In the next 12 hours KBWOTN is 50% off on steam

[hippo]

Looking at this reduced price those who bought game for full price made a business of theirs lives
Don't buy yet,wait for 75% price for this bugged game.

[Onir303]

Originally Posted by hippo

Looking at this reduced price those who bought game for full price made a business of theirs lives
Don't buy yet,wait for 75% price for this bugged game.

Hummm... I bought the game, and I must say that I must agree. Even at 15$, this still feel expensive. I saw plenty of visual glitches playing only 1 hour. There is no voice acting. Only text. And there are plenty of spelling mistakes. Even when you select your Hero. On one of them, it is written "Raget" instead of "Rage". Plus, on my resolution (1902x1080), there seems to be too much space between some words. Something seems off.

In the end, this title feels rushed. It's sad since it brings nothing new to King's Bounty. Same game, same engine, same everything. Don't get me wrong. It's a good game, but it could have been much better.

[Zhuangzi]

Originally Posted by Onir303

Hummm... I bought the game, and I must say that I must agree. Even at 15$, this still feel expensive. I saw plenty of visual glitches playing only 1 hour. There is no voice acting. Only text. And there are plenty of spelling mistakes. Even when you select your Hero. On one of them, it is written "Raget" instead of "Rage". Plus, on my resolution (1902x1080), there seems to be too much space between some words. Something seems off.

In the end, this title feels rushed. It's sad since it brings nothing new to King's Bounty. Same game, same engine, same everything. Don't get me wrong. It's a good game, but it could have been much better.

Well, there's never been any voice acting in KB, so nothing new there. Unfortunately the bugs in the text are not new either. These are cosmetic issues only though. Katauri should have hired one of us to proofread their text for them. I expect we would have done it for a free copy of the game...

[LegendMaker]

Originally Posted by Onir303

In the end, this title feels rushed. It's sad since it brings nothing new to King's Bounty. Same game, same engine, same everything. Don't get me wrong. It's a good game, but it could have been much better.

Yes, and same maps, for most of the game. It goes beyond that, too: many NPC and Heroes use the exact same art as other characters from the previous games, bosses are copy-paste... Everything is copy-paste, and what little new elements are there (mainly the Viking race) is still half-recycled (berserker and viking units, the soothsayer is a reworked druid, slingers are freaking halflings, and ice dragons and spiders... not exactly new either). And don't even get me started on the storyline and the hero's background: Armored Princess' wasn't as strong or well thought-out as The Legend, but this one is just generic. Instead of having a cohesive universe and a hero with a mission, we get a generic knock-off of the existing human faction, and a hero who's just walking around and happens to take in quests as he finds them, just because. No real purpose or concept, there.

This is by far the weakest episode in the series so far. Although sure, it's still enjoyable (bugs aside), it's freaking King's Bounty, after all; but it's still really disappointing that it's such a half-baked rehash of previous episodes. Even Crossworlds, which wasn't officially a new game but just an add-on of AP, had way more new content to offer.

[ckdamascus]

Originally Posted by LegendMaker

Yes, and same maps, for most of the game. It goes beyond that, too: many NPC and Heroes use the exact same art as other characters from the previous games, bosses are copy-paste... Everything is copy-paste, and what little new elements are there (mainly the Viking race) is still half-recycled (berserker and viking units, the soothsayer is a reworked druid, slingers are freaking halflings, and ice dragons and spiders... not exactly new either). And don't even get me started on the storyline and the hero's background: Armored Princess' wasn't as strong or well thought-out as The Legend, but this one is just generic. Instead of having a cohesive universe and a hero with a mission, we get a generic knock-off of the existing human faction, and a hero who's just walking around and happens to take in quests as he finds them, just because. No real purpose or concept, there.

This is by far the weakest episode in the series so far. Although sure, it's still enjoyable (bugs aside), it's freaking King's Bounty, after all; but it's still really disappointing that it's such a half-baked rehash of previous episodes. Even Crossworlds, which wasn't officially a new game but just an add-on of AP, had way more new content to offer.

As an avid player of Crossworlds, I'd say this offering does have a bit of differences.

Warriors of the North (WotN)'s Ice Dragon and Rune Mage are completely different than Crossworlds.

Viking (as a race) synergy is a bit different and there are different strategies to be explored here since they did make some balance changes (ignoring the broken ones right now).

It is sort of funny since a lot of people said "Crossworlds" was just like Armored Princess. However, for those who played the game ... perhaps too much, they could see some serious differences.

My observations so far

Viking/Warrior -- king of critical damage thanks to Absolute Rage skill. Get him to 100% critical chance and max absolute rage, and he should out perform every class. This is begging to be used with the 100% shooter build and the random generator seems to favor for it too.

Skald/Paladin -- No idea. The songs seem interesting, but they only last 3 rounds? This was a fairly big change though compared to the others. I didn't play it in depth yet though.

Soothsayer/Mage -- now Super Stacks might be viable since buff duration has increased dramatically and there is the "timeless" spell that lets you increase buff duration even more. Spells can now score critical hits (including fire/cold/poison ticks) so this can make for some interesting strategies on whittling down "invincible" stacks.

Other units are more viable now. I mean, I'm not sure what else you expected. It is King's Bounty. After a while, it will all look the same on a very high level.

I agree the bugs are disturbing. I normally use Pygmy, but because it is currently broken, I don't want to. Bleh.

[LegendMaker]

Now, don't get me wrong: Crossworlds was a fantastic bit of fresh air in an already awesome game. It's still my favorite part of the series.

Of course, I didn't expect the gameplay or the game mechanics to change drastically, I love them as they are and want nothing more than dozens of new KB adventures expanding on that while retaining the core awesomeness.

My disappontment with WotN stems from two main promises it didn't keep:

1/ It was supposed to be a new episode in the series, like Armored Princess was. It's not. Instead, it's an addon of The Legend, faintly disguised as a new adventure.

AP is in the same universe as TL, but it's not just a TL 2.0: you get to travel to new places, 90% of the maps and challenges are new ones. Sure, they're vastly inspired by the ones you had in The Legend, but they're not the actual same maps and challenges slightly revamped. Playing AP after TL doesn't feel like playing TL again, it actually feels like what it is: a sequel. WotN isn't a proper sequel: it's a remake.

2/ Even as an addon, it doesn't add anywhere near as much new exciting stuff to The Legend as Crossworlds did to Armored Princess.

WotN, far from being a brand-new adventure, is more akin to Crossworlds in the sense that at least 3/4 of the maps you go through, and a whole lot of fights, quests and characters are straight copies from an already existing adventure: The Legend's, in this case, just reworked a bit. This is boring when you remember TL so well. Going in an area "for the first time" in the game and already knowing your way by heart isn't quite as exciting as just discovering actual new terrain.

More importantly, while CW gave us the largest selection of everything ever in the series, adding a lot of new units, objects, quests and even game concepts (the awesome Battle Academy, notably), WotN took away a lot of things (Lizardmen, Wives/Companions and the Battle Academy, notably) and didn't introduce that many new things (that are actual improvements). And CW still had a story, not a generic situation you're thrown in, and then you just grind away with no real purpose. The Undead are invading? The Orcs are invading? Been there, done that!

The (battlefield) Rage skills are hands-down the least interesting of any version. As for the (adventure map) Valkyrie abilities, they are all of them useless and ill-suited, and I find it hilarious that there's a Medal for using them more often. The Spirits of Rage from TL were really awesome, sometimes I found myself missing them in AP/CW; but the Pet Dragon was fantastic in its own right, and had plenty of new cool tricks to enjoy. Here we get useless rage skills from the hero, which you can ironically use more often thanks to some Might tree skills, and a couple of cool rage skills from the Valkyrie, which we hardly get to use, because it takes twice longer than the average battle length to reload them (and that you can't reduce).

Also, I hate to admit it, but the horribly obnoxious troll who whined so much about the game being too easy to beat compared to the others was right about that. It's my first walkthrough of the game, I play on Impossible, and I don't even really try to play no loss, at least it's no big deal to me in itself... Yet, most of my battles end in 2-3 rounds tops, even against enemy heroes. I don't even check what it says before attacking a wandering stack of troops: if it's there, I attack it, and I know I'll rip it to pieces without much effort. It's like "Uh-oh, big fight, there: thousands of all kinds of troops ahead!" and then I remember "Yeah right, my RM's astral ray does up to 21K damage on critical (which is like half the time), I can spam unlimited Red Dragon stacks at them, Gudrida's Rage cuts them in half at round 1... and anyways, I'll just berserk the sturdiest stack with my soothsayer and get the popcorn as they kill each other!" When I played The Legend on Impossible, compartively, I distinctly remember having to suicide my hero dozens of times in a row just to raise a bit of funding for new troops after getting all but obliterated by the insane enemy armies... I don't think I improved that much since then, the game also got way easier to beat.

[Onir303]

Originally Posted by Zhuangzi

Well, there's never been any voice acting in KB, so nothing new there. Unfortunately the bugs in the text are not new either. These are cosmetic issues only though. Katauri should have hired one of us to proofread their text for them. I expect we would have done it for a free copy of the game...

Nothing new there... and that's the problem. I only played "The Legend" before that. There was no voice acting in "The Legend". But it would have been nice to see just a little in this episode. Nothing too fancy. Something like the Torchlight games, would have been great.

As for the bugs in the text, I never noticed them before. Or I just don't remember them. It's been a while since I played "The Legend". And I know these are just cosmetic issues. But I just started playing "Warriors of the North". So let's just say that things are not starting well.

This title feels too "recycled". I'm still gonna play it, and enjoy it I suppose. But it's difficult to recommend "Warriors of the North".

Anyway, enough complaining.

[ckdamascus]

Ahhh I never played the Legend! That's probably why it feels less recycled, but if this stuff was in The Legend, ugh.

I found the valkyrie/hero 'rage' skills somewhat useful and if tiered properly you can alternate usage fairly well. Again, since I never played The Legend, I don't know what I'm missing out on.

Yeah the rune mages are clearly broken which is what bugs me. How could they let something like that go into the release.

[Bunnle]

The spelling and grammar issues are present in every other paragraph you read. It's really sloppy. A simple spellchecker would've fixed at least half of them.

But I love the series otherwise, and it's not the biggest issue with it right now.