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MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica



Well I was browsing steam today and to my surprise my favorite strategy game (that isnt crusader kings) got a sequel released. While I was making GBS threads my pants GBS-style, my wallet tore itself out of my manpurse and flew to Russia at relativistic speeds. For those of you not in the know King's Bounty is a tactical strategy game that borrows A LOT from heroes of might and magic. The reason for that is that HoMM was actually original based on the very first King's Bounty. HoMM went on to focus more on town building and other pussy rear end poo poo while the franchise reboot (which this is the third iteration of) kept the same rogue-like overworld feel. The parallel between the two franchises being the tactical combat.

How does King's Bounty play?

The overworld which you spend about half your time in is composed of a whole bunch of poo poo from buildings, taverns for recruiting monsters to your army, loot, quests and encounters. You build a mercenary army of sorts and then fight these encounters while trying to to explore and conquer whatever territory you are in. I compared it to a roguelike because the resources and encounters are mostly randomized and its very possible to get yourself into a game-losing scenario (where you have no money to hire creatures and no way possible to beat the armies in your way). Overworld exploration satisfies a lot of the same things for me that rogue-like exploration does in the 'oh gently caress thank god i needed that 1000 gold so loving badly' sense.

The combat is sort of like HoMM3 the most. It is a hex based playing field where units are represented as little armies full of a # of units. There are is shitton of variety when it comes to units and flavor and unit abilities that keeps the combat always interesting. You also have to be fairly careful in not only winning but making sure you dont lose too much in the process.

What does Warrior's of the North bring to the table?

code:
The unique race of furious Vikings, as well as new neutral creatures;
New main hero - Olaf the Viking;
Valkyries! Five magnificent warrior maidens accompany Olaf, which he can call up during battle by expending his Rage points;
Improved skill tree and new unique talents;
New awards that grant special benefits;
Additional battle spells and a completely new magic school - Runic Magic;
Modified battle system based on the use of Runes;
Chant - a unique ability of the Skald class which can turn a likely defeat into an overwhelming victory;
The ability to forge new items;
Full Steam services integration, including Steam Cloud, Achievements and Leaderboard
Screenshots




Videos PLZ

Hilarious overly-dramatic trailer with gameplay footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcsA2tAzOq4

HD gameplay footage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-KVtIFhQ8M

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MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Pumpkinreaper posted:

The game is pretty fun, but I've been finding that it's quite a bit easier than Armored Princess since not only are all the encounters for the first couple of isles listed as weaker than you, the viking units are ridiculously strong.

Though I haven't completed Fastland or that place with all of the jotun, so maybe this is just a prelude to an rear end-beating.



The new units while pretty drat strong, are fun to use. The Soothsayer is fun to wreak havoc with using Loki's Touch to set a troop to uncontrollable status, then watch as the a.i dogpiles the troop. Berserker's are retardedly strong too, since they have high crit, decent health and counter attack counter attacks.

Honestly, for anyone that enjoyed HoMM, Advance Wars or any other turn based strategy game, they should take a look at the King's Bounty series in general, it's really well done (though the newest still has a patch or two to go to fix all of the typo's and some of the buggy Skald songs), also very challenging (though I wouldn't say to the point where you can create an un-winnable situation, which you would really have to work to achieve)

What difficulty are you playing on? I just finished playing through the tutorial and it gives you a ridiculous amount of gold (which seems like it has to be a bug.)

Also the typos are all really hilarious. I find the translation in general really loving funny in these games. They obviously dont take the story at all serious and just in general have fun with everything.

edit: The music is sorta catchy too so far

MOVIE MAJICK fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Oct 27, 2012

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:

The MMO is still in development. Katuri, the developers of the first two modern KB games are still working on it. This new game is made by a lovely internal studio 1C uses to make their lovely cash-in sequels. The terrible Men of War stand-alone expansion/sequel was made by them.

That, along with concerns about game difficulty and balance has me staying away from this one for the time being.


Eh, I'm almost done the first island and I'd say the pacing is definitely an improvement on AP. It is also going to be hard as gently caress now for those of you who like to do the impossible no-loss runs.

I was talking to a big King's Bounty nerd (hes already halfway through the game :wtf:) and he said the balance might be even better than AP, apparently they improved on a lot of the Crossworlds stuff.

edit: that's combat balance not the ridiculous gold you get.

Node posted:

Well I'd love to hear from people who have purchased this game to see how it compares to AP, or KB: The Legend, and tell us if its a horrible unrecognizable mess. Or if it still has awesome music, funny and weird dialog, good gameplay, etc.

Thanks in advance!!!

First island and it still has all three qualities of AP at TL. (The music might even be better)

MOVIE MAJICK fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Oct 27, 2012

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Rascyc posted:

It's pretty much everything AP was with a much gentler difficulty curve. There's plethora of really weird dialog (I read about half of it, and skip the other half). Also they took Paladins and gave them another unique ability in the form of pre-battle buff songs that scale. I'm playing this class personally after not seeing any big changes with mages and runic magic looked boring.

I'm only in the middle of the second island and I have 150k gold with the difficulty set to Hard. Echo'ing the comment that the viking unit base is really strong and it feels like you have all the tools to actually play the intro game.

Sounds like they've taken the entire AP soundtrack and also introduced new soundtracks. I've heard a lot of familiar tracks, although oddly placed sometimes. The pirate island theme from AP appears in the weirdest places like fights.

Yeah I really like how you dont start with an army of poo poo-head peasants and footmen and actually have a bunch of tools at your disposal in the beginning. Hopefully it does actually get more challenging later on. I found AP had the opposite problem, where halfway through Verona and into the midgame it got a bit too easy, even on hard.

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Quarex posted:

Edit: Oh, and one of my favorite new things, both because the game benefits from them and because it is something every game should do, is the mini-achievement system that actually gives you in-game rewards for doing things (there is also a bigger achievement system and I do not know if that does anything yet), so for example I just killed my first dragon in the same combat where I killed my hundredth vampire, and so I now get 5% extra damage against dragon and also a permanent +1 attack (not just against vampires but it came from that), and the vampire accomplishment also triggers another mini-quest when the Vampire Hunter Society contacts you via a technological divination device and gives you a job!. Basically this game rules

This existed in the last game too :raise:

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Amamake posted:

I'm 10 hours in and the game is good (and getting better).

Some points:

1) Exploration is much better since they (mostly) got rid of lovely kiting minigame. It's not necessary to steal flags and runes from high level islands anymore, but it's still possible to do if you want to.

2) I started on Hard, played for two hours and restarted on Impossible as a Paladin. Game is easier so far, Impossible seems to be an equivalent of Hard in Princess.

3) I like Viking armies a lot. So far I've seen about 10 new creatures and the same amount of new spells. I hope I'll get an opportunity to use insane Dinosaur armies from Princess :killdozer:

4) First 4 islands suffer from the lack of troop variety. I have a lot of vikings, a handful of pirates and animals and that's about it. I think I saw some dwarf troops somewhere, but I wish I'd had more choices. This is a minor complaint, but honestly it's pretty hard to get a no losses medal with viking armies since they tend to die a lot.

I might restart on impossible too, I felt like Hard on AP was just the perfect amount of difficulty.

Does anyone know how the hell the rune system works? Is there a limited supply? Can you keep buffing your troops over and over?

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Kraven Moorhed posted:

Can't believe I didn't hear anything about the first game, since I got into the latest HoMM after buying Disciples III. (:suicide:) Should I start with Armored Princess or jump straight into this?

Jump straight in, there isnt any continuity from what I can decipher

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Lamer posted:

How long is this one supposed to be? $30 seems like a lot for another one of these, though I've liked them all so far.

Apparently 60 hours if you go straight through the campaign. Even if it is 60 hours doing everything that is 6x the value you get out of a modern release big budget single player game.

Compared to the others it is the longest as well, but this is other peoples' accounts so who really knows.

edit: is anyone else getting overwhelmed by all the awesome games released this month? I actually cant stand it. I wish it was just one awesome game so I can play it and be satisfied

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Mr.48 posted:

I like all the game mechanics in the new King's Bounty games, but I really hate the overall progression. Basically every chapter is the exact same: Arrive in new area, grab free poo poo, take out weak armies, do quests, take out strong armies, do chapter quest. Rinse and repeat for every chapter of every game. Heres hoping that they change it up a bit this time. I think the biggest problem is that the strength of creatures ramps up too drastically every time you move into a new area. If it was a slower curve you wouldnt be forced to sneak around for your first hour in every new area avoiding fights.

This game definitely has a slower curve, havnt had to do that poo poo yet even once on hard

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Elswyyr posted:

I've never played a King's Bounty game before. Which should I start with, Armored Princess with Crossworlds?

Honestly start with the current one. AP's difficulty curve can be pretty brutal

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

goldjas posted:

Really glad this game came out of nowhere, it's awesome so far. Awesome music, and the difficulty curve so far isn't 10 kinds of hosed like APs was. Bosses still seem to suck though.

By the way I've been wondering. I beat Armored Princess way back when, but never played Crossworlds, was wondering if it's worth grabbing if I've already beaten Armored Princess (and really don't feel like playing the AP campaign again).

I did, but then against I usually play through these types of games on a harder difficulty when I beat them

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Kaizer88 posted:

Unfortunately, the game is a bit buggy. Had a few CTDs, but thankfully autosave stopped me from pulling my hair out. Also, don't take the diplomacy skill, as that completely screws you over when you get troops that you already have the max of. You'll get an uncontrolled stack wandering around like dumbasses in the fight, which can really mess up your game plan.

I think thats a bug, if you have too many units they should just be disappearing

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Amamake posted:

Play on whatever difficulty you used to in AP or Legend. The difference is that now there is a lot less emphasis on scavenging and the game likes to give you a poo poo ton of cash for no reason. Vikings are a pretty well-designed army, but I don't think they are that much stronger than starting troops in AP: I would kill for some King Snakes, Inquisitors or these huge artillery plants whatever they are called.

I made a mistake starting a blind Impossible run, which was going great until the first boss. And then I had to restart all over again.

I hope they will patch or someone will mod this new fucktons of cash thing. Part of my enjoyment of the KB series was the desperate feeling of never having enough cash

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
Holy gently caress skalds are a Ridiculous unit. One ability buff you're entire side with things like bless and the other ability debuff the ENTIRE enemy side with poo poo like doom.

Also loving the porn names for these Valkyries

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

PotatoManJack posted:

Hey, you're right. I just checked out wiki and it says the game came with an editor. I wonder why I had never realised this before. Time to see if there's some good fan content out there.

I played some mod that made it that armies can gain experience and become upgraded with new abilities. It was pretty cool but eventually became eXtremely overpowered. IIRC peasants got an ability that let them insta-kill a stack for sacrificing 40% of their units

MOVIE MAJICK fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Oct 30, 2012

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Kanos posted:

Is anyone noticing a bug with Learning, the +% XP skill in the spirit tree? I picked up a level of it as prereqs and am suddenly getting absolutely no experience from killing strong, very strong, and deadly stacks on greenwort at level 17. I'm horrified that it might be bugged to reduce your xp gain TO 10% instead of increasing it by 10% or something ridiculous.

Edit: Yeah, my game is completely hosed. I'm killing invincible stacks and gaining absolutely 0 experience from anything but quests. loving hell.

Edit2: Rolled back to a save before I took Learning and am getting full experience from everything. Looks like the talent is super bugged.

Oh holy gently caress I just took this talent, better double check

edit: nope it works fine for me

MOVIE MAJICK fucked around with this message at 17:05 on Oct 30, 2012

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Malek posted:

So a new patch got released today and it appears that using the spell "Phantom" (from a Rune Mage) on a Royal Griffin (which I admit, I used that on them, then Celestial Guard off of the phantom which NEVER wore off) causes the new Griffin to vanish instantly. Has anyone else had this? (I did it twice in a row with "Second Wind" from a Paladin and the game crashed too)

(EDIT) Never mind, was either that encounter, or that specific battle. Either way, back to exploiting.

Can anyone find a link to the patch notes?

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
I loving love this game I really do, but a lot of games got released recently that I really like. So I'm going to shelf this one a bit in the hopes of some more patches ( although the bugs, imbalances and crazy rear end typos do add to the bizzare enjoyment)

MOVIE MAJICK fucked around with this message at 05:59 on Nov 6, 2012

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
How's this game looking now? I was waiting til they got a large portion of bug fixes done before firing up a new game. Have they patched much since a month ago?

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Sloober posted:

I think they fixed most of the buggy stuff. Just as an aside though it is a much easier game than AP/CW was since talents can be game breakingly exploitable. Once you get access to full human armies you can easily get into a cycle of copy/paladins/rune mages and basically win every fight without a loss no sweat.

Yeah the ease of this game sort of sucks compared to AP. Even on impossible it's fairly easy.

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Suspicious posted:

Another thing that came out of nowhere:



A small island lost in the sea is covered by snow and ice. It is inhabited by the clan of Snow Elves. Young Olaf, the son of the Northling King, faces his destiny again as he helps the people of the North in their struggle against the upcoming thaw.

New adventures and challenges, new friends and foes, new items and awards await Olaf on his way to victory. He will set off on a journey to distant parts of Endoria that weren’t visited even by the Royal Bounty Hunters…

  • Creature skill system – lead your troops through dozens of battles and they will become stronger than ever!
  • Snow Elves – a new Elven nation that prefers snow and blizzard of the Ice Gardens instead of the green forests of Merlassar.
  • Necrolizards – a new kind of the undead, Lizardmen that have risen from the dead.
  • New locations to explore.
  • Over 20 new creatures.
  • Revamped creatures of King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North.
  • New items with unique attributes.
  • Over 20 hours of additional gameplay.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Time to give Warriors of the North a fair chance. I hope this fixes the game's wack difficulty curve and all the silly bugs

MOVIE MAJICK fucked around with this message at 17:45 on Jan 30, 2014

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
So far the DLC has streamlined the first couple islands, is less of a slog. The AI is definitely improved, you get less gold, you dont get a flying mount with the first babe, and they stopped the game from getting linear by opening up more islands sooner it looks like.

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

Verviticus posted:

Oh nooo when do you get the flying mount :(

According to people it is the 9th babe, but I like that because for me flying sort of kills exploration

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
Really funny bug encountered where a artifact that is supposed to improve call of nature by 20% actually improves it by 10000%, huge stacks of 10k hyenas

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
This DLC is much better guys, enjoyment is on AP levels so far

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
Another expandalone coming out soon. It better not be a pump and dump

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

quote:

Fun so far, if you liked King's Bounty games this is worth a snag. It is nice to play demons/orcs/undead for once.

I cannot help comparing this to Warriors of the North + Ice and Fire......and in comparison the material here (after 4 hours) seems rather thin.

Favorable reviews already

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
Well one of you guys needs to bite the bullet and tell us whats up

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica

PaybackJack posted:

So I'm a ways into this now and I think this might be my favorite of the games actually. I'm really enjoying this "building your secret shelter of darkness" thing. It was nice getting to use the Vampires and Demons in the early game, and while the islands are smaller than other games I feel like bouncing between them is actually enjoyable for the plot. Things aren't always laid out for you, there are occasional times where there are two ways to accomplish the same task and the way the world is getting (re)built around you is very cool.

There aren't a terribly large amount of bugs, mostly pathfinding issues. I've had 1-2 hard crashes, but saving often is a necessity in these games because the autosaves are only in the castles which are few and far between. The game needs some polish in a lot of areas, but the level design has been pretty good. The Spirit of Darkness(Rage Pet) abilities are so-so, I think my only problem with them is that having one that pushed units around made getting the Trapper award quite a bit easier.

Woah, better than Crossworlds? How's the difficulty/pacing?

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
Okay its released, downloading now, will keep you all updated

MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
The title screen is really low rent and lmao

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MOVIE MAJICK
Jan 4, 2012

by Pragmatica
The official forums are straight out of 1997

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