[MattCaspermeyer]

Impy - love it!

1) Just like Impy, I totally forgot about the Catacombs because it said come back to this later. I thought that meant that you had to get the map for the place to be able to "come back to it later"! I didn't realize that you could go to Atrixus and get Demons and Demonologists after you returned to Portland. So instead I muddled with Evil Beholders and then added Assassins to my Imps, Scoffer Imps, Blood Prietesses (replacing them with the Assassins when I got them), and Cerberi. This was all during early access at the end of June and it made for a slow start, but I guess that's the way it goes and it was fun playing different troops!

2a) There are a lot of things about the game, actually that I'm not a big fan of, but most of it occurs after you get Dragon Riders. They are:

• I don't think you should be able to go back through to Tristrem and Atrixus until you've visited them. This would mean getting a map for Tristrem and getting to Atrixus through Helvedia (which is strangely how I played). This would prevent the Blackie teleportation exploit to get around guards that are meant to prevent you from getting access to certain troops too early.
• The unit AI is absolutely terrible. Why would a ranged troop target the ArchDemon's Volcano if it is not even in range to hurt them?
• What's the point of amping up the Leadership of the enemy troops if you have a 15% chance of halving a stack with each attack? This ability works incredibly well with mass damage attacks as has been pointed out.
• I kind of got bored with the game once I got Dragon Riders. I felt that most of the fights after that point were pretty much academic and I actually took a week off twice during my 2-month span of finishing the game because I needed a break from it.
• I currently do not like the starting conditions of either Daert or Bagyr compared to Neoline. I'm glad I played Neoline, first, because so far she is the most fun through Whitehill for doing no loss. Daert is so hopelessly underpowered such that you have to get rid of all his troops but the Vampires if you want to try to do no loss and hope for a spell that you don't start with to the save the day for the Shelter, Basement, and Whitehill fights. I actually posted what I think is a great starting troop / spell combination for Daert that is way more fun here. Perhaps it needs more tuning, but it beats creating saves and scanning them with the save game scanner to see if you have a chance at no loss. Bagyr seems to start similarly with a fairly hopeless bunch of units. I'll post more about observations in this regard, later.
• There is one medal (the units that you need to dismiss) that is not possible to get in the game.
• What is the point of not being able to dispel Bleeding, Freezing, Poisoning, or Fire? The Dispel spell is now essentially useless in the game. Bleeding can be removed with Healing, but not if the troop is Magic Immune.
• What is the point of having the above effects causing damage based on the size of the stack? I realize this mechanic has been there since AP, but this causes several thousands of damage when the stacks are big, even with low damage from an attack. I actually have a much better system in my H3B mod where these effects are based on initial damage, then halving each round as the effect wears off. I could cast Dark Clot and use Invisibility to essentially have enemy stacks sitting their doing nothing as the cold just ate away at their health causing several thousand hitpoints of damage to each stack based on how many units were in their stack.
• Most of the enemy heroes in the game are terrible. Their only utility is in amping the experience return from the enemy troop complement so that I can level up more quickly. Anyone who's played my H3B mod knows that the hero fights in that mod are some of the most challenging of any of the KB games because I actually devised a system for their abilities and bonuses that give them unique abilities.
• The improvement quests are really lame. +1 point to a statistic and only for that race? They should be to all dark races and neutrals and the attack, defense, and krit should be a lot bigger bonuses. As it stands, the only one mildly useful is the res all and it is barely helpful for only one race.
• The two shelter units from the circus guy are completed too late to be of any use. They also seem like they are not very good units and I never even tried any of them because of this.
• Some of the areas seem mysteriously incomplete. Whitehill has been mentioned, although this does seem okay to me. But Aralan also seems a bit sparse (there's only a couple of troops on the whole island, although a lot more do appear over the course of going through the quests there). Okkerland seems like there is not much there, either.
• Some of the quests are not possible to complete since spell scrolls are not guaranteed at the shops.
• I could probably continue, but these are my biggest gripes. Overall, I do like the game more than WotN (I do have I&F, but haven't played it, yet).

2b) Even though Impy didn't list this, I think it is only fair to list what you like about the game, so here is what I like:

• ArchDemons after so many iterations finally kick major bottom!
• Dragon Riders are awesome!
• I kind of have a love / hate relationship with the above 2 units since once you get them, the game is essentially over, but I do enjoy their abilities.
• 3 Different starting characters with a converging story. I really enjoy that!
• Sexy Neoline walking around half naked through the entire game! I thought that it was hilarious that someone posted that their wife didn't like that and he changed her to Bagyr on the map!
• We finally get to be bad! I think it's also hilarious that someone said they wouldn't play the game because they don't play evil due to their religious beliefs.
• There are some fun and interesting new spells such as Empathy, Chaos Breath, Time Shift, and Hex.
• I love that Kamikaze now works on enemy troops (well I guess this change occurred in WotN) as the spell is now more useful!
• I like that we have more Demon troops like the Elementals and Blood Priestesses (although the Elementals are kind of useless).
• I like more female troops! Here's to the aforementioned Blood Priestesses and Female Vampires, Amazons, Novices, and dark variants of the Elven female troops! Now if we can only find that elusive female Dwarven troop!
• I love the dark variants of the Human, Dwarven, and Elven troops! I think WotN would have been a lot better if you had to fight some Undead variants of these troops as it would have broken up the monotony of that game. There does need to be some differentiation of their abilities from their light variants where warranted, though. Also I think light troops such as Priests, etc. should be raised as their dark variants.
• For the most part, I really enjoy a lot of the skills in the game. I think it was a great idea to add +Mana to the Spell School skills as I had often considered that in my modding.
• Even though some of the quests are the boring go here, go there, etc. for the most part the quests are interesting and I really enjoy the "you have to figure some things out for yourself" part.

3) My name is basically my forum name: Matt Caspermeyer, I am 45 years old and live in Phoenix, Arizona and am an avid hiker and mountain biker as well as modder. I previously created a mod, Hyperion, for the Emperor of the Fading Suns game and you can tell from my H3B mod that I created for The Legend that I used to love playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and was a big fan of the heroes in that game. As a whole, I do enjoy both turn-based and real-time strategy games such as StarCraft, Sins of a Solar Empire, King's Bounty, Diablo, and Majesty to name a few. My favorite game of all time is Star Control II. I do have a keen eye to inconsistencies in games when I play them and if they are too great then I get bitten by the modding bug! Does that make me a little like Spider-Man?

4) To Impy's Ball of Lightning - doesn't it just look like the Pet Ability in AP / CW? I wonder if there will be a King's Bounty - Light Side as a sequel to this game. Hmmm...

Well, now someone else's turn!

/C\/C\