Players feedback/reviews

[ArkhanTheBlack]

I agree for the most parts. I'd also say that the music is top-notch.

I'm not sure if I agree on everything balancing-wise, but I also think that the randomness of units and spells could be improved.

In my first game I got a lot of undead stuff like black knights, cursed ghosts and sacrifice very early, but since I made some bad decisions (my first game!), I decided to restart on hard and focus on playing a 'Necromancer'. Unfortunately, the game seems to have other plans with my character and I now find the whole 'greater peace' equipment like phoenix spells, unicorns(!!!), etc. I neither got black knights nor cursed ghosts and it was even necessary to send the furious Paladin to the undead afterlife to get access to a bunch of simple skeletons. However, I can't even fill half of my LD with them, so they are pointless anyway. The only undead unit with some reserves are zombies. I also have access to basic ghosts, but on hard difficulty they are very problematic, since they attack my army as soon as I loose control over them. And without sacrifice, my limited vampires and skeleton archers from some coffins are pretty much pointless. My whole treasure, about 150 decaying zombies, also won't last very long without sacrifice. I also never got inquistors to ressurect, although I don't even know if it's possible to ressurect undead. I never got the spell, and in my first game the Inquisitors died very fast since I didn't know their value at that time.

I think it should be possible to get decent amounts of basic units for several ways of playing the game. For example, solving the Paladin quest in the 'undead' way offers the basic undead units like skeletons, zombies and skeleton archers in usable numbers.
On the other side, I get some great units far too often. I have access to ~200 bears, but the druid runs an assembly line of almost 2000 ancient bears, WTH?!? I can get only about 400 swamp snakes, but it's not a problem to get 1000+ royal snakes in both my games, which are pretty much the best unit in the game.
I think the basic units of a certain type (undead, snake, spider, etc.) should be always available in decent numbers, maybe even bound to xor quest types (either one or the other...). The special types of a certain kind of creature like royal snakes, ancient bears, fire spiders, decaying zombies, cursed ghosts, etc. should be randomized bonus units.

Some spells should also be not randomized. Ressurection is okay since the Paladin has it as home spell, but sacrifice is a bit too important to be just randomized. All mini stacks of great units are pretty much dependent on this spell. Though, I'd agree that sacrifice should not necessarily be available in the early game (= 1st isle). Another solution could be a time or progress dependent 'grow' of creatures in a HOMM way, with maybe a max amount available at a certain time.

For a King's Bounty 2 I'd love to get prestige classes like Necromancer, Druid, etc. with a home castle...

There should also be a way to get rid of money. Maybe a buy random creature/item with a chance of a rare in a Diablo way.

[Vilk]

I agree with your suggestion to improve some random aspects. But in fact it seems you haven't yet take in count the time element which is major for the final score.

[OGKingsBounty92]

I love most of the game but THEY HAVE TO FIX THE PATHETIC RANDOM ITEMS AND WEAPON GARBAGE!

Screw the random crap, let me buy what "I" want to buy so I can plan which units to go with. What is this garbage of having a set of items and weapons (to look forward to), reading in the descriptions ALL the great benefits..to find out you can only get 2-3 of the entire set..WTF is that?

FIX IT dammit! Or someone come up with a trainer, cheat or mod to get ALL the items we want if we want a certain set etc.

Rest of the game is exellent.

[Metathron]

I love the randomness, it's one of the main reasons I've played the game 5 times through, and am now playing my 6th game as paladin on impossible.

[Vilk]

The random is quite complicate problem, I think ArkhanTheBlack suggestions about this are good and won't break game diversity and in fact some will help by offering you more units choices.

Also it's right that there's a set problem. For small set that's ok but for large sets like the knight sets, it's almost impossible to get them. But yes some random are also a point of the game.

[DigitalForm]

Great Game except for the problem with the randomness as stated before. I started a Paladin and Mage at the same time and played with both to see the differences. The Paladin got the short end of the stick for sure. Items that didn't help, low on cash from constantly hiring regardless of the Paladin skills for money.

Options are always better than restrictions. Have everything available but have them in random locations and for random costs. Not completing a set is disappointing. The random objects/pickups could be weighted towards the players class a bit too to be more useful.

This game has terrible flow:
Move - Stop - Too Strong - Go a different way - Stop - Dead End - Read Quest - Can't go that way because the enemies are too strong - Read another quest - Try that route hoping to not find too strong of enemies.

Starting characters have less tools to work with which should be kept in mind (which it isn't). The quests should be in a general area where progress can me sustained in a smooth manner. This game is better than HOMM V in my opinion but at least I made constant progress in HOMM.

Can we get a patch to smooth things out? I will hold off on the expansion even though it plays different but with the same basics like it sounds.

[OGKingsBounty92]

Originally Posted by DigitalForm

Great Game except for the problem with the randomness as stated before. I started a Paladin and Mage at the same time and played with both to see the differences. The Paladin got the short end of the stick for sure. Items that didn't help, low on cash from constantly hiring regardless of the Paladin skills for money.

Options are always better than restrictions. Have everything available but have them in random locations and for random costs. Not completing a set is disappointing. The random objects/pickups could be weighted towards the players class a bit too to be more useful.

This game has terrible flow:
Move - Stop - Too Strong - Go a different way - Stop - Dead End - Read Quest - Can't go that way because the enemies are too strong - Read another quest - Try that route hoping to not find too strong of enemies.

Starting characters have less tools to work with which should be kept in mind (which it isn't). The quests should be in a general area where progress can me sustained in a smooth manner. This game is better than HOMM V in my opinion but at least I made constant progress in HOMM.

Can we get a patch to smooth things out? I will hold off on the expansion even though it plays different but with the same basics like it sounds.

I'm not even thinking about the expansion or buying it until they fix the random and item imbalance in this game.

I just stopped playing it last week going with undead because I couldn't find the vampire items and the Elven Bow for the skeleton archers..I just said screw it and stopped playing. It's freaking annoying KNOWING there's some items there but you just can't have them.

[Vilk]

Originally Posted by DigitalForm

This game has terrible flow:
Move - Stop - Too Strong - Go a different way - Stop - Dead End - Read Quest - Can't go that way because the enemies are too strong - Read another quest - Try that route hoping to not find too strong of enemies.

Starting characters have less tools to work with which should be kept in mind (which it isn't). The quests should be in a general area where progress can me sustained in a smooth manner. This game is better than HOMM V in my opinion but at least I made constant progress in HOMM.

I saw that more like making you search the best path. For me the problem with that is more that this doesn't match the importance of time in the final record. A too obvious path could be a little tedious but having a non direct path and well setup can be difficult with random factor. I think the goal was to make the player have to dodge some rude enemy to add some diversity.