King's Bounty is out - 90% review from Gamespy

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I liked the game for a while, but it's getting a bit monotonous. Playing as a mage makes every single battle more or less identical: spam AOE until things die.

Then don't play as a mage. Game is much more challenging as a warrior, I noticed. I didn't find it repetitive all the way up to the end, remained fun and challenging especially finding ways to take down some tough demons.

Funny, I found that by the time I'd left the initial island and traveled to the pirate lands my offensive spells had become pretty much useless. In fact I noticed a fair ramp in difficulty at that point, despite the fact that I'd done almost all the quests available at that point. Now all the encounters are either overpowering or impossible.

Oh, I'm in elf-land right now--and now there's another thing: the human, dwarf and elven continents all have identical terrain--and at this point, spamming level three geyser twice is pretty damn effective, especially if I manage to follow it up with spirit of rage AoE a few rounds later. Granted, I inadvertently "cheated" by entering Demonis before I came to the elf continent, which is probably too early (given how all the encounters in there are either impossible or overpowering, and I ran from every single one). But it granted me access to necromancers, who are ridiculously powerful with that raise undead ability. I also bought evil beholders, who have a mind control skill, which I utilize well and often.

I also grinded. A lot. Sought out every single "weak" or "slightly weaker" encounter, backtracking to previous areas over and over. My army consists entirely of ranged units, and I can usually kill most enemy troops before they even reach mine. Got sick of melee troops having to crawl all the goddamn way across the field (used griffins for a while for the flying, but even that was too slow for me).

This is definitely a fun and addictive game but 90? For such a score I'd like to see more... content. Movies, cutscenes and art. The character creation system and development is too simplistic. I HATE RPGs that give 3 mundane classes to choose from. While I can appreciate the merry theme of the game, the world could have been at least slightly original and have some kind of a story that grips you. I'm very early in the game but as of now there seems to be nothing more than a NWN 1 like bestest student plot.

I can see this becoming too repetitive. The developers should really have tried to achieve something new. This type of gameplay has been successfully conquered more than a decade ago. We lack ambition as a whole in the game industry.

Really? I'm having the opposite experience. Haste+bless, increased defence on round 1 and all the other little nasty warrior skills, basically means I can rush the fuck out of everything with little fear of the consequences. Only tactics part of it is how best to pin enemy ranged units, everything else is pretty much just "click here to inflict damage to massive organs".

You guys won't feel so confident when trying to clear out Demonis or the pre-end boss battles, along with the later areas. Even dragons will become next to useless unless you spam greasy mist (I think) and weaken their fire defenses. Or maybe I just try not to use cheap tactics in order to keep it all challenging.

If you want tougher opponents though, there's an "Improved AI" mod here.

No longer will they always target hypnotized opponents (makes some battles so easy) nor will they always target your phantomed troops.

The thing is that I don't feel I'm using "cheap tactics" so much as, you know, utilizing class advantages. Enemies mount up in ever-bigger stacks. There's no real point in holding back on the big AoE spam, since that's the only way to win battles efficiently, with minimal losses (and given how limited some troop types are, keeping attrition rate low is a requirement) as a mage. Games that force you to "hold back" to make it fun are silly, and the sense of challenge is only an illusion; see the argument about VATS in FO3. Of course, I'm only playing on normal and could just start a new game with the next level of difficulty instead.

Those mods look interesting, though. Maybe I'll give them a whirl, especially since I find the game's AI dumb as a brick.

Have you been using the reaper spirit or enabled him yet? He becomes the best spirit by far later on, especially once you level him up. I played on normal too and found the game quite challenging up to the end, but maybe I just suck or didn't utilize the warrior build properly. But hard difficulty is a bit tougher, as money is harder to come by so you have to be careful when replenishing units.

I think spamming AoE or any of the same skills repeatedly is obviously going to make the game feel redundant. I had fun just mixing up unit types -- having an army with undead, demons, humans and elves at once. There's many useful troop types throughout the game, so my best advice to keep you from boredom is try out all the different units. Yes, even the slow giant/cyclops/ent units can be workhorses against overpowering fights and nice choices if you have items to enhance their speed.

You need to increase your Intellect. A mage should have it above 30 by the end of the game, and each point gives an increase despite what the accompanying text says.

The Mage character is a lot stronger than the Warrior or Paladin, IMO. I am playing on Impossible now (third time overall) and I am kicking ass. But it's still fun - 150+ hours of gameplay for me in less than four weeks. :shock:

Oh. So that's why my spells are doing ridiculous amounts of damage. (Int is at 20 right now, or so.)

That's also probably why you're losing interest in battles, if your spells are smearing armies out like lemmings. I had a different experience with a warrior, as the only spells I could use towards the end were mainly phantom and hypnosis in certain battles. Even then I didn't like hypnosis, made some situations too easy.

I'm using a mage on my second run right now, I'm playing on normal again and now that I know what I'm doing -- everything seems way too easy. Maybe should start again on impossible or something. Argh, hate doing the beginning area over again. Those stupid thorn and dragonfly battles are dull.

It's weird how journalists tend to complain about the game being too difficult in the Normal difficulty setting.

The only challenging, or rather impossible, fight for me as a warrior is the mirror match against the future self. He gets double or tripple the amount of units and destroys my stacks no matter what I try. Should probably max out hypnotize and assemble a particular composition of troops for that battle. Most other battles are a walk in the park due to rage AOE spam (black hole every 2 turns) and buffed up archers.

Probably because they're retards and the game didn't have enough hand holding for them. I usually suck at these games and lack the patience to plan proper strategies. Even so, still finished the game just fine. Hardly too difficult.

Never did finish the mirror battles, beat the first one and lost so many troops that I didn't bother with the next one. I assume the easy way to do it would be to go store all your units up in garrisons, and return with like 1 peasant troop. Then just kill the enemy with a spell or spirit attack if you get the first turn. Forgot to try that.

I also never opened up that damn pyramid in the early dwarf land area, somehow missed 2 pillars. Not sure how far you are yet, but I'm sure you'll have some problems once you reach towards the end. Battle difficulties ramp up quite a bit and you'll be losing plenty of troops if you don't play it careful.

Doubt that would work. The dwarf doesn't let you fight unless you have the max troop amount with you that your leadership allows. Cleared everything up until the Dragon domain (Haas' incarnations).

Multiplayer?
Hotseat?
Yes, no?

No, not at this stage. Although I am hopeful for hotseat at least in the expansion which is apparently in the works. The combat system is this game is so freaking good that I would love to be able to play multiplayer. The AI is just too stupid once you learn the ropes.

Oh, and Mage >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Warrior. Especially on Hard and Impossible. My observation.

hmmm.. should i get this game

I wish I had that much rage. Sadly, as a mage, I'd be lucky if I get to fire off one black hole in a whole fight. I console myself with geyser and fire rain.

But yes, I'd never played any game like this before either, and though I was somewhat baffled about the minutiae for a while--and stumbled through the first few battles losing all troops--the learning curve was hardly immense. And once you've learned the basics, it's not difficult.

Agh, that's right. There might be a way to do it cheaply though, because going in there with your tank force and trying to fight off two or three times the amount of them would be nearly impossible. Maybe try maxing out your army with weak units, then spam your most powerful spells and spirits. Only way I can think of winning it.

You've reached right where the game gets tougher though, aside from Demonis. I actually nearly died on one of the incarnations, I believe it was the one which included two sets of demon troops of over 150 troops. Those bastards are tough as nails when in large numbers, doesn't help they can reproduce too.

This is certainly one of the better games but why does everything look so gay?

God damnit why can't I use demo saves in the real game
Lack of motivation to play through the beginning area and all those quests again has bumped this down my "to buy" list quite a few places

Only thing really lacking visually is the character art, if that's what you meant. Everything else looks great in my opinion. Sort've Blizzard-ish maybe, but still better than generic 3D and overdone bloom effects that do nothing but make hardware chug.

More importantly, why the fuck aren't any of your Rage creatures unlocked when you're level 19?