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KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

Darth Roxor

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Also, it's very nice of that cheeky french asshole to put a specialised anti-magic greatsword that dispels magic and lowers spell resistance on hit right before the spider queen fight, WHEN THE DISPEL CHANCE AGAINST SAID SPIDER QUEEN IS 0%
 

Tweed

Professional Kobold
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harsh circumstances
Pathfinder: Wrath
Once you have the vorpal axe though you can slice through everything. Use the genie to duplicate it and pass them off to your gladiator.
 

Darth Roxor

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202009151403051.jpg


:smug:

holy shit I knew this greater grap would pay off one day

202009151403231.jpg


:smug: :smug:

202009151420501.jpg


Eat shit and die! :dance:

Random thought: I swear the AI on the fucking player summons is made specifically to work against you. I summon a marilith with the explicit idea of having it finish off one of the goddamn spider mages - what does it do? It fucks off to bash one of the confused generic giant spiders in the other room that are nowhere near the the immediate vicinity of the major brawl.

Fun fact: Just before the fight ended (the random-ass stone statue was on the ground with 50 hp - WTF is this stone statue even DOING here for FUCK'S sake?!), I accidentally nuked Boreale with a stray sirocco. Somehow he was hit even though he wasn't highlighted by the targeting zone. Fortunately, though he had little hp left (~20), after the cast he went down to -1, so he survived. Imagine my outburst of maniacal laughter when the next guy finished off the statue, and it fucking exploded into mass-aoe ~40 damage as a final fuck you that would have otherwise killed Boreale :lol:

This game is fucking ludicrous, I swear :lol:
 

CryptRat

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Man, how I always end up posting a wall of text to say nearly nothing... I have been taking tons of notes, I'll need to sort those and I'll eventually post some very long boring text, maybe when I finish the game if I ever manage to do, what's certain is that so far I can still say I loved every second of it.

I play the game as is, in default mode, like I always do, and certainly won't cheat. Maybe I'm going to hit a wall if difficulty ramps up in chapter 4 like you suggest, which at this point is just a statement, I have no opinion about whether it's a good or a bad thing without the actual context.

Now if devs want to add retarded cheats (or retarded hard mode for the matter) to their games then I don't really care if it does not take too much time, I'd rather have a default polished experience and I think it is (and I know we don't agree) rather than really more than one difficulty with the full content balanced several times. Games often could be harder while this one could be easier, but that's fine, especially since it's the game with the very best combat system and combat content out there so I'm probably enjoying it even more than if it was easier, I end up actually changing weapons, looking for the best spell in any situation while I sometimes, maybe often, but don't always do. If I need to restart then I will, I restarted Dungeon Rats once because it was very fun and KOTC2 is one more step better than Dungeon Rats. If the game was not that good and was about reloading (it is, just read further :)) and redoing the same thing (don't forget initiative is rolled, and enemies change their tactics when you reload sometimes simply because the situation is different when their turn comes and occasionally even in the same exact situation, that's can't be said about every game).

About the campaign part I agree it's not a game with dungeons like some cool orcish fortress with some orc guards, a dragon surrounded by the corpses of the shamans that summoned it, some ambush from wargs, slimes and rats in the sewers where all toxic stuff is dumped, some wooden bridge above lava, and yes Star Trail is possibly the best example, and even KOTC1 which is nothing special is much better than KOTC2 in this aspect. Although' I think it could be worse, KOTC2 is a bit of a big mess, yes. However in the details the, indeed disconnected, parts are really fleshed out, there are checks before encounters against isolated groups of enemies, many of optional battles are against groups with lines of dialogs, in fact I would not say it's some random enemies put into a map, more like interesting enemies randomly put into a map, which is not the same thing, and when the reason is to provide one cool combat after another I can totally forgive that and arguably praise it. Then there are the interactive containers and items, that could be very banal but would not be 0 cost anyway and it's a bit better because there's often a few story lines related to those, there are the riddles (I think the part in the crypt from the very first encounter against the mimics to the very last one against the efreet or whatever it is is very good), this part is improved above KOTC1, and ultimately I don't mind that much that the game is more about one cool thing after another rather than a really coherent thing because these things are very good (I mean Star Trail has a combat auto-resolve option, the two games are of the only kind of RPGs which should exist :), PnP style and whatnot but they still are not the same exact kind of games with one with very good campaign and OK combat and the other only very good combat, while old SSI games and KOTC1 would be somewhere in-between with moderate cool combats and moderate cool campaign, I mean moderate as a comparison, of course I think they're great in both aspects).
 

CryptRat

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By the way, since we're having this discussion about cool, actually coherent campaigns, don't forget to put Hearkenwold in your to-play list if it's not already.
 

NJClaw

OoOoOoOoOoh
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Pronouns: rusts/rusty
Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
I play the game as is, in default mode, like I always do, and certainly won't cheat. Maybe I'm going to hit a wall if difficulty ramps up in chapter 4 like you suggest, which at this point is just a statement, I have no opinion about whether it's a good or a bad thing without the actual context.
The problem with chapter 4 is not that it's too difficult, but that you have to go through the same encounter copypasted multiple times, and the only reliable strategy is to blast everyone into oblivion (forget melee, CC, and any spell that doesn't deal high amount of damage in a large area).
 

Darth Roxor

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Regarding the 'cheat modes', I've come to realise, though maybe I'm wrong, that the paid level-ups are probably only an issue up until you leave the moon crypt. I've been monitoring my geld throughout the game, and roughly at the time when you leave the crypt, it seems you're showered with cash after every major fight, and given how ridiculously expensive everything is in shops, it's not like you're going to be spending that cash anyway. Atm my dudes are level 14, I have like 450k geld and dozens of junk items in my inventory that I keep around just in case, and at least once I picked a garbo magic item instead of a mountain of geld when I was given the choice (efreet at the end of the moon crypt).

Still, the sheer anguish of rubbing your face with sandpaper throughout that fucking oubliette is I think well enough worth disabling the level up costs, though perhaps I remember it being so terrible because my first party was shit. But regardless, I'm just a poor sap and I like my dopamine rush from clicking that pretty flickering star immediately when I level up. Perhaps superior 'thals can live with postponing it until they have the geld.
 

Darth Roxor

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Imagine my fureh when I found out only after the third fight in the south upper sewer death snare that I could get rid of the bullshit mass-slow and suppress sword with a simple dispel magic outside combat :negative:
 

CryptRat

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This moment when you answer "Rose" to a riddle and the answer to the next riddle is obviously "Rose" ...

Also got a funny moment, in the area where you get more and more Constitution maluses, I cast a spell for a temporary constitution bonus, the fight ends, character gains experience, then die from negative constitution, but the experience was just enough to level up so character levels up then get raised aftwerwards losing only less than 300 experience points.
 

Darth Roxor

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I gave the skewering vorpal greataxe to my sammy. He now has a 75-90% chance to crit for ~160-240 damage.

First test ride was the black dragon fight. Skewer -190, Skewer -190, dragon dead, cleave on vrock, skewer -190, dead, great cleave second vrock, skewer -190, dead.

 

Darth Roxor

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I've cleared out everything around the castle, now trying to bust through the gates.

Honestly, this thing is just depressing.

It's not even particularly, I dunno, difficult. It's just depressing. The way all those enemy mages come pre-buffed with a mix of blur, mirror image, mind blank, foresight, good fortune, stoneskin and contingency is depressing. The way they all know ALL the spells their class has to offer is depressing. The way they just keep spawning new ones is depressing. The way they always open up with accelerated spell is depressing. Their up-the-ass spell resistance is depressing. The fact they stand on fucking towers is depressing.

It's like peeling and cutting an entire bucket of onions. You have to keep stripping the layers away one by one, you cry all the way through and your fingers stink after the deed is done.
 

CryptRat

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I'm not going to talk about the editor. Maybe the game is worth buying for the editor alone but I don't know more than what you'll know if you read this, basically the system is great but I've no idea about the editor itself.

The game is hard, among party-based RPG whose challenge is focused on combat and where you can save everywhere, it's the hardest one I've played as far as I remembered, if I played an harder one it was possibly not worth my time for some reason. If you don't like hard games then don't touch the module with a stick. Once again whether you should buy the game for its editor anyway or not I've no idea.

I did only one playthrough, there are tons of things I've not explored. Most class or race presence or other checks are visible even when your party does not fulfil those but the truth is I've no idea how much of the checks change with a very different party, it's possible that it's basically all the same (and anyway fundamentally most of the game will be fighting against the exact same enemies) or that it's significantly different enough that it's worth a praise.

By the way, the text is overwhelmingly positive, don't feel forced to read further if you feel you're going to be pissed off by its positivity. Also there are probably going to be some mistakes and false claims and assumptions, hopefully not too many.




I'm not sure about sound and music, music especially seemed cool while sound seemed mediocre, sometimes weird but because of circumstances I played a lot of the game without sound. Turn-based games have to be as fast as you click, so putting sound feedback is always complicated anyway.

I'm not sure either about how I feel about the low quality environment textures, and even if I can't remember the games I'm certain it's not the first game with this sort of environment and that I already didn't have a strong opinion about it. It does give a tabletop map feel but it's so low quality that it's not really pleasant to look at. And it's just the textures which are low quality, bookshelves and such actually look good. Default tokens look mediocre and the game definitely looks worse than KOTC1 (although' some monsters such as trolls already looked a bit mediocre in KOTC1, with different perspective than characters and giants). However the reason was to make content more easy to do, both for original dev and potential other module makers, so it's alright. I don't know if the game looks alright, or worse, but what's sure it's really nothing you would not get to after the first 30 minutes, especially since it's straight top-down, which is great for visibility. Well, it's not completely true, water (is water really always water?), and especially elevations are not always perfectly clear at first glance I thought.

Game use a normal mouse-based inventory UI, and there are clickable things on the map, the commands in combat work and you have got easy access to all the enemies' stats.

I think they are hyperlink problems and missing, but the glossary is still overall very good.

You can save everywhere and multiple saves are available, you can only access the 10 last ones but the other ones are not deleted.

2.jpg



It's not worth it to make a complex game if nothing works as intended, and the state of the game on release date made it look like it. However on the contrary if a game is complex I will accept some bugs and that the UI is not perfect in all circumstances. This is current state of the game. I took notes of some bugs and annoyance. Note that the loading times are short so crashes can be less annoying than in some other games, and anyway short loading times are a good point of the game. Here is a list of bugs and related stuff.

I got multiple crashes or freeze (sometimes the game does not crash and I even think it's not strictly frozen, just slow like the “Ready vs spell” text would take literally two minutes to disappear, no idea if the game actually goes on if I don't kill it) and I took notes of most of these in case it could be useful (for a few of those it may be). I got 1 crash when killing a mimic in front of the crypt which then was going to throw out a character, 1 crash against Pizzara in the beginning of chapter 3 during the turn of an orcish soldier. He was in a quicksand and the bosses were dead I think so it is not impossible that he was trying to flee, 2 similar freezes when a red mummy attacks with the message “Attack 1/2 ()” (in quicksand each time if important). This one is the only one I reproduced. I got 1 crash against the phoenix, 1 crash I took the notes “water elemental” “web” “solid fog”, 1 crash when trying to shoot and got prone by an AoO from these small fire things (the ones with the not-mind-flayers), 1 crash when the spider queen appears, 1 crash in the big battle at the entrance of the castle. Also up to the very ending battle it was alright then, but I got 3 crashes and 1 freeze during the last battle, unfortunately I've got no detail but I can potentially answer questions.

Other potential bugs (maybe none of these is a bug) I faced were temporary companion takes items on the ground when party is full but you can't take the items back from him, Earthquake (druid) is not in the same level in my book (7) and in the help files (8). I think I got some weird thing with the paladin companion, and it could be due to the xp cost of recharging a wand, but eventually her displayed level did not correspond in the different places, and especially did not correspond to the XP she actually won after encounters (I think she had the same level as the others but did not gain the same XP, I can't remember exactly). There's finally this encounter against lizardmen in chapter 2 where the text would always say they've got a surprise round but sometimes they actually don't.

I got lags during big battles, and especially during the last battle the game could lag during the turns of the enemies. My PC is very bad so it may be the reason why, and it never gets unplayable, but it's annoying. I also always got big lags when buying or selling items, it can be very annoying when buying a lot of options since you need to buy the potions one by one.

I've got more complains about convenience even if most of these are not exactly bugs. Loading times are short but not null and since I got to reload a lot I would not have complained if there were even shorter. During long battles, even with all the related options checked, enemies' turns are not that short (nothing horrible). Getting out of water is a mess?? I always lost my turn without doing what I wanted to do, not sure how normal it is or if what is going to happen should actually be more clear with the arrows. I never managed to know who an enemy is targeting with “Read vs spell”. Not sure if it's normal, just me being stupid (well I am, but it can be both), or if something's lacking. I can't click ESC and reload while enemy is thinking, most of the time it's not a problem, of course, but during the very ending battle I know I'm dead at this moment so I want to reload as soon as possible. Pressing 1 opens character 1's sheet, pressing 2 while inside character 1's sheet does nothing. Maybe it's me not clicking right but I think that the game lacks a lot of hyperlinks. I took note of “Mass greater invisibility”, also right-clicking on some conditions when casting Dispell magic gives nothing, Right-clicking on Pull or Slide gives nothing. There's no (maybe it's almost no) hyperlink on potions and scrolls, that's annoying. Finally, Formation is a mess. You should be able to rearrange your characters in the beginning of a fight, as is you rearrange in a weird way then click exactly on the right tile to enter a room to be sure they will be rearrange as you wish, and sometimes it does not even work as intended because it's a room when they don't get rearranged automatically and the party entered the room differently from the last time.

4.jpg



Although' the game does not entirely take place underground there's no real wilderness part. Unless I'm remembering wrong there'll be in some next official module. Note that I like open exploration, but compared with KOTC1 which in theory had wilderness exploration and definitely some parts where you could choose between two dungeons the number of “A mysterious force prevent you from going further” when entering a new location, which is a very bad way of presenting a very bad feature to begin with I would not say KOTC2 is worse than KOTC1 in that aspect, on par at worse.

You can't bring evil characters into the campaign. I feel like it's not a bad idea, you accept from the beginning that you're not playing evil characters here.

The game is divided into 4 chapters. To make it simple since it's not exactly true each chapter is one map and you can freely roam the map but can't go back to the previous one.

In the details it could be a bit better, but at least the game uses exactly the kind of narrative that I like. It's not completely abstract and emergent with only traps, encounters, which is alright but still not how I like it the most, I like chatting with stupid goblins and freeing a lich being more than reaching its tile. However more importantly it's party of adventurer narrative, you won't end up fighting against some main protagonist's twin brother, there's no mood talk. Besides events are not some super grim stuff about choosing between saving a child or his mother.

I want to distinguish 3 scales, the overall campaign scale, each chapter scale, and each event scale, because I think the first part is done alright, the third one is well done and the second one badly done.

On a big scale, the main plot of the game is about pursuing some villain. You'll occasionally meet him ore some of his thugs. That's alright. Besides there are interesting transversal themes, like some important relics, the Tome of the Dead and the Staff of Reversal, that you eventually find and will be involved several times during your journey. That's a nice touch.

I think that the complete campaign does feel like a complete campaign with a satisfying conclusion.




Now each chapter is big mess, except maybe for the final part of the game. Areas lack a dedicated central theme. I already mentioned that, and maybe it's a bad example since this game has single floor, single map chapters (but it could be the entire game too), but an orcish fortress does not mean you'll fight only orcs with maces. You can have trolls, wargs (which ambush), shamans of course, a dragon surrounded by the corpses of shamans, and there can be some evil book just like in the game, then there are the sewers with crocodiles and acidic slimes, a tomb with a fallen orc king, then there are the lower levels near lava with slaves making weapons, but also trolls, fire elementals and a demon in a corner. Now this game, no, you have evil eyes coexisting with vampires, dark knights, a phoenix, a frost giant and a dragon without a lair.

It's a bit of an exaggeration. Chapter 2 has the crypt, but the narrative of the full chapter is just not that well focused around it. All of it is very fleshed-out narratively anyway, story with goblins, story with witches, it's interesting.

Chapter 3 is focused around finding 4 keys, and what's very cool about it is that it's a bunch of encounters, some optional and some mandatory, that you can take in any order (with about 4 levels to win so order will matter in what is fundamentally easier or harder, and what will be easier or harder in practice). However once again the set of encounters is too incoherent, even if fun encounters and fleshed-out events meant that I didn't care much about that. It's just that some games are very overall atmospheric and immersive, this one not really even if in the details some parts are. I won't blame it too much for being messy but it is. Solve riddles, fight against a phoenix which appears later on the map (or don't, by the way), help knights fighting against a dragon, and free then banish a lich, if you didn't miss the secret passage that is.

Besides, ironically the chapter 4 in particular is the most coherent part. It is mostly a straightforward fortress assault, and it's coherent but it's also the least fleshed-out part when it comes to atmospheric texts linked to evil books and such so I think it's not a better part, I would even say narrative-wise it's possibly the worst, I prefer chapter 2 and 3 (encounters are so-so, I mean by the standards of the game, they're great anyway). It's a cool conclusion though', the game clearly does not wastes your time with filler content and a big multi-floor dungeon could have been anti-climatic if done wrong.




Events are often polished. Sure this kind of games is strong on emergent narrative, when you cast a web spell or a quicksand spell it always makes for cool battles. Killing a dragon with an instant death spell is something memorable. It's different from simply making damage. Same with enemies, there are also more than making damages. There are not-mind-flayers with their slaves, this dark knight with his strong weapon during the first battle of chapter 3 against Pizzara which stay there alive in the battlefield after you've cast a couple of Earthquake spells and every other enemy is dead. Skilled spell casters including vampires and blue mummies are always something, even with no narrative associated. The final fortress is a fortress, there's about no line of text but it works very well anyway. Dragons, overall, are a big thing, and so are demons summoned from outer worlds, without ton of associated text. I think the goblin arena is almost iconic of the game, it is an arena where a big group of green goblins are fighting against a big group of purple (there are called blue? I'm not sure) goblins and you can choose to fight against one chosen group alone, fight against the two groups at the same time, or side with one group against another. There is one part where your party is split. The only not-beholder is sort of a big thing.

Now narrative is very far from only emergent, at least until the end of chapter 3. Riddles come in very concrete way, and there's atmospheric texts associated to the smallest things like looking for books in a library. Maybe only the crypt part in chapter 2 make you feel like playing your PnP campaign, but in my opinion the game, overall, is very far from terrible in that aspect, despite being a mess with very incoherent biotope.

Free then banish a lich, summon a genie and make a wish, make dark pacts with witches, engage into a retarded struggle between goblins, that's the kind of narrative I want to see in such games. Also named weapons, very important.

Many of the enemies have dialog lines, some of the enemies are also allies of fortune because they're shopkeepers and heal for money. Events are often very fleshed-out, especially in the first part of the game where every encounter is actually narratively introduced, while in the second part it's not as true but there still are the lich, the not-beholder, the dragon, the riddle guys …

When you click on a mundane barrel or a book there's a chance it'll open a dialog box with 5 different choices depending on your races and classes.

Anyway, most events end up with a cool encounter, which is still mostly the point of the game.

Also your heroes' feats are added to the journal and you get to keep the hydra's heart (hope I'm not mixing things up) and other trophies.

I put it that way in another post but really what I think is that there are maps, and then there are not random encounters put into the maps but rather well-thought encounters randomly put into the maps, which is an important nuance.

11.jpg



The game is composed of four medium size, very dense, maps each corresponding to one chapter. Exploration is limited, you often can't go back. I prefer freely exploring a small world with a few dungeons, but I like that you won't go back unless you've found an important key.

You're basically playing through a linear campaign with some immediate choices. When a dialog box pops you're generally proposed a lot of choices, some of which are inactive because you don't have the right race or class inside your party.

Don't misinterpret, the game is not a long corridor where you smash the next monsters which appear. The exploration during the biggest part of chapter 3 is very non-linear. Also chapter 2 has many choices, and my party managed to ally with ratmen, then chose to side with green goblins for an easy fight where my weak party, who could not do better, did nothing but probably some of the worst possible rewards there, then roamed the crypt, which with experience gained from the fight between goblins was not that hard, then fought against lizardmen, which was very hard, then against a bunch of animals and water spirits, which was very easier. Then it moved to the next part, only going back a little later to turn a then companion paladin from stone to flesh then only much later decided to fight against the coven of witches met here. I feel like it may be the easiest way to approach the chapter but it's certainly not the only one.

I think I needed about 100 hours including reloads to complete the game, while I feel like the game is nearly as long as KOTC1, it's not very easy to judge because it's smaller but also more dense. It also has more choices with different encounters depending on your choices in particular during the second chapter.

I think I finished chapter 1 around level 5, 2 around 10, 3 around 15 and was level 20 during the final battle. The game proposes about 75 encounters, all cool.

The party get split once, it's a cool mechanics and, it could be longer than the actual very few involved fights but it's cool that it's not more than once because this sort of thing, just like the goblin arena, is more memorable as a one-of.

Many shopkeepers are enemies which are allies of fortune and that you can eventually attack, the encounter is meant to be won and you don't get many items nor gold leave alone the entire merchant's stock. I've no strong opinion about that, and it's a bit of the same for many enemies, many enemies have very strong equipment but you only get a few part of enemies' equipment after defeating them.

Rest is limited to fires, which provide a limited number of possible rests, but some shopkeepers also offer a resting option, including one unlimited one but that you would not be able to go back to after a while. Shopkeeper scan also heal your characters, hp restoration is cheap, cure from affliction can be expensive and you'll often prefer to choose other ways, and they won't restore spell slots nor psionic power points. I think it's fine, it counterbalances how stronger than fighters spell caster are that you can get back your hit points for a small price but are unable to get back your spell slots the same way.

Perception checks often involve the player. Either you must not miss some clickable spot, and I really like that there are a lot of clickable spots and that it's in theory not impossible that you miss one, for example to enter the crypt you need to find 5 hint scrolls and even if it's a tiny moment I thought the research was cool. Or you must get close to some wall not to miss some hidden spot or passage. Then the characters may be involved twice, first finding a clickable spot if it was not initially visible, then actually find the hidden thing or failing to find it via a dialog box. I don't know if there are checks which are not deterministic and that you can pass or fail to pass, it's possible that I did such things but I'm very far from certain.

There's one case of direct interaction where you need to actively use appropriate healing on a non-player character. Interactions with libraries, books and such opens dialog lines with different choices based on your party.

There are also some more cool things, you can trade Max hit points for rewards, and two times you can choose a reward among several items as well as gold if you prefer. This gold choice is important because it can allow a party who would not take optional encounters to still have enough gold to level up.




The game has a decent amount of puzzles and riddles. These are an important of old CRPGs to me so I'm very happy with those. In the details there are bunch of math riddles and chess riddles which may possibly feel out of place (I personally like those, but that's not the point), while the other riddles are good.

I think they are well-thought. Besides I can't know exactly (I don't know if you can technically get stuck) since I didn't use those but I think players can gradually get hints, so that players who don't like riddles won't bother with riddles at all while people who like those but don't like to get stuck (some riddles can't be bruteforced like combat, it is another type of challenge) can get some fun from the riddles.

They're polished, for example when you need to decode a code (one letter = one sign) the dedicated UI is made and well made, you're given the number of apparitions of the most occurring symbols, and with the good class a character in your party can give you a big hint with the letters of one word in the message. This kind of puzzles really fleshes-out the experience, while you can't get stuck if it's important to you. The kind of puzzles you'll need to solve to enter doors are very good too.




I think that one particular feature of the game is a total lack of freeform and emergent gameplay. You can't directly attack NPCs at will or launch a combat by casting a spell (very few spells such as Mirror Image can be cast out of combat, but this one is more than anecdotal because it's strong). Let's say we can't judge aspects individually, I think the KOTC2 full package makes sense, everything is done with the aim to make combat more interesting, including letting you take the fights you want and when you want to when possible. Note that the result is that I always played the game fair (except for this one encounter where I don't know if I should get surprised but in practice did not), I never cheesed by putting my characters in a corner during a fight, I never walked back during a fight in fact, and I'll get back to this but I never used Summon spells to make combat easy in a weird way.


13.jpg




My only Pen And Paper experiences with Dungeons & Dragons were from AD&D and my experience with 3.5 is only from video games. I've no idea how faithful the adaptation of the system is and can only judge how good what's in the game is.

The engine got upgraded since KOTC1, psionic powers were added as well as many new classes and subclasses with their dedicated feats.

Characters can wear basically any equipment, potentially, for example weapons, with maluses depending on feats (some depending on classes) and armours come with a progressive chance to fail to cast spells.

Maxed out stats, with the strongest equipment, go up to about 30 at the end of the game. If you've played KOTC it's about the same. That's not that terrible since the bonuses are often not stupid, but one thing I've already complain about after playing KOTC is that in theory I'm not the biggest fan of enemies already all having 80 hit points when learning the fireball spell and eventually fighting against bunches of giants with 350 hit points each and wizards with more than 150. My wizard actually got even more by the end, with a belt which directly provides 100 more hit points. Note that it's not a big deal, it's only natural to rely on instant death and more generally disabling spells against giants rather than damaging spells anyway, still overall I'm not that fan of 3.5 number bloat.

Also, based on that, how the fuck do level 9 spells which target only enemies with less than 100 hps make any sense ?!

My mantis dealt 27 hits per round at the end I think. That's stupid. She was not even strong, because she was a gladiator and gladiators unlike fighters can't learn the Wade In feat which allow to make more than one hit per round after walking. Note that 27 hits per round is stupid, but unbalanced it's not in the sense that the character is nowhere as good as a mage anyway, she's useful in her own way sure but not overpowerful compared to other protagonists on the battlefield.

Gladiators have the Blinding strike attack which as the name suggest can blind enemies, but I think it's pretty much useless because one of the reason why you want to blind enemies is to prevent Ready enemies to trigger an Attack Of Opportunity when your fighter approaches them.

By the way, let's not overstate the number bloat, the numbers, the ways to bypasses high hps and how everything work, item balance especially, are still miles better than anything which is not D&D.

Levelling up costs gold, which is a mechanic I like. A smaller party will have more gold to buy equipment.

Instead of exponentially increasing XP costs and rewards, you gain less Xps when your level is higher, which I highly dislike because instead you should simply gain less Xps when your current Xps is higher. It should be based on your current potential level, not you current level at all. You can choose not to level up as soon as possible, and there's no way to know when you are intended to level up, in a game which is so finely balanced it's annoying. I mostly levelled-up before resting because mages and druids gain useless empty spell slots. I get the reasons, a smaller party should not get too much extra xp, underleveled characters (for example raised from dead which means they did not get XP from encounter and even lost some, or because he used XP to enchant a strong item) get extra XP compared to the rest of the party, and you should be able to go on without taking optional content or at least not all of it. However once again the only problem is basing the XP you gain on level rather than current XP, it totally ruins what I've said about optional encounters if you choose not to level up as soon as possible.



I read the thread a bit before playing and knew the game was hard, so I played with a strong party. It's complicated for me to talk about that part because I did almost nothing really different that usual to be honest, I used exactly the classes I wanted to use, just re-rolled a little more than I generally would have and took care of choosing appropriate races I like instead of races I like at all. I don't like to use too many own rules for the game to be hard enough so that's fine.

Pool of Radiance was made and balanced so you would play with your PnP party, and with nearly any party with little restriction (especially with 2 additional mercenaries). It does not mean there are tons of choices available (very few classes, no feat) but that's absolutely great anyway. Pools of Darkness was not, you would play with 5 humans, strong classes and I'd recommend a mage with both high intelligence and dexterity. However note that the manuals of these SSI games or at least some of those propose a recommended party and it's always a very strong one. KOTC you have about no choice unless you want to play with 3 mages over 4 different characters. Now KOTC2 I really would not recommend to play with less than 2 and probably 3 offensive spell casters, and also probably one real strong fighter. That still leaves tons of choices, especially with the amount of choices of schools of magic, spells and feats. Note that subraces allow for more choices of races which are actually strong for a given class. I don't know how critical 2 or 3 points in a stat is, I personally rerolled for the most important stat for each character be maxed-out and other relevant stats not be too awful.

I like mages and I like fighters so I used a mage and a fighter, and I'm sure these classes are good, I don't like hybrid classes, maybe most of the classes I did not used are all ridiculously bad (paladin companion and especially warlock companion are alright though'), and maybe with two dwarves instead of a half-giant and a mantis and with a mage with only 16 in intelligence and with a focus on different schools from Enchantment and Evocation I would have not managed to complete the game. Note that I always say a game is well balanced if and only if it proposes a challenge to an average banal diverse party so I'm totally coherent here if I say I don't give a shit about whether the game can be completed without a mage (note that you can probably finish it with 0 mage but 2 psionicists but you know what I mean) nor how easy it is with 6 mages. I may try with another party someday, but the reason why I probably won't is simply that I never replay games and if I think that this one for once would be worth another playthrough (with all the possible different parties) I'll probably simply play some next module instead.

The game rewards you for using more different classes and races by providing more interaction options during choices. With so many classes I doubt people would use less than, let's say 5,to get more options and I used 6. Races do not really give different options, I used 2 kobolds and 2 halflings, possibly knowing it unlocks extra interaction options I would have used 6 different races.

The only controversial character in my party was a rogue. During most fight she was plain useless, sometimes doing nothing at all. But there are two things. First I'm not certain how many of the hidden passages my party would have found without her nor of the number of encounters where she allowed the party to get a surprise round or more often not to face a surprise round of the enemies. She allowed to make copies of the Tome of the Dead, which was useful twice. Maybe she was actually useful and I didn't noticed, it's possible that I would be surprised if I replayed the game with a different party. Besides during a few very hard fights and in particular the very last one she was not useless because she could use mage scrolls, the power of spells with numbers would be very low but Accelerate spell especially she could cast on herself and on the paladin and the druid.

The rest of my party was composed of strong characters with the limit that I think, as already mentioned, that the mantis gladiator could have been more useful as a fighter during the last fights of the game which are spell caster feats (at least she can grapple one mage after moving when possible). I made some bad choices, like I took several feats related to shields on my fighter who eventually used a two-handed weapon.

The companions (a paladin and a warlock, there's for sure one more companion I missed in the beginning based on the dialog options) completed my party well. The paladin with her shield sustained hits quite better than my other characters, one such character among 8 is not completely stupid. One additional spell caster was not a luxury and the warlock also came with different spells from those my mage and psionicist had previously learnt.

I don't know how many things I missed due to my party composition, probably very few, there's a Trident whose analysis requires a religion check. Still I really made my own party and my own story.




I used a druid, I don't know if a cleric is better. I thought the Holy word spell whose one scroll I used was very strong and is unavailable to druids. Also the level 9 druid spells (Whirlwind, in fact) seem not to compare with level 9 cleric spells (Mass Heal, Mass Harm, True Resurrection, Mass Spell Resistance). I am sure about how useful Turn Undead is in the campaign but it does not seem useless for sure, I imagine especially that it could help solve the crypt part before meeting the goblins, and I thought that some fights against undead in chapter 3 were particularly hard while possibly with a cleric they're not. You've given scrolls (+ a wand) of strong cleric spells at the end and I did not have any cleric in my party, I don't know if the game can be completed without cleric spells but it's fine since it can be completed without a cleric and with only the scrolls.

Paladin's Smite Attack is good, I always forgot to use it but it's good.

Unlike wizards who need the ability to speak so anything which happens to them prevent them from casting, psionicists can use their powers in any circumstances. Sure there's a silenced casting feat but between all the other feats I also wanted to take I never took the time to learn it and once in a while it did matter.

For some reason I didn't think of using True resurrection spells (or Heal spells on Unconscious characters) directly during battles until the very last battle. It could probably have helped a few times.

One thing that's true is that plenty of things I would have no idea exist or how they work if the game was not that hard. I discovered tons of things as I played, which were probably in other games such as KOTC1 but I barely knew (although' for sure some I had known and did not remember). I could not exactly tell what's new or not regarding fighter skills and other general skills for example.

Some things I don't know how they work, I think one thing which surprised me was when some enemy was Ready vs Spell, then I cast quicksand under his feet and he gets stuck then he reacts to the next spell anyway.

Also I totally missed that dexterity did nothing for melee fighting while strength increased both attack and damage. Not a big deal eventually, since dexterity is important for fighters anyway because of armour class, that the Finesse feat allows to use dexterity modifier for attack bonus anyway and that you can find and buy enough items that increase melee damage. When I discovered this finesse feat the mantis automatically became a lot stronger, and there's also one of the feats related to dual wielding that I think she took a bit late and also significantly improved her power. However my rogue was going to use a bow at first, and with her low strength she really was bad at it, she was bad at everything anyway. The rings you can find which increase damage do also work for ranged attack, but I did not find enough to satisfy everybody. If I replay the game, or a next module, I may create a party which can actually support a ranged character (probably directly a ranger too).

There are tons of feats available, I didn't take most of the feats giving bonuses to some type of saving throw but I'm sure someone who analyses or knows better that I do would know that some are very useful for the actual module or at all while some others are not. Past a feat raising initiative, mages can specialize in some dedicated schools, and specialized mages can also pick feats directly related to some spells linked with their specialization, increasing their effects or preventing allies from being hit by the spells. Fighters would especially choose between feats which work with multiple weapons, those which work with a shield and those which work with two-handed weapons.

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It was not unexpected since it has been the same in most D&D games since Eye of the beholder and Pool of radiance, but itemization in this game is great.

Maybe I remember the first game wrong but I think it's very close to the first game, nothing surprising about that.

There are items which give +2/+4/+6 to one stat (bonuses which are often not cumulative), especially constitution and items which directly give more hit points. These are really not the most inventive ones but at first it's interesting to choose who you want to give these items too, whether to a mage so he won't get killed anytime he took some damages or to a warrior so he can efficiently do warrior things.

Anyway, weapons you find are mostly unique, most weapons and armours have a name, they're really hero stuff, and they have interesting effects. One of the early mace can potentially kill undead in one hit and I still switched to it near the end of the game when fighting against undead. Another one would dispell effects on the target, which is strong anyway and would also kill a summoned enemy in one hit. For the rest progression curve is perfect, one two-handed vorpal axe was so strong it is was actually game changing, and even this one I changed one time for a reach weapon to bypass reaction force damage from a monster because I'd got no ring preventing force damage. You don't find too many armours and they're very unique, and you find just enough weapons that you would keep a few for different situations and sell the other few.

There are also ring preventing one type of damage, and the mantis had to switch between those in order not to get killed by the taken damage dealt to most bosses as well as slime and babaus (alternative is to use reach weapons which bypass that damage, which I did exactly once).

There are more strong pieces of equipment, you find some boots of haste which gives permanent haste. You also find some helmets which blind the wearer on purpose so it'll be immune to gorgons' eyes, which is not a luxury, and blinding is less of a penalty in such fights that I thought at first. Boots of initiative is not a luxury for a mage either.

Enemies which can wield a weapon are often given a strong weapon. You really can't pick everything they've got after killing them, I am really not sure what you actually get, possibly a part of bosses' equipment you actually get. I've not a strong opinion about that, I don't care much that mundane enemies have strong items and I'm happy that you're not flooded with weapons.

Shops also sell tons of different items, and depending on your choices you may have access to slightly different merchants during the game. They also sell strong weapons with a name, and during the entire game you won't get enough gold to buy more than something like 3 of them if you don't buy anything else. Consumables are also available and in practice I bought most available potions of healing and all items which restore spell slots and power points (these ones are cheap, I'm certain you're meant to buy all of those, people who don't take the time to look into shop inventory will be punished). They sell some total immunity equipment and other defensive equipment whose price is off-putting, because why not.

I noticed a belt which gives the Pounce ability near the end, which allows to perform a full attack with more than one hit when charging, that I did not buy (possibly I would have even duplicated it) because I did not realize I would actually have much more gold than needed by the end, because finding a path to charge is not always easy and also because I thought current belt which raised both dexterity and strength was already not that bad.

I quickly bought a bracer for +6 to melee damage, and also at least one medium power hit point increasing equipment part because these are not too expensive. I bought some potions of haste and heroism. I never bought any slaying arrows while some are available, my bow using rogue was very bad so I didn't really care, I am not certain you actually bypass Mirror Image with the True Seeing ability but I'm certain enemy archer at least occasionally bypasses my Mirror Images, in which case these slaying arrows could be very powerful. I also bought many items at the very end with my remaining golds, from which a cheap wand with Mass Heal charges which is cheap and very likely meant to be bought from everybody.

There are some items for special characters, like you can buy equipment which raise attack and damages when unarmed.

Overall I think that the content of shops is good. My only complain could be that I feel like they could also have some weapons like the mace I talked about which allows to slay undead, is cheap and very strong on certain circumstances, but maybe there's no really such same possible kind of abilities, in which case maybe this exact weapon should be sold instead of found exactly because it's one of the weapons which is strong but cheap. Also I imagine that this kind of things is what crafting you're meant to use for, I just never took the time to.

Note that, since many shopkeepers are allies of fortune, you can fight them, the encounter is not overly hard but you don't get much gold nor many items when killing those, I've no strong opinion about whether it's good as is or better done another way.





Two times I think you can get rewarded an item of your choice from a list and you can also select gold, enough to buy a strong item but that can also help to level up. Everybody likes this sort of reward, and I have the intuition different players would choose different rewards, which means itemization is good at all and these choices especially are interesting. I selected gold the first time and a robe which adds spell slots the second time.

You're also given once the possibility to duplicate an item, I duplicated a cape which gives more spell slots but here too I think players would choose a different item to duplicate, the boots of haste were an interesting choice but I felt like during very big battles I can always cast Haste (or in fact Time Manipulation which simultaneously slow down the enemies).





Crafting complements the system well. Basic items are cheap to create as long as you've got the required metal, I created a tower shield because I did not find a satisfying shield in the beginning. Adding extra enchantment on the contrary is expensive as it should be (but it's really not ridiculously expensive). It costs gold, xp and a special magic gem depending on the enchantment. You find enough gems to do whatever you want during the game I think, other scripted things cost gems but you can choose whatever gem you want. Only enchant I added was a +5 bonus to the light shield of my thief, I did not ended the game flooded with gems, and I think I never sold any. Once again one reason I think it's very good is that I'm certain other players did not craft the same items as I did.

Weapons have a limit of 10 points of enchantments, and strong weapons you find especially already are fully enchanted and you can't add new additional enchants to those weapons.

Inventory uses some basic slots (consumables stack) + limited total weight.

Gold gain is perfectly balanced in my opinion. You've got just enough to level up and buy maybe two strong, a couple of weak items or craft some and potions and scrolls if you take most optional battles, and I feel just enough to level up if you don't take most optional battles.

Gold spent on levels is significant and small parties probably have more gold in the end, because why not, you need to counterbalance the lack of thugs with better equipment.

There's a good chance different players bought, used, crafted, chose as a reward different items even with relatively similar parties. And these items are powerful and different, the reason is not that they don't matter. That's a proof that itemization is particularly good.

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As you expect combat is the central mechanic of the game.

The game is hard and I'd say that in old similar games you'd need to be lucky or make the right choices, in this game you need to lucky and make the right choices.

One important aspect is the different time different actions take. There are full time actions such as the Mass heal spell and attacking with multiple hits in a round, standard actions which don't prevent from moving, Move actions that you can take instead of moving so you can still perform a standard action anyway and Free actions which in practice are not completely free (the actual rule is different and depends on the action but let's say one same free action you generally can only take once in a turn as a free action). Different spells can be a different type of action. There's no preparation time and when you cast the spell it's immediately cast. However there are preventive actions of at least two types which can prevent a spell caster from casting. They must target a single enemy. Counterspell allows to counter a spell, while Ready vs Spell allows to preventively use your action (the character didn't use an action during his turn), and disabling the mage would prevent his spell, of course, but damaging him well enough will generally do the trick as well. Enemies effectively use those actions. I love this system, more than 2AP systems which it is the closest to but is still different from for sure, and also more than both full AP systems with one AP bar and systems with two different bars, one to move and one to attack, I think these other systems all have their own problems that this one does not have.

The game has cool terrain. Enemies will push and pull your characters into fire, and your tall and high strength characters can or cannot do the same depending on the enemies being immune or not (for example because they're flying).

Attacks of Opportunity are a big thing, and your spell casters often want to blind or make enemies fall down before your fighter would approach them. Attacks of Opportunity are also a big thing when a character tries to stand up after falling down (a feat can prevent this kind of Attacks of Opportunity but you can't learn all feats).

Initiative plays a big role, as much as in old games but for very slightly different reasons. In Pools of Darkness your mages would die from two fireballs, after enemies damaged them there's a chance your mages would be unable to cast a spell and also casting a fireball first would directly kill half of the enemies at once and especially half of the spiders which would poison a character making it unable to fight in one hit, while in KOTC2 the enemies may have disabled your mages and your party may be half dead if you could not at least limit the slaughter by doing something first, directly killing them is hard but preventing half of them from acting is possible with a Quicksand or Animal Trance spell.

Note that the chance that a character with high dexterity and the feat raising initiative is high enough, not too low but not too high either, you don't want your characters to always play in the same exact order.

Depending on the queue order, both of your characters and of enemies, you sometimes take very different decisions. The very last battle is very relevant of that aspect, this balor you would try to deal with differently, killing it with your fighter for damages to its allies, desperately trying to dominate it because he's going to act next and your chance to simply disabling it is not stronger than the chance to dominate it anyway even if dominating is not terribly better (if he loses the enchantment on his next turn because of its shacking it off feat), choosing a better spot, because you can, where you would try to dominate both him and the cleric and bowman behind him, and if you don't directly manage to dominate it it's not a big deal because your warrior is also going to play before it, or using spells from your two mages acting first with big areas of effect because the chance he will at least be stunned is far from null. And I talked only about the balor but the mages are even slightly more of a threat, and I also talked only about the first turn while the more a combat advances the more there's a chance you reach a unique situation. This aspect is very important, I reloaded a lot while playing the game but more than often I just was not doing the exact same expecting luckier results for the reason that the situation was different.

The difficulty of each encounter is high, but I think the game is very tactical relies just as much to randomness as I want such a game to, it's hard so there are many situations where there's nothing you can do and in the very few hardest battles I would often reload simply by looking at the initiative queue but that's fine, it's a price to pay for the game to be as much fun and satisfying as it. It's clearly the least worst kind of system, I really hate player turns instead of character turns and I really hate deterministic initiative as well. Besides I think that gold, fire and other aspects are well balanced.

I often reloaded when missing my first spell, very rarely when missing any spell.

I switched weapons and elemental resistance rings more than I ever did, I discovered (sometimes a bit late, and it's very likely that there are tons I missed because I did not learn) many spells which could be very strong in some situations, you have access to strong options and there's not only one which work in a given situation. Overall I used more different spells than usual.

I think that one particularity of the game is that many enemies have scripted first actions, and don't get me wrong if you put them into weird situations they will still act differently. It means that especially the same type of spell casters will, in an almost deterministic way, each use their own same spells on their first turn. I've got no strong opinion about that, I guess it's better than winning because on one reload one an enemy did something stupid, but that still happens at times, Remove blindness or False life are not exactly as strong as Prismatic Void, and yes it's an euphemism. Also an enemy may lose a turn to awake an ally, if it awakes a strong boss it's really strong but if it's another weak enemy your warrior can't reach and the enemy who actually awakes it is the strong boss then it can be weird. But this is nitpicking, the AI proposes a fun challenge, and rarely acts so bad that you feel like you simply won because enemies did all they could so you could win.

Anyway in practice I thought that fights against spell casters was a step away from spell caster which have mirror image (well a lot of them do have mirror image) and cast fireball and web, I talked about the beginning of a fight but during fights they propose very different things. But maybe I should replay KOTC1 and I would realize it's actually already exactly the same. What's certain is that enemies overall use a lot of different skills, giants will take advantage of their size and such, they're really a pleasure to play against.

I really like the AI that way, you can anticipate a bit but not too much, it is strong and unpredictable.

Summon spells only allow to summon one monster and each summoner can have only one associated summoned creature at a time. As someone who tend to spam the battlefield with swarms of weak monsters for the only reason that enemies will target those instead of my actual party and win that way, I think it's a good thing that this game will make me play differently. As a rule, except for creating a diverse party (and I don't mind creating weak characters, given I can play the classes I want to play, if the game is intended to play that way) I hate to put self-restrictions on my way to play the game, so I really like what the game has to offer.

I used tons of small level spells, because of limited rest and cool D&D balance. Limited rest is nice, and really not particularly punishing, or rather it means it's not always easy to reach the next fire, but if you did with a few exceptions it means you did fine and you can go on.

Delaying your action to the end of the round means that during the next rounds you'll also play last, that's a good thing.





Magic is a big part of combat. The ending battles from level 17 especially are battles between spell casters who cast Accelerate spell on themselves then cast two spells in a turn.

Mages, druids, clerics and hybrid classes with the same magic use spell points. Psionicists use a set pool of power points which increases as they level up (immediately when they level up, while mages gain empty spell slots, that is a thing when you're paranoid about when to rest).

Given he's learnt the appropriate feat, a mage can cast a spell using some higher spell slot (he can use a higher spell slot without any feat simply to make it slightly stronger) for example to expand its area of effect or to increase (Maximize doubles the power) the power of the spell.

The effect of some spells scales to the mage's power, typically the number of a missiles of Magic Missile, some don't.

That's for mages, many psionist powers allow the psionicists to use more power points up to their current level for increased power, and that makes some powers from earlier levels at worse only slightly weaker than the upper level ones at full power.

Besides spell resistance, many types of different saving throws can be taken into account when using a spell, to make it work or to make it work at full power. Disintegrate requires a touch attack for example, which uses armour class but not really.

There are a few spells you can cast before combat such as mirror image and mage armour, so there are likely many spells I've not learnt while I would have learnt if I knew you could (I mean, I'm sure it's written in the description, it's just that I did not pay enough attention). I like it that way, with limited rests just all spells that you can cast anywhere and stay would be too strong, if they stay only for one fight it could work but I prefer the way it is. Some spells like haste especially I would cast, I also cast Greater Weapon Enhancement more than once. I can't remember exactly but a few more improvement and especially defensive spells I cast once in a while, which is fine, while I used offensive spells quite a bit more. I also used some potions of haste or greater heroism especially.

Shadow Storm which removes enemies' levels is the coolest spell by the way, strong spell casters who cast weak spells is fun (although' sometimes they surprise you by casting totally appropriate low level spells which get you).

I thought Dispell magic and Greater dispell magic were often very useless. They are useful to break a Web, get rid of a summoned creature or out of combat, but what I have in mind is things like getting multiple characters free from a cage for example. The spell would not even target the cage, I think, in the case of targeting an area you're simply targeting the higher level effect which has no reason to be the one you want, also Freedom of movement (Haste, for Slow) can also work but not in this exact example.

My mage focused on Enchantment then Evocation with the appropriate feats, it's possible that for a next module I'll force myself into focusing on different schools such as Necromancy

Quicksand, Animal Trance, Web, Grease, Energy wall, and many more, there are tons of different spells used to disable as much as possible a part of groups of enemy depending on their locations, resistances and possible immunities (flying enemies are often a threat), while Deep slumber or dazing spells can be very effective against a single strong enemy.

Depending on the situation a mage may have to pass a concentration check not to fail to cast his spell.

I used Confusion and especially Chaos less that I generally do, but I used tons of different spells anyway. This game has come a long way from the Sleep/Magic Missile then Fireball/Haste days.

Warrior type characters also have plenty of possible actions, like grappling a mage so he won't be able to cast a spell, pushing or pulling enemies to make use of the terrain like already mention, and paladin for example can make strong smite attacks against evil enemies (I think Death knights can against any enemy? I want to try this class someday).




Among cool combat moment, mage kills itself with his own spell with a large area of effect, then useless paladin uses a True resurrection on the mage then the mage can immediately act again (it always work this way after a resurrection or after a summon, the summoned creature immediately acts), actually he gets only half a turn because he must stand up but it can make a difference.

One moment when I played very badly, I missed that I could heal myself from the effects provided when you enter the area with the mind flayers in chapter 3, and then to be even more stupid I realized only one bit later that casting Haste on first combat run was actually the thing to do, not trying to win the first fight then casting Dispel magic, Haste being infinitely better than Dispel Magic against slow since it always works, whatever other enchants you may have. But this was not the worst moment. The worst moment was when I pressed the key shortcut by chance and realized that the spider I got summoned at the begin of the first fight of chapter 3 against Pizzara was able to cast spells, and not weak spells, very strong spells including Disintegrate with a very important chance to kill Pizarra on first turn and prevent her from summoning a demon, and if you've not played the game I can say that Pizzara and the demon put together are half of the difficulty offered by the fight.

By the way, since I'm starting to talk about specific battles, I think this battle in the beginning of the chapter 3 is one of the coolest ones. It may be nearly impossible without getting any of the potential bonuses at the beginning of the fight, but since literally half of my party could give a surprise round and one more character allowed the spider and some crawlers summoned I feel like you must have some very weird kind of party not to get any of the bonuses.

It's one of those fights where you're given some high level scrolls, and those you won't use you'll be able to keep for later. That's a cool feature, if you use those you won't get stuck.

More important, it's one of those fights against a lot of enemies. There are a few fights against a strong enemy alone or escorted by very weak allies, and some of these fights are kind of bad, it's very simple, you pass your spell check and you've won or you fail and you've lost (and if your chance is low you'll do it anyway, you won't prefer to come back later, the game is hard so any fight which can be won just with a few reloads is a good take), that's it, nothing more nothing else, but there are a very few such fights in the game so one may say there are just a change of pace, they won't take long anyway. However not all of these fights are even really bad in practice, because I thought (or I am wrong, or I didn't focus on the appropriate schools of magic) that it's easier to daze this sort of enemies rather than making them sleep in which case you could then kill them in one hit. Dazing an enemy (which means reloading until it works) is not always the end of things, because you need to kill it before it wakes up, and the damages taken when hitting it must also be taken into account.

However fights against many enemies are much better. The bigger the fight the less one random thing determines of it all. The more enemies the less each enemy will simply kill you in one hit and the only way to win is that no enemy ever acts and the more some parts of the fight will be about fairly trading blows. The longer a fight the more different things can happen when reloading and playing it again, and the more there's room to improve your tactics.

More enemies generally arrive during this sort of fights, and I think the fight where you want to break the doors of a fortress is one of the best too. It's not even among the hardest one, unlike the one just after it and the very last fight. The very last fight is hard, as it should it, and very slightly gimmicky but not much, which is fine.

There are a few fights where you control more than your group and some fights with allies that you don't control (there could be slightly more, big battles are a staple of SSI's games).

Apart from two fights chapter 4 was easier than the rest of the game to me. Not that most of the fights were highly tactical fights, quite the opposite, I needed to cast Prismatic void then maybe Quicksand or something and killed everybody before enemies would do the same, but it was fast so nothing to get bored from. Note that it means your spells actually work, in some games it's very worse with late enemies having high hit points and being immune to everything (yes I've yet to finish Helherron, it's great so it's worth it but I would not say these are the best parts of the game). In some way you can say it's some accomplishment from getting there, but I'd rather always be challenged.

It may have been the very last fight, and the very last fight is very good, very hard and a bit long as it should be, but otherwise I think the hardest mandatory fight may have been the one against the not-mind-flayers with constitution decreasing to me. The not-mind-flayers need to be killed as soon as possible, the boss casts strong spells and is hard to kill, constitution lost is very far from anecdotal to the point that many of my characters generally got killed because of negative constitution, and my best (without everybody dead but one or two characters) victory was when I temporary increased the constitution of my party and two characters died after the fight from negative constitution. Also the demon makes, I think, force type damages when it gets hit so none of my elemental protection rings would allow my mantis efficiently to attack it, my other fighter used a reach weapon (at least a very strong one, +5 and bypasses damage reduction) without the appropriate feat I think (it's -4 to attack rolls, it's something but not prohibitive) and after I killed other enemies and, I think, managed to disable the demon by dazing it I still had to kill it in short time. I guess this single fight could be optional, or not.

The very last fight is intense, although' it was even negatively more intense than it should be because of possible crashes.

There are also many optional encounters you can take, and not all of them are integrated into the game the same way, which is cool. There's the goblin arena fight, where you can choose if and who you side with and against who you want to fight. There's at least one fight in chapter 3 where allies would help you or not depending on the possibility to make a diplomacy check. You can choose to attack many shopkeepers. Also plenty of encounters are simply in a corner and you don't have to beat them to progress.

I think that the encounter variety is totally amazing, past the fact that it feels very random, it's like any type of enemies can appear after any other type of enemies, there's often little work put into trying to give any sense of coherence to the location of the encounters. That's worth a mention, but I'll forgive that given how fun they are to deal with. It's also not always true, the crypt is composed of 5 unique, all very cool, encounters against undead, and what comes before and after those is cool too. Overall the game is well balanced between small size, medium size and big size fights. Regarding difficulty it's also balanced between mundane fights, half of which are basically as hard as a boss fight in KOTC1 (which ones will depend on the order which is often up to the player), while actual boss fights are even harder. Don't forget there are only about 75 encounters in the game, each encounter is meant to be more or less a boss fight. I think it's a little less true for chapter 4 encounters and the truth is that chapter 4 encounters are both easier and narratively less important (you're fighting against small skirmish parts of the fortress, not against a lich).

Then many encounters have a given scripted context and many different bonuses you can get depending on the races and classes which are present among the characters in your party.

But the best point is the number of different enemies. Overall I tend to consider that as many different enemies as encounters is already very good, and this game probably has twice that amount. Note that if we need to make a comparison, the first half of the game is even better than the second half of the game, nearly each single encounter in the first half of the game is essentially as unique as some real boss fight would be in another game with cool boss fights.

The game is hard, but it's so good anyway that I think that its very high difficulty (I mean compared with just high difficulty, of course if it was easy it would simply be worse) makes it better rather than worse.





Regarding optional encounters, I know I can't stop talking about this one but the hardest one may have been against the lizardmen as long as I did not find a way to cheese? for the enemies not to get a surprise round. This fight is cool anyway. The boss will likely summon an elemental which needs some time to reach water, where your characters start and you want to unsummon it, my mage had 25% to make the boss sleep so he can't summon an hydra, given one of the characters manage to smash it to death before some of his allies wakes him up. Also, when the hydra appears, it can quickly get rid of the party but if the party is in good shape at this moment, which is not an easy task, then there are more than one way to disable it, for example the druid had 50% chance to make it hallucinate with the Animal Trance spell (level 1 spell!). Then the allies, which during the beginning of the fight are generally useless, (which for some reason fight against the goblins if you choose to attack them, this may be a bug) would have the time to come and then killing the hydra is far from an impossible task.

There's also the spider queen. Let's put it into context, it's optional and requires your party to find an hidden passage, and it's a fight where you're given some very strong scrolls before the fight and then you're meant to use some and keep the ones you manage to keep. Yet, it's a very strong fight, you need to deal with the spider queen which is the hardest enemy in the game (fortunately she's not immune to being killed by Prismatic effects, and her thugs are just among some of the strongest enemies, similar to some spell casters you would encounter in the very last fight at level 20 while you're fighting against the spider at level 15 if you did everything else before). That's one fight in the game, it's fine, it's cool.





In theory keeping some bombs (I mean high level spells) may be important for fights where many parties would in theory get some bonus(es) but your own party does not. In practice I don't think such thing happened to my diverse party.

Whenever you kill a character before it would normally summon a strong enemy via a script independent from game mechanics, at least the monster is not summoned, which is cool and the most important thing. The game is so hard that I feel like it's still important that you get the experience, and what happens in practice is that the monster will often appear alone from nowhere sometimes later when you'll have had the possibility to save your game and heal, I'm OK with that. I think it sometimes works the same when you kill all the current enemies of a fight before new additional enemies would appear, and I like that new enemies appear during fights because it allows for bigger but not unwinnable fights and also because I like when at first I had difficulties in dealing with the first enemies then realize it was really only the beginning and I'll need to reach the same point in better shape and it'll be hard, you can save and heal then you can fight those, although' more than once when it happened I often had the impression that it was not the first time I did and that they may have appeared when I killed the last enemy a previous time.

During the last fight I don't know how good of a bet trying to control the Balor is between the risk to fail while you could have done something else instead, its Shake it off 3 which can remove the domination and the welcome damage it makes to its allies when dying. I ended not controlling it (because I failed) but controlled one cleric and the bowman. I did not summoned many monsters before the undead came. Undead to death killed the two vampires and at this moment I felt I could really win, and especially summoned some creatures. During this battle the useless paladin spammed Mass Heal and True Resurrection scrolls while the useless rogue used Accelerate spell scrolls on allies who don't have the spells (the paladin and the druid). The battle is about spamming level 9 spells but I felt that you can choose a better such spell than another in different situations, and I probably died a lot because I did not choose the right one (of course with insane luck it could have worked anyway, but that's not how computing odds work).





The game offers a good balance between a challenge of each individual encounter while requiring some resource management especially via limited rest. I like that in general you will go on after a victory but occasionally will reload anyway for better resource management, if that was often that would be boring but never is a bit of a shame too. There are enough places to rest and you get a good amount of spell slot restoration and power point restoration and resurrection scrolls. It's important to put emphasize on these points, because I think that however you feel about some (or even most) of the encounters being stupidly hard it's really not overpunishing on other aspects. I like to try and optimize spell slot management when playing this kind of games, and so I was happy there was a real reason to do this in this game. I was cautious, I could even say paranoid, but then there was more than enough fires and I finished the game with a lot of spell slot restoration and some power point restoration (never used one except for the very weakest ones but you get fewer than spell slot ones) items so I think that even playing a little less cautiously you'll always manage to go forward. Also I don't think you could be dead man walking anyway, there's one part in chapter 3 where you may feel short, it is fine that there is one such part and you do find some items and fires there, for the rest the longer part may be the crypt which is not long to start over, and then I highly doubt there is a part where you would manage to reach the next fire but could not progress anyway.

You get some True resurrection scrolls during the game, and a lot near the end, you can lose a character during an encounter once in a while and can still go on without having to use a weak Raise Dead every single time.

The game is built and balanced around the ability to Save everywhere, I don't know if this game can be won in Ironman Mode and I absolutely don't care, I've explained more than once how I think intended Ironman Mode or Save everywhere should be clear and you built very different games based on one choice or the other. By the way, the difficulty is not really ramping up during the game, if you manage to reach the third chapter I feel like you should be able to beat the game, it's just consistently hard.

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The amount of content of the game is ridiculous. I mean, all different enemies are nearly as unique as it can get while the game has more different enemies than games where enemies are just different hps and damages, all spells are unique while the game has more spells than games where spells are all different amount of damages and different areas of effects, classes are quite different and the game has more classes than games where classes are all the same and finally a small half of the feats are very much not just stat boosts while some games would have only the second half.

Since I played KOTC maybe 4 years ago, and thought that it was one step above what was done before, I was waiting for this game. And it did not disappoint me. Plenty of things probably could be slightly better, but for a large part these things are things which simply don't apply to KOTC1 because KOTC1 is less complex in some aspects. KOTC2 is a better game than KOTC1 in many aspects, more classes, even better encounters, some more “narrative” (they have consequences on gameplay) and choices, extra resource management in my own experience because I played KOTC1 on default settings as well. I think the campaign of KOTC1 is more cool, with more coherent dungeons.

The game ticks the boxes of what I want to see in every game, full party creation and big party, turn-based combat, a certain kind of narrative which is not completely emergent but never turns to mood talks either, some freedom, at least some riddles, no concession to challenge, and I'd certainly rather play a game which is arguably slightly too hard rather than an easy one, and also the boxes of my conception of this exact kind of games, Save everywhere, focus mainly put of encounters individually but with limited rest and some amount of resource management, challenge mostly based on the idea that you'll take optional encounters, a proper campaign and not missions, even this is not a given these days. I did not mention the restricted exploration, I tend to prefer more open exploration, but what I like is the ability to take dungeons in any order more than the ability to go back and forth between those at will, inside dungeons I think I like limited exploration for the sake of challenge so there's that. Once every sun eclipse I feel like I am among the target audience of a game and the best praise I can give to this game is that it's one of those.

Also, not sure about other kind of players, but I think that people who just want to create and customize their own big party then go into a proper campaign (not missions) mainly based on very hard handcrafted turn-based fights must play this one. It's really one step above Pools of Darkness, Helherron or Natuk. The party building, combat system and combat content are all better in this game. I have no strong opinion about whether games such as Natuk are better or worse than SSI's games on a pure tactical aspect but KOTC2 is better than both in my opinion. Not that in a sense I think that the difficulty of the game makes it special, we'll see how the other turn-based D&D games with full party creation will turn out, I have no doubt that I'll have tons of fun with all of those but it's likely that KOTC2 will still stay my personal favourite.

I may replay the game someday, maybe with a smaller party (like 5 instead of 8) and with different classes, although' to be honest I probably won't and simply play the next official module on its release day, or some unofficial one if one get released in the meantime.
 

gunman

Arcane
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I admit that the visuals of this game is kind of putting me off. I really liked the looks of 1. Why didn't he kept the same style? It was simple enough but quite charming.
 

NJClaw

OoOoOoOoOoh
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Pronouns: rusts/rusty
Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
I really liked the looks of 1. Why didn't he kept the same style?
Because in Pierre's eyes the potential of the module editor is one of the main selling points of this game, I guess. And with this "generic backgrounds + 2d tokens" it's far easier for players (and for him) to add custom stuff to the editor.
 

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