Players feedback/reviews

[Vilk]

I cannot find the thread collecting players feedback/reviews. So I open this thread until I find the original one.

It's obvious that this game is near to the top of the best games of all time. The amazing gameplay is is based on a nice simple RPG mood, a good class system, some strategy elements coming from the management of movements and troops. But the core of its gameplay is mainly the tactical elements of the combats:

• The magic system is one of the most diversified and balanced I ever saw, the number of spells useful in some cases is amazing.
• The rage system as less diversity but is a nice addition anyway.
• The troops diversity is another element that adds a lot of depth and diversity to the tactical combats.
• One detail but not that minor I really enjoyed to not have to bother with resources managements too much.
• Another detail, the item design is quite amazing, a lot of diversity in their design, morale, various stuff given after n combats like runes or attributes points, gremlins fights, items improving through gremlins fights, each item get personalized description, and so on.

The RPG parts are quite far to best standards in the genre, the story is very schematic and non original, the only distinctive point about it is the numerous touch of humour but for my taste too many are pure reference to modern world. Among RPG elements only the class system match standards quality of the the genre but this RPG setup gives a nice mood to a tactical game.

The sounds didn't catch my attention but the shiny graphics did, they add a lot to the charm of the game and are a quite pleasant change to modern mode to do dirty and/or dark graphics.

The replay value is excellent and based of the extreme diversity and the excellent depth of the tactical combats but also on the subtle differences between the classes.

I should close my feedback here but I like whining so I cannot resist to give few more details about some details I didn't like:

• The score based on game time is a little stressing once you start take care of that. But I admit I have no better solution.
• The game has some strong unbalance that become a little unpleasant when you start take care of your score. The partial list could be Time Back, Cardinal, Anga's Ruby, Dryad, Griffin, Demon, Sacrifice, Gift, Resurrect, Black Hole, Chargers, Emerald Dragon.
• The importance of time in the score breaks too many elements of the gameplay diversity. The game balances hasn't been tuned enough with that point in consideration. The balance tuning forgot a lot the time factor that is major in the score.
• The difficulty level also reduce the diversity of the game. The main problem of higher difficulty level is to be based only on bigger enemy stacks and that breaks many points.
• One weird detail, I hate this knight camp you get soon in game, making very tempting a tedious if not boring little gameplay element. And that point also reduce a lot the game diversity of the first areas, once you have taste it it's hard to not exploit it.
• I am shared about the high random in the game. It's clearly a significant part of the replay value but that breaks a bit too much planned strategy approach. I think some solution could be find but I have no clear suggestion about that.

[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.