King's Bounty II

[Daemongar]

If I remember correctly, they have been clear about this troop limit in developer's videos, the purpose of this troop limit is to force players to try different type of units throughout the course of the game rather than just rely on a few favorite low-level ones the whole game.

Why would they care how players are playing their game? Did folks using the same troops cause the developers personal pain or cause reduced sales? Yeah, it does sound like selling a problem as a feature. What they probably wanted to avoid is making players walk all the way back to replenish troops, but knew they had problems with all the walking.

Just a note: reading this thread had me go back and fire up KB: HotN - the only one I never finished. They have ways in multiple games to get players past using the same troops over and over. In this one, they just take away all your troops and make you start fresh with human troops. There are also limits on how many you can buy.

To the point - I always play the KB games the same way, or fall into a pattern - I try to never lose troops. So I'll build a group that has healers, offense, plus a hero with talents geared towards avoiding troop loss at all costs. I don't like traveling back to getting new troops, but it's also just how I like to play the games - I don't reload if I lose a troop, but it makes the battles that much more interesting. If the game were balanced so I couldn't avoid losing troops, but had to walk around and re-supply after every battle, it would make the game even more horrible.

Resupplying troops in KB was just annoying enough that you didn't do it constantly, and were willing to go into fights at lower strength while you felt you could, also the best units were limited so it hurt losing even a few Jarls or such. A mechanic that added dimension to combat. I think if you add the ability to just resurrect troops after every battle, a significant portion of the game falls apart.

 

[jf8350143]

Currently level 10 and I'm poor as fuck. Get only 2000 or something at the moment.

Probably because I bought bunch of high level creatures instead of stick with the starting ones. However they aren't stronger than the low level ones due to the fact they still need to level up.

And as far as I can tell they need to do damage in the combat to gain experience. So it weaks your team for a while when changing creatures.

The game isn't really very hard though, beat the skeleton mage in the swamp fairly easy when I was level 9(he was level 13),probably because right now there is only normal difficulty.

Still quite a fun game, the core of the series is still intact, despite lots of unnecessary changes to make the game more appealing to mainstream players.

 

[jf8350143]

And have you gotten to the point where the game completely fucks you over when you suddenly realize there's a hard member limit for a stack? It kindda varies but so far I've found it's between 8-10. So if you heavily invest in all those low-tier Order units like Archers or Healers and then suddenly your leadership jumps by a few hundred or more, you can throw all those in the trash, more or less. Because you just can't bring more than 10 Healers or Archers into a battle (or more than 8 dogs). I have enough leadership for 20 dogs but I can't bring more than 8.

Thousands of gold wasted. I've found out like an hour ago and wanted to throw my monitor through my window. What a retarded decision, jesus fucking christ.

Yeah, I read some youtubers have falled exactly into that trap (went full low tiers) with their press release version and completely stuck after 16 hours played so they had to call their review "a preview" :D

And nobody at 1C thought this might be a problem. Wow.

All that would be moot if the economy was handled like in previous games ("don't spend like an idiot but don't worry about money too much, focus on troop composition and good tactics"). But here money is pretty tight and if you don't know about the troop limit you can absolutely brick yourself 20 hours in and start over.

They said in a interview that they specifically designed the game to be like this, so you swap into higher level creatures in the late game instead of using absurd amount of low level creatures like in previous games.

 

[Reinhardt]

And have you gotten to the point where the game completely fucks you over when you suddenly realize there's a hard member limit for a stack? It kindda varies but so far I've found it's between 8-10. So if you heavily invest in all those low-tier Order units like Archers or Healers and then suddenly your leadership jumps by a few hundred or more, you can throw all those in the trash, more or less. Because you just can't bring more than 10 Healers or Archers into a battle (or more than 8 dogs). I have enough leadership for 20 dogs but I can't bring more than 8.

Thousands of gold wasted. I've found out like an hour ago and wanted to throw my monitor through my window. What a retarded decision, jesus fucking christ.

Yeah, I read some youtubers have falled exactly into that trap (went full low tiers) with their press release version and completely stuck after 16 hours played so they had to call their review "a preview" :D

And nobody at 1C thought this might be a problem. Wow.

All that would be moot if the economy was handled like in previous games ("don't spend like an idiot but don't worry about money too much, focus on troop composition and good tactics"). But here money is pretty tight and if you don't know about the troop limit you can absolutely brick yourself 20 hours in and start over.

They said in a interview that they specifically designed the game to be like this, so you swap into higher level creatures in the late game instead of using absurd amount of low level creatures like in previous games.

But why? Why make most creatures unusable? No racial armies, no thematic armies, only high tier armies. And if you decide to replay you are stuck with same creatures again. just retarded.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I made a huge mistake saying tons of DLC. For some damn readon I was confusing the Newest Age of Wonders series with the Later King's Bounty series. Still, before KB2 you have:
KB The Legend
KB Crossworlds GOTY
KB Warriors of the North
KB Darkside

I'll assume those all played similar. If I were to even bother to dip my finger in I'd revisit the original (maybe screw around with the dos KB2), the jump to The Legend being relatively cheap. I guess I'll reread reviews and watch vids on each; sort out the pros and cons.

 

[santino27]

WotN is overly long, and its DLC (Fire and Ice, I think) adds troop levelling, so I'd avoid it like the plague.

 

[cvv]

Everyone just get Crosswords. IMO it's a genuine masterpiece, bursting with content and delightful design ideas.

 

[fantadomat]

Everyone just get Crosswords. IMO it's a genuine masterpiece, bursting with content and delightful design ideas.

Nah,played them back to back and the princess one was the weakest. The balance was really back and the exploration was muh,also the shortest game,i believe. I enjoyed the most the warrior one. Also all of them had game breaking bugs that i had to search fixes lol. Troop levelling is pretty fun addition to the games,it makes you play more careful and try to save your troops when you can. The valkiria levelling achievement was the most annoying,since you have to use their shitty skills frequently and fallow how many combats you have before reusing them. Also the rune use was interesting addition. Also legends was pretty good,lacks the complexity of warriors but have wifu harem,very chad game. Also writing and exploration was the most enjoyable,but the dragon dungeon was pain the arse,burns trough your troops annoyingly fast. Would recommend playing them in release order,all around it is pretty good game franchise.

Except darkshite,lol that is some teen edgy garbage with the worst balance i have seen,dropped it after an hour.

 

[Peachcurl]

Ok, why is there no animation speed up

 

[IDtenT]

I don't get it. The level desing is so tight. Why is everyone complaining about movement speeds?

 

[fantadomat]

Ok, why is there no animation speed up

Cheat engine speedhack lol

 

[Saravan]

Fucking hell. Big fan of HoMM3, came across this thread and played through Crossworlds and Legend, was really stoked for this game. Reading major despair warnings from this thread about it however and I had just secured the weekend for gaming by trading my free-time for the next one with the wife. What a shitty trade that was.

 

[Peachcurl]

Thank god they included important features like a button that can make you move even slower or the horse slowing down to walking speed in the city.

What, are the guard going to pull me and my army over for riding too fast in town? I'M NOT RIDING TOO FAST, I'M TRAVELLING!

Seriously, what is wrong with these people.

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Thank god they included important features like a button that can make you move even slower or the horse slowing down to walking speed in the city.

What, are the guard going to pull me and my army over for riding too fast in town? I'M NOT RIDING TOO FAST, I'M TRAVELLING!

Seriously, what is wrong with these people.

This is when you have incompetent game designers or just people that think that a feature THEY liked in a game could be just dropped in another without actual purpose or thought.

 

[IDtenT]

Thank god they included important features like a button that can make you move even slower or the horse slowing down to walking speed in the city.

What, are the guard going to pull me and my army over for riding too fast in town? I'M NOT RIDING TOO FAST, I'M TRAVELLING!

Seriously, what is wrong with these people.

Don't want to get a penalty in the pitlane for speeding.

 

[cvv]

Finished, shy of 30 hours. Game became fairly trivial when I realized I could "heal" lost units instead of buying new ones. Final fight was p. easy too with a Warrior. Would be probably more difficult with other classes but with Warrior's "plus bazillion % damage" you just smash everything.

Overall very disappointing. Game is about half as long as old KBs, missing half the features (rage abilities, treasure hunts, challenge bonuses, flying horse, boss fights, marriages, item levelling and tons more), writing is drab and boring instead of witty, subversive and tongue-in-cheek, there are only two maps (tutorial and main), itemization is bad (tiny item pool compared to old KBs plus most items are bland and boring), visuals are ugly, VO is cringy (the Warrior is voiced by Mr. Witcher himself but he was clearly bored with yet another gruff, stoic hero, plus I could swear he ran of patience at some point, bailed and was replaced by someone else) and the UI was designed by someone who is 1. a pre-schooler, 2. blind and 3. retarded. Also the hard unit cap is a truly idiotic decision that limits your strategic options something fierce. It's not as apparent now, with just one difficulty when strategy doesn't matter since the game is a cakewalk but if they add more difficulties everyone will immediately see how retarded the cap is.

I was mildly entertained at mid-game but as it went on I soured and now I would immediately refund if I could. I've been a devoted fan of the series since Legend came out but this is a rusty knife in the back of the KB legacy by a bunch of idiots who had clearly no idea what they were doing. It's almost as if the creators of Darkest Dungeon thought "let's turn the sequel into an ugly, fully voided, 3D pseudo-Witcher open world and let's also cut half the features and make the game half as long, I'm sure the broader appeal would compensate". This game is getting the thumbs down on Steam. Avoid.

 

[Peachcurl]

Can't finish this in this state.

So, will I have to wait for Disciples for the next disappointment, or is there some other recent HOMM-like game out there?

 

[IDtenT]

I'm confident that patching could fix most qualms, but as far as I'm aware there's been no commentry on future content or patching so I don't have high hopes.

I still believe the game is not terrible, and worth playing in bite-sized chunks as I've been playing it. I am planning to play an Anarchy Mage after I'm done with my Order Warrior. The Paladin is an interesting one as well, since you're locked into order and forced to multiclass as a Mage / Warrior amalgamation.

Having a difficulty that enforces how cvv played the game should be quite easy to implement, if not complete player driven.

 

[cvv]

So, will I have to wait for Disciples for the next disappointment, or is there some other recent HOMM-like game out there?

Well, not much besides Disciples Liberation that I know of. There are Songs of Conquest & Fanstratics in the making. Fanstratics might be good, because it is a spiritual successor, from the lead game designer of Heroes of Might and Magic III. It's in pre-alpha production.

There's also Disciples III: Reincarnation, sort of a rehaul of the original Disciples III game that came a few years afterwards. Most people didn't play it bc the OG was fucking terrible and so they never looked back but the remake is very good, definitely worth a run or two.

 

[jf8350143]

So, will I have to wait for Disciples for the next disappointment, or is there some other recent HOMM-like game out there?

Well, not much besides Disciples Liberation that I know of. There are Songs of Conquest & Fanstratics in the making. Fanstratics might be good, because it is a spiritual successor, from the lead game designer of Heroes of Might and Magic III. It's in pre-alpha production.

There's also Disciples III: Reincarnation, sort of a rehaul of the original Disciples III game that came a few years afterwards. Most people didn't play it bc the OG was fucking terrible and so they never looked back but the remake is very good, definitely worth a run or two.

The new disciples game is coming in October as well. There was a leaked streaming(about 30 hours long) about the game and people watched it says that it plays just like armoured princess.

 

[Archibald]

Yes, you can instantly replenish all your slain troops after the battle for a small sum, as long as at least one member of a stack survives, instead of running back to the recruiter and buying units. So if you lose half of your army in a battle it'll costs you a few hundred instead of thousands.

There is this homm-lite series on steam/mobile: https://store.steampowered.com/app/285800/Braveland/ that has same exact mechanic, its just that it is automatic there, you don't need to press anything. I wonder if they "borrowed" this idea from here? Or maybe there are some older cases of such mechanic being present?

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

cvv some of the quotes were in the review I've linked yesterday but they're all in Russian. To translate/paraphrase some of them:

- "We all agreed that people who were playing those games (Katauri ones) have grown up so we decided to reflect that in our new game. KB2 is conceived as a serious and mature product".
- "We wanted realism. Did you see the Warcraft movie? There's fantasy and realism. We wanted the same."
- "Players on Xbox/Playstation are used to seeing expensive, juicy, fancy stuff (visuals). We couldn't keep such indie pixel-art graphics. It should be serious, gorgeous."
- "We have decided that if we're making such an expensive, big, gorgeous console game, we should look at Mass Effect and The Witcher in terms of role-play elements."
- "KB2 is a giant leap into the modern world, the world of consoles"

etc etc

I do not get how any developers can actually believe this after the last 13 years or so. It's not that '90s PSX era time anyone where people were just totally enamored with the novelty of 3D over pixel art. They could have literally just copied the visual style of that Dragon Quest 3 remake and done some nice sprite based version of the designs of the 2008 game and I guarantee this game would've had more attention just because of it's visuals than it's had with this fuckin' generic looking Dragon Age looking shit.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Contrast with this:

==========•==============
Well, that top pic is pretty gorgeous i interesting, tbh and I don't say shit like that about many modern games. The bottom reminds me of a mmo from the still alone..... or dungeon siege.


Edit... but does it play like MM3? Or close to the original? I wouldn't know. I see the DLC content for it and the space one and just turn away.

and these combat screens look... ugh.

i guess certain stills are deceptive.

i will say the original has aged a bit and I didn't know there was a KB2

KB 1

KB 2

Gorillas?

"Magic Secret Powers were revealed to me the day I held my Magic sword and said....."

"I HAVE THE POWER!!"

He's downright D A N G E R O U S !

There isn't a '90s King's Bounty 2, or at least an official one by New World Computing. New World moved on to HoM&M after King's Bounry years later, and when they did return to King's Bounty it was that weird PS2 Heroes game. That King's Bounty 2 is a unlicensed knockoff game from the Ukraine; guess King's Bounty was big over there and in Russia, and people would make unofficial sequels to it.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

But.... it has Kong and gorilla armies.

 

[IDtenT]

Finished, shy of 30 hours. Game became fairly trivial when I realized I could "heal" lost units instead of buying new ones. Final fight was p. easy too with a Warrior. Would be probably more difficult with other classes but with Warrior's "plus bazillion % damage" you just smash everything.

Overall very disappointing. Game is about half as long as old KBs, missing half the features (rage abilities, treasure hunts, challenge bonuses, flying horse, boss fights, marriages, item levelling and tons more), writing is drab and boring instead of witty, subversive and tongue-in-cheek, there are only two maps (tutorial and main), itemization is bad (tiny item pool compared to old KBs plus most items are bland and boring), visuals are ugly, VO is cringy (the Warrior is voiced by Mr. Witcher himself but he was clearly bored with yet another gruff, stoic hero, plus I could swear he ran of patience at some point, bailed and was replaced by someone else) and the UI was designed by someone who is 1. a pre-schooler, 2. blind and 3. retarded. Also the hard unit cap is a truly idiotic decision that limits your strategic options something fierce. It's not as apparent now, with just one difficulty when strategy doesn't matter since the game is a cakewalk but if they add more difficulties everyone will immediately see how retarded the cap is.

I was mildly entertained at mid-game but as it went on I soured and now I would immediately refund if I could. I've been a devoted fan of the series since Legend came out but this is a rusty knife in the back of the KB legacy by a bunch of idiots who had clearly no idea what they were doing. It's almost as if the creators of Darkest Dungeon thought "let's turn the sequel into an ugly, fully voided, 3D pseudo-Witcher open world and let's also cut half the features and make the game half as long, I'm sure the broader appeal would compensate". This game is getting the thumbs down on Steam. Avoid.

Impressive. This is the third review on Steam. Should I friend you?