[Zechnophobe]

What advances have been made from KBTL?

Having compared KB in general to other games, how has the game progressed lately. I'll also throw in a little bit on my expectations based on the gift bag, and upcoming content pack.

The biggest difference between The Legend, and Armored Princess, is in the map flow structure. TL was, for a large part of the game, quite linear. In order to advance to new areas, you would need to do certain quests. And almost all of those require significant combats of one sort or another (or potentially large money expenditures). AP uses a significantly softer model, wherein you can approach the content in a more dynamic order, providing you can get the navigational maps to new areas. While the 'big fights' for these nav maps is similar to the older system of quest completion, they are a lot more varied, and sometimes unprotected maps can be found giving you fun chances to go to a much higher level area.

In general, this feels like a much better system. It gives more variety to the troops you can have, as well as letting you spend more time perfecting an army before being forced to use it. There however, is a noticeable balance issue, in that the higher level islands, and gaining access to them, can very very quickly make lower level ones feel trivial. Ultimately this makes one of the strongest strategies to be to unlock as many islands as possible, and then strip them of available resources (Flags, gold, items, spells, troops, etc).

The second overarching change is the number of shops in the game. You may not have really appreciated this when playing through, but if you go back and play TL it will become quickly apparent. AP has, for instance, more than 20 shops in Verona. Even Bolo, a small island, has 6. This means you get to see more items in each play through, and have more troops and spell variety. In the same vein, there are more item sets in the game, so finding items in shops is also more exciting.

Once again, this is a generally good thing, but it does end up making the game a bit more uniform. I like that you can actually COMPLETE item sets now, but I am less fond that most of the lower level items are all but guaranteed during a run through.

The addition of Achievements to the game is the bright sparkling modification that I think is the most obviously good addition. Role playing games are defined by their reward systems, and this is a good one. Unlike so many other games where achievements are just random things to pick up, the ones in AP are actually important to your character development. They add another progress bar (10 of them, actually) for you to be pleased about when it fills, and also give some strategic options to the game. I think in the future more achievements like the Trapper achievement (that functionally change play, instead of adding stats) would be interesting. Focus on traps, and your combats run a bit different!

Dragon vs Rage Spirits is actually not much to talk about. The systems end up surprisingly similar. THe main difference is that the dragon abilities are almost all very useful. Even end game, the Crushing Blow has a specific strategic effect. This is a step in the right direction, even if the concept of rage has changed much. The only other point here to make, is that Rage no longer contributes to critical hit damage, which I think is a mistake. I think raw rage value adding to crit hit damage would be a good system. I'd also like to see a little more play between the percentage and fixed value mechanics with rage. More in part 3.

Lastly is the leveling up system, which now is a lot lighter, and focuses more on the skill tree. You only get leadership and runes when you level up, which I think is better. You then put those runes into skills, and those skills can give you stat points. The system is just more elegant this way, and doesn't have random level based things to worry about (Getting leadership early level is a waste compared to late level where it is imperative).

The only thing that still feels missing from the level up system, is leadership. Right now the game's three classes (Mage, Paladin, Warrior) have only two different focuses (Spells, nothing, Rage). The paladin is really trying to be a synthesis of the other two, instead of being specifically GOOD at something. Even his 'ultimate' skill ends up feeling pointless (especially for no-loss players). As an aside, I propose that in the same way the Warrior gets little bits of extra attack and rage for some of his skills, and the mage gets mana and int, why not get the paladin leadership and defense?


Short Version

Mostly better than its predacessor, but map jumping a little unbalanced, and you may get too many items compared to the size of item pool. Achievements are awesome, and so is new level up system. Dragon a bit better than rage spirits.