Analysis of King's Bounty

[lauvhk]

1. There are indeed a lot more shops available but I feel pretty underwhelmed when it comes to the shop's content. Racial troop availability is horrible outside of their racial continent and Lizardmen units are almost Reha-Exclusive (don't count the wanderer scroll for the moment). Another rather popular level 4 neutral - Demonologists - is so severely limited that you can play a game or two without actually seeing them available for sale (run KBScanner if you feel unconvinced).

2.

game is strongly slanted towards high level units...

There are a lot of units available in the game but regardless of game objective (no loss or not), most units end up being less favorable than the others. So What gives for having so many shops that actually sell a lot of less favorable units?

3. Many shops sell a combination of units, items and scrolls but they hardly differ from one another. What I mean is that they don't have a mercenary camp that offers a truly wide range of units (not just 4 or 5), a magic academy that houses a huge record of scrolls and can even take order to create one that you need, a blacksmith that can actually forge an item or a black market that sell obscenely overpriced but high level items early on.

Yes the shop structure in AP inherits its predecessor but sadly more doesn't necessarily make it better.

[jake21]

I like some (many) of the addition to the KB-AP but am a bit unhappy with the game flow and map. The game flow issue is balance; the game is easy at start (good); ramps up to be very difficult at lower/mid level (around level 14-20; when you first move to verona) and then becomes incredibly easy ('cept for the final two boss mobs). This makes it rather difficult to adjust game difficulty because of this rather sharp non-linear curve.
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Shops - yes there are more of them but there is a weirdness to what they sell. For instance last game I played (hard mage) there were tons of royal griffons but many mobs (like dermonolgoist (sp)) either did not load or (knights) loaded in very small quantity. This game (hard paladin) I just explored verona shops and there are TONS of (regular griffons) but no assassins or royal griffons. It almost seems like the game select some mob (griffon in this game) and then places it everywhere. (This game is going to be very hard unless something decent loads else where because mob selection up to verona (debir, scarlet, rusty, boa, verona) sucks big time (it makes my mage game look like a gold mine).
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The last thing I dislike is the map layout. In KB-TL there was a bit of backtracking but overall the maps themselves were some what interesting. In KB-AP for the most part the maps are not that interesting at all (many reusing parts from the previous game) and the last few islands are pathetic (I suspect the developer was rushed a bit; not sure but I get the feeling that map making for this game might be non-trivial).
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bugs: there are some weird bugs; for instance several times (2 or 3) I've defeated a stack and then instantly thrown back into combat with the same stack I just defeated.
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I do like the increase in item variety as well as a few other twitches in kb-ap but the flaws are quite annoying on a grand scale.

[Hento]

HOMM5 was totally ruined for me because the skill selection when you level up was random.

[lauvhk]

As jake21 points out, the map layout and the world design are not all too fantastic. With regard to the world design, I believe that the developers try to forge a world that is remarkably different than its immediate predecessor since travelling between islands in AP is predominantly relied on ship. It is in some sense reminiscening the old KB so it is more a matter of taste than something that could be argued. Still the individual map design failing to show distinctiveness and depth is a significant drawback.

Most of the journey in AP happens in the world of Teana. I am not sure if there is enough lore backdrop that actually links both world, but then all racial relationship carries over without a blink. And what about the lore of Teana? I am certainly not a lore seeking/loving person but with the Demon hiding far off the world while the Lizard raiding the Dwarf land, the Dwarves actually hate the Demon more than the Lizard? Not to mention there is a necromancer occupying another Dwarven Castle.

[Smash]

I am sorry but because you do not like cattle managment or strategy aspect of heroes series doesn't mean that they are worst, honestly homm3 is still the king in nearly everything. I didn't really even bother with rest of text wall.

KB is little shallow to me, there are only battles which are not awesome. They really should improve battlefield if they wanted focus only on them...
Troops are not balanced, paladin class is not designed well and plenty of more things.
I had really big expectation over this expansion but well i was disappointment. They didn't improve important thing except failure try on paladin skill tree.

[DGDobrev]

Bold statement, Smash, and it is your prerogative to feel this way. I, on the other hand, think they did it like this to avoid creating another HOMM clone. We have plenty of them already - Disciples 3 being the latest in the long line

Why do you feel this way about the Paladin tree? It has some really great skills: Resurrection, learning, prayer, voice of the dragon, persuasion, even scouting has been buffed up.

[Zechnophobe]

Well, learning isn't that impressive. But overall the Paladin skills have been majorly overhauled. In TL, Paladin was basically terrible. He didn't get the rage of the warrior, or the magic of the Mage. All he got was Runic stone, and the ability to do a little better against undead/demons. Pfah.

Also, Smash, did you at least read the 'short version' I put at the end of each post? I realize not everyone wants to read that much, ergo the sum up.

Though, if you honestly think HOMM3 was better than KB... I have a feeling we won't come to any reasonable agreement.