserkers. The creature xp system is good, but of course it rewards you for using the same units over and over. For some reason the Berserkers seem to level up faster than the other Viking units.

A team of Berserkers, Vikings, Soothsayers, Jarls and Mystics or Warrior Maidens is a fine team, but why must I use the exact same units for 93 fights now? Against the exact same enemies? Christ.

[Darkeonz]

Oh god I regret buying the DLC. While it improved warriors of the north a little bit, it just wasn't enough. I am level 43 now and the main land from legend is repopulated once again and I have to fight my way through it, once again!! I forgot this would happen.

I mean not only did they reuse the land from King's Bounty legend, but they actually went ahead and reused it TWICE!!!! I mean jesus christ it is lazy.

[Zhuangzi]

Oh god I regret buying the DLC. While it improved warriors of the north a little bit, it just wasn't enough. I am level 43 now and the main land from legend is repopulated once again and I have to fight my way through it, once again!! I forgot this would happen.

I mean not only did they reuse the land from King's Bounty legend, but they actually went ahead and reused it TWICE!!!! I mean jesus christ it is lazy.

Crap, I really don't think I can bothered with this. I'm level 17, just up to being back in Greenwort. I mean, the Viking lands aren't the best but at least they were new areas in WoTN. Being back in Darion just...sucks. Greenwort was SO much fun in TL (and I've replayed it recently so I remember) and now it's just utter fail in WoTN. Really, what were the devs thinking in making all the enemies undead? So boring, so dull. Greenwort is raped, the magic tower broken, and I can't help but feel like that's what WoTN did to KB as well :(

[KarlosCV]

The creature xp system is good, but of course it rewards you for using the same units over and over....why must I use the exact same units for 93 fights now? Against the exact same enemies? Christ.

I think you rebutted yourself here :)

I personally strongly dislike the unit levelling system precisely because it nudges you to use the same units over and over again.

Btw maxed out Slingers are beastly but then you want to try something else, replace them with the new Scouts or Avengers and OMG, it seems the new shooters aren't doing any damage at all. Or you run out of the amazing Jarls and it takes about 50 fights before you get your Knights or Horsemen on the same level of dmg output.

On the plus side, they did solve the worst tedium - i.e. on the Nordling island. Yes the following islands are still bad but it wasn't that big a problem for me anymore.

And the new Ice Gardens island is quite interesting, although buggy and crashes a lot.

But on the whole, this is my second and last playthrough of WotN and in the future I'll only replay TL and CW.