Leadership (and possibly stats) bug? How can I be the only one???

[Elwin]

Yes, it was well known that difficulty wiil be higher before game was realesed. Legend was just to easy. And Ap is a challenge only on first play as a mage.

[Zechnophobe]

The game systems are just different. Legend had a different level granularity (You got levels more rarely) compared to AP, and the sources for your stats and leadership are also different (You get more leadership from finding gems, completing achievements, etc).

There are some bad guys (Bosses, stacks that guard maps) in each area that are a lot harder than the stacks in the same island. I think this makes people think they shouldn't bother moving on to the next island, even though they easily could. You will also need to fight some hard battles early on to open up newer islands, that have more pickups, stores, etc.

[smee]

Right, good points. I actually enjoy the extra difficulty, now that I know what's going on. Somehow I missed the fact that this was going to be somewhat harder -- probably because I just skimmed a couple reviews and didn't look at any forum posts. (I liked Legend enough to know I would be buying this game as long as it was not a complete dud, so I didn't bother doing much research.)

It's funny, I am a big believer in letting the player fail -- I very much dislike the practice of auto-scaling enemies, for example -- but it has become such common practice that I am now a little startled when a game doesn't make every battle readily winnable. I guess despite my best efforts I'm allowing myself to get dumbed down.