Shall we start a new high score/info thread? (Spoilers inside)

[DGDobrev]

I know the game's out only for the Russians, but I got it on my trip with our company to Moscow bought it and beat it. I'm Bulgarian, I've been studying Russian for 15 years and it wasn't a problem going through it.

First of all, randomness is here, and is here to stay. Wonderful. A lot of items have been added, a lot of enemies and the wickedly powerful Paladin unit is probably the best addition to the game. Actually, I stopped using Inquisitors since lvl 25 or so because of these guys. They have mass resurrect of all allies in the adjacent 6 hexes. With Time back (it's back as a spell) you can do 2 mass resurrects, which usually makes you take slim to none losses, unless the battle is really, really hard - like the battles with some of the bosses. There is no gift spell, and inquisitors' holy anger has only 3 charges, which makes the big ressing vs. bosses somewhat difficult.

The next thing to consider is the travel time. I finished in 14 days, but I can easily shave off like 3-4 days out of that. I did a lot of pointless traveling because of quests I wasn't aware of, troop replenishment or chains of quests that require you to travel through several islands and/or multiple locations. It will be most interesting and challenging to try and find out the best and shortest route with minimal travel time.

I really liked the way the AI performs. If the AI decides that it's losing the battle, it doesn't allow you much time to do resurrecting. It usually suicides the last unit against your closest one, unless it's ranged or the unit is with no retaliation trait. For example, I got extremely irritated in the battle vs. Samail (in a castle on Shettera island) who as soon as he realized that he's losing the battle began casting Armageddon each turn (he had 361 mana, I think, so he had 9 armageddons available...), effectively destroying more of my units rather than his own. I did win, and with only 18 units lost, thanks to the 2 mass resurrections, but still, it was irritating as hell. I can imagine how a powerpuff girl party will cope vs. him. The losses will be extreme

The final battle vs. baal was also fun. You team up with Bill Gilbert to kick baal's... ummm... backside. Baal has over 125k HP's on normal (I can imagine how will it be on impossible) and has a peculiar spell. You start on a big chunk of rock, portions of which can be destroyed by Baal from time to time. The AI that commands Gilbert's units is absolutely awful. I saw 3 of his units disappear just like that, because he didn't move them from the endangered area when the rock broke. Even worse, I think that Gilbert's units losses count as your own. If I'm correct, that can give you bonkers if you need to do a game without losses, because you have no control over his units whatsoever.

In any case - the story's good, the game's good, the good tactics and minimal losses are once again the key to victory.

Maybe it's time to try a game with a mage now. It will be fun with the addition of the multiple bonuses to the spell damage introduced in this game.