And Boudica's questline is what? There's even a guy from the 9th Legion being brought out of Tartarus at the end.
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KickStarter King Arthur: Knight's Tale + Legion IX standalone expansion - dark fantasy turn-based tactical RPG from NeocoreGames
- Thread starter Infinitron
- Start date
And Boudica's questline is what? There's even a guy from the 9th Legion being brought out of Tartarus at the end.
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Lmao as though everyone else buys their myths from ebay
Oropay
Educated
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Yes, a lot easier as well, and no difficulty spikes like in Knight's Tale. I would say Very Hard in Legion IX is the equivalent of launch version Hard in Knight's Tale. I'm definitely having fun with Legion IX, but it feels slightly too stripped down. It's kind of of like Knight's Tale at home, but better than Knight's Tale from wish.com.
Finally got the time to start Legion IX, and it's pretty much what the reviews said: a mini-version of KA:KT, with all the compromise that entails (no injury system, stunted progression, free respecs, less variety, butchered, binary morality system). Which honestly kind of sucks.
And yet - the game is still very good so far. The fact that it is is a testament to how incredibly excellent King Arthur's combat and systems are. Even a somewhat lesser version is just still awesome.
The new "Brutal" difficulty is insane so far. Harder than 'Very Hard' was on KA. This might change, but I had to replay the second mission a crapton of times. I'm hoping as the difficulty falls off (as I'm sure it will), Brutal > Very Hard will mean it doesn't get completely piss easy like KA did after the halfway point.
And yet - the game is still very good so far. The fact that it is is a testament to how incredibly excellent King Arthur's combat and systems are. Even a somewhat lesser version is just still awesome.
The new "Brutal" difficulty is insane so far. Harder than 'Very Hard' was on KA. This might change, but I had to replay the second mission a crapton of times. I'm hoping as the difficulty falls off (as I'm sure it will), Brutal > Very Hard will mean it doesn't get completely piss easy like KA did after the halfway point.
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Also whoever made new recruits uncontrollable in their introductory fight should be shot. Turns fun encounters into a pain of managing your uber-retarded teammate lol
Froila
Educated
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But they're the only one (and also Finns, I think) who are honest about it. So everyone can shame them.
Whoever said Legion IX on Brutal is easier than KA on Very Hard is smoking some crack. That Flamen side mission is real shit(tm).
Mind you - you have no Vanguards, barely any movement skills and your only Champion has pretty poor skills
Then to top it off they steal a party member for the mission - and then another one for the final fight of three massive waves
Mind you - you have no Vanguards, barely any movement skills and your only Champion has pretty poor skills
Then to top it off they steal a party member for the mission - and then another one for the final fight of three massive waves
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It’s two different games
Alright, finished the DLC, here's a very short mini-review.
The following notes are written from the basis of playing on the new BRÜTAL difficulty - but not on roguelite:
Strengths:
- The biggest strength is that the combat is often even better (!) than the in main game. The prime reason for this is that your six heroes are all unique, and they are way, way better balanced than the main game's as they completely axed spiraling AP generation and most movement skills. The best way to exemplify this is your protagonist, Gaius Julius. He is basically a Vanguard, but without movement skills or stealth, doing your wombo hits is a very (*very*) careful balancing act of finishing your turn in safety and protecting him. There's also virtually no AoE damage in the game (even less than in KA:KT, which already didn't have much). In other words, to do the BIG THINGS(tm) that each hero can do, you have to weigh some trade-offs, which means combat often has a stronger series of interesting choices than it did in KA:KT. The cost, however, is that hero kits are less varied and character building less exciting (see neutral points).
- In addition to the above, difficulty is much more even throughout the game on the hardest difficulty. In fact, I did not have a single easy mission until, bizarrely, the final 2 missions. Even more bizarrely, these weren't easy because hero power spiraled out of control (like the case was with KA:KT), but rather because they were significantly undertuned. The final mission sees you reverting back to killing a small amount of piss easy Tier 1 and 2 enemies while providing you with three campfires, when other missions have had you killing T4 and T5 enemies for a while. But like I said, besides these 2 missions, the game is very well balanced. The beginning is about on par with KA:KT on Very Hard (that is to say, INCREDIBLY difficult) and while the difficulty then scales off, it's not by a huge amount. In fact, beyond the starting missions, I'd say the most difficult mission for me was I think the fourth last mission where you enter the seelie realms. There was even one late game mission that I almost had to replay because I kind of got trounced.
- This is still KA:KT, so even without all the bells and whistles, everything that was juicy in KA:KT is still juicy here.
Neutral:
- Hero kits are so-so. I really liked the kits of the Praetorian (Defender) which had a lot of potential build variety, while I disliked the Flamina (Sage), Flamen (Mage) and Sicarius (Marksman) which felt uninteresting compared to the other companions. The Tribunus (Vanguard) and Centurion (Champion) fell someplace in between. When I finished the game I still had tons of things left in the Praetorians kit I really wanted, while the last four levels had me shrugging about what to pick for several others, as the choices left didn't seem like big upgrades.
- In addition to the above, Neocore Games are for some godforsaken reason still trying to make DoT happen. One of the reasons the Flamina and Flamen are so underwhelming is that one of their two main build paths are based around Burning and Necrosis damage respectively, and even though combat is better balanced in Legion IX, combat is still over fast enough that doing 3-11 DoT damage per turn is laughable. They try to balance this by providing buffs when units are burning, but these buffs have the exact same problem that the DoT damage have - you have to leave enemies alive for them to be relevant. It's a real shame to, because a lot of design work clearly went into the Flamen's Necrosis build path, and you can see why the designers thought it would be awesome spreading this slowly intensifying plague to all enemies. In practice it just doesn't work. Fortunately both heroes have much more relevant skills outside of these builds, but especially the Flamen becomes a very narrow character who primarily spams two skills (a link skill followed by Death Hex) and then basic attacks while waiting for the cooldown of those skills.
- Base building is a lesser version of KA:KT. It's OK and some of the buffs are very meaningful as they were in KA:KT, but the variety is very much lessened. The same goes for events which, while they try to diversify them, often boil down to picking between gaining one of the two types of binary morality or which hero you want to gain loyalty.
- Itemization. Unfortunately, one of the great strengths of KA:KT takes one step forward and two steps back. While the addition of many new, interesting affixes pull in one direction, the strength of these new affixes leave so much to be desired many items are sadly not worth considering. I went for maximizing relic dust early on so I could play with cool items, but ended up with 4500 relic dust in my inventory having bought only one (1!) relic in the entire game - and even that purchase was dubious. For something that felt so exciting in KA:KT, that's a major bummer. There is a small chance I was just unlucky with my shop rolls, though, as some of the relics I found in missions were much more enticing. [EDIT: Disregard the next bit, apparently I'm an idiot.] The most bizarre part of the itemization is that the annoyingly useless "...when in a duel."-modifier is EVERYWHERE, and I encountered exactly one (1!) duel during the entire game!
- The game has a new system where you places statues ('Lars') in a slot. This gives team wide bonuses at the cost of a trade-off. While the Lar system is a really, really cool idea, the implementation doesn't work. There's 1 Lar which, in my opinion, is a SIGNIFICANT boost that is almost downright necessary on Brutal difficulty, and then the rest seem like colossal traps. For example, one Lar gives you a small bonus if your hero starts their turn within 2 tiles of a burning enemy, but a massive debuff if they don't. Given how important positioning is in Legion IX, you do not want to leave up dangerous enemies just to make sure a hero doesn't take a huge debuff. It's a shame that the implementation is so weak, because the system itself is a great addition to the game in theory.
- While the story is pretty bad, it is pretty cool that the final boss
Weaknesses:
- There's no way around this being a lesser version of KA:KT. *Everything* is condensed; the fantastic morality system is now binary, the title system is just a tiny selection of buffs you allocate to your six heroes, there's no HP/injury management, obviously less roster variety, there's no side quests at all (side quests are actually just obligatory quests that just don't concern the main story), very few events and so on. This is a massive bummer but also, I suppose, understandable. It does make me question why Legion IX isn't just an expansion to the base game though. Every part of this game except for the combat is objectively a downgrade to KA:KT, and a pretty big one at that.
- To touch on Sunri's point, I think "early access" is a little harsh, but the fact remains that you can feel the strained, tiny budget of this game on the production values of the story. The game doesn't really have a story as much as it has some slightly interconnected cutscenes. At some point the plan was probably for you to fight Emperor Sulla after a more lengthy campaign, but rather than being cut late in the process (i.e. feeling unfinished) it seems like they just abandoned that scope and went for what we have. To underscore Sunri's point, the game ends with a setup for a sequel, which seems downright bizarre considering even a sequel to the original is a doubtful prospect.
TL;DR:
To enjoy Legion IX, you have to be a pretty big fan of the original. If you are, though, there's a pretty good chance you'll find your money's worth here. The worst thing I can say about Legion IX is that it often made me want to replay the original to have the more complex experience. This always happened outside of combat itself though - I can easily imagine replaying the original and during mid to lategame wishing it had the combat balance of Legion IX.
The following notes are written from the basis of playing on the new BRÜTAL difficulty - but not on roguelite:
Strengths:
- The biggest strength is that the combat is often even better (!) than the in main game. The prime reason for this is that your six heroes are all unique, and they are way, way better balanced than the main game's as they completely axed spiraling AP generation and most movement skills. The best way to exemplify this is your protagonist, Gaius Julius. He is basically a Vanguard, but without movement skills or stealth, doing your wombo hits is a very (*very*) careful balancing act of finishing your turn in safety and protecting him. There's also virtually no AoE damage in the game (even less than in KA:KT, which already didn't have much). In other words, to do the BIG THINGS(tm) that each hero can do, you have to weigh some trade-offs, which means combat often has a stronger series of interesting choices than it did in KA:KT. The cost, however, is that hero kits are less varied and character building less exciting (see neutral points).
- In addition to the above, difficulty is much more even throughout the game on the hardest difficulty. In fact, I did not have a single easy mission until, bizarrely, the final 2 missions. Even more bizarrely, these weren't easy because hero power spiraled out of control (like the case was with KA:KT), but rather because they were significantly undertuned. The final mission sees you reverting back to killing a small amount of piss easy Tier 1 and 2 enemies while providing you with three campfires, when other missions have had you killing T4 and T5 enemies for a while. But like I said, besides these 2 missions, the game is very well balanced. The beginning is about on par with KA:KT on Very Hard (that is to say, INCREDIBLY difficult) and while the difficulty then scales off, it's not by a huge amount. In fact, beyond the starting missions, I'd say the most difficult mission for me was I think the fourth last mission where you enter the seelie realms. There was even one late game mission that I almost had to replay because I kind of got trounced.
- This is still KA:KT, so even without all the bells and whistles, everything that was juicy in KA:KT is still juicy here.
Neutral:
- Hero kits are so-so. I really liked the kits of the Praetorian (Defender) which had a lot of potential build variety, while I disliked the Flamina (Sage), Flamen (Mage) and Sicarius (Marksman) which felt uninteresting compared to the other companions. The Tribunus (Vanguard) and Centurion (Champion) fell someplace in between. When I finished the game I still had tons of things left in the Praetorians kit I really wanted, while the last four levels had me shrugging about what to pick for several others, as the choices left didn't seem like big upgrades.
- In addition to the above, Neocore Games are for some godforsaken reason still trying to make DoT happen. One of the reasons the Flamina and Flamen are so underwhelming is that one of their two main build paths are based around Burning and Necrosis damage respectively, and even though combat is better balanced in Legion IX, combat is still over fast enough that doing 3-11 DoT damage per turn is laughable. They try to balance this by providing buffs when units are burning, but these buffs have the exact same problem that the DoT damage have - you have to leave enemies alive for them to be relevant. It's a real shame to, because a lot of design work clearly went into the Flamen's Necrosis build path, and you can see why the designers thought it would be awesome spreading this slowly intensifying plague to all enemies. In practice it just doesn't work. Fortunately both heroes have much more relevant skills outside of these builds, but especially the Flamen becomes a very narrow character who primarily spams two skills (a link skill followed by Death Hex) and then basic attacks while waiting for the cooldown of those skills.
- Base building is a lesser version of KA:KT. It's OK and some of the buffs are very meaningful as they were in KA:KT, but the variety is very much lessened. The same goes for events which, while they try to diversify them, often boil down to picking between gaining one of the two types of binary morality or which hero you want to gain loyalty.
- Itemization. Unfortunately, one of the great strengths of KA:KT takes one step forward and two steps back. While the addition of many new, interesting affixes pull in one direction, the strength of these new affixes leave so much to be desired many items are sadly not worth considering. I went for maximizing relic dust early on so I could play with cool items, but ended up with 4500 relic dust in my inventory having bought only one (1!) relic in the entire game - and even that purchase was dubious. For something that felt so exciting in KA:KT, that's a major bummer. There is a small chance I was just unlucky with my shop rolls, though, as some of the relics I found in missions were much more enticing. [EDIT: Disregard the next bit, apparently I'm an idiot.] The most bizarre part of the itemization is that the annoyingly useless "...when in a duel."-modifier is EVERYWHERE, and I encountered exactly one (1!) duel during the entire game!
- The game has a new system where you places statues ('Lars') in a slot. This gives team wide bonuses at the cost of a trade-off. While the Lar system is a really, really cool idea, the implementation doesn't work. There's 1 Lar which, in my opinion, is a SIGNIFICANT boost that is almost downright necessary on Brutal difficulty, and then the rest seem like colossal traps. For example, one Lar gives you a small bonus if your hero starts their turn within 2 tiles of a burning enemy, but a massive debuff if they don't. Given how important positioning is in Legion IX, you do not want to leave up dangerous enemies just to make sure a hero doesn't take a huge debuff. It's a shame that the implementation is so weak, because the system itself is a great addition to the game in theory.
- While the story is pretty bad, it is pretty cool that the final boss
will be one out of two of your companions based on your choices.
Weaknesses:
- There's no way around this being a lesser version of KA:KT. *Everything* is condensed; the fantastic morality system is now binary, the title system is just a tiny selection of buffs you allocate to your six heroes, there's no HP/injury management, obviously less roster variety, there's no side quests at all (side quests are actually just obligatory quests that just don't concern the main story), very few events and so on. This is a massive bummer but also, I suppose, understandable. It does make me question why Legion IX isn't just an expansion to the base game though. Every part of this game except for the combat is objectively a downgrade to KA:KT, and a pretty big one at that.
- To touch on Sunri's point, I think "early access" is a little harsh, but the fact remains that you can feel the strained, tiny budget of this game on the production values of the story. The game doesn't really have a story as much as it has some slightly interconnected cutscenes. At some point the plan was probably for you to fight Emperor Sulla after a more lengthy campaign, but rather than being cut late in the process (i.e. feeling unfinished) it seems like they just abandoned that scope and went for what we have. To underscore Sunri's point, the game ends with a setup for a sequel, which seems downright bizarre considering even a sequel to the original is a doubtful prospect.
TL;DR:
To enjoy Legion IX, you have to be a pretty big fan of the original. If you are, though, there's a pretty good chance you'll find your money's worth here. The worst thing I can say about Legion IX is that it often made me want to replay the original to have the more complex experience. This always happened outside of combat itself though - I can easily imagine replaying the original and during mid to lategame wishing it had the combat balance of Legion IX.
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Oropay
Educated
- Joined
- May 26, 2021
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- 107
Duel is a situation in routine combat that arises when two opposing characters are only adjacent to one another.
Lol, you're right
I'm an idiot. That's actually relevant on Tribunus and Centurion then. Wouldn't have changed me not buying any of the relics though.- Joined
- May 5, 2018
- Messages
- 6,241
Yes, that's why I said it was the Legion expansion where the sound was fucked. Don't know about now though.
It’s very telling I completely forgot to mention the Ultimate abilities. They’re… fine. You’ll be happy to have them in a pinch, but they’re not anything too noticeable. The most use I got out of any of them was probably using Tribunus ultimate to one shot enemies I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.
EDIT: Fuck it, I'm doing a new playthrough of the main game with a tiny challenge rule: Must fire all Vanguards once I get a full team and can't use Vanguards except in the very beginning if I don't have a full team of non-injured people from other classes.
Time to see what the 2.0 update done did for Marksmen.
EDIT: Fuck it, I'm doing a new playthrough of the main game with a tiny challenge rule: Must fire all Vanguards once I get a full team and can't use Vanguards except in the very beginning if I don't have a full team of non-injured people from other classes.
Time to see what the 2.0 update done did for Marksmen.
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Man, 2.0 changed the game a fuckton. Poor Sir Ector's lost his powers of ultramysticism and gained a tiny bit of capitalism instead (the old +one billion relic dust when not on mission-trait got replaced with 100 gold when not on mission, lol). Kits, skills, talents, traits - everything is changed.
There's also a new building that allows you to upgrade items using a new resource, and it's designed to be useful from the get-go.
They even made a bunch of entirely new skills - Sir Ector can summon zombies now, for instance.
There's also a new building that allows you to upgrade items using a new resource, and it's designed to be useful from the get-go.
They even made a bunch of entirely new skills - Sir Ector can summon zombies now, for instance.
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- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,621
First Arthur fight is completely revamped on 2.0. Much, much better. You can no longer one-shot him, so the fight is actually a fight now where he uses all his big abilities - multiple times. On the flip side, he deals less damage. It's now much more of an attrition and positioning fight. Due to my rule of not using Vanguards it came down to the wire - Mordred took 3 injuries, Dindraine 2 and Kay 2. MVP was Balan and his Rampage, who even got off without injuries, the mad lad.
Marksmen are definitely much more useful now, and looking at their kits I’m willing to bet a million smackaroos that ones like Yvain with lots of raw damage in their kit can probably by far top damage charts for a single attack under the right conditions.
Their issues aren’t gone and I still think I’d be leaving them behind more often than not if I didn’t actively want to test them, but you clearly not hamstringing yourself on purpose any longer if you bring one.
Marksmen are definitely much more useful now, and looking at their kits I’m willing to bet a million smackaroos that ones like Yvain with lots of raw damage in their kit can probably by far top damage charts for a single attack under the right conditions.
Their issues aren’t gone and I still think I’d be leaving them behind more often than not if I didn’t actively want to test them, but you clearly not hamstringing yourself on purpose any longer if you bring one.
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- May 5, 2018
- Messages
- 6,241
I think they made something special with this game. You know when you finish it, and you've got multiple positive memories? And you can specifically remember battles, characters, dialogue, etc?. The fact that it's also incredible to look at and was clearly made with actual imagination and motivation doesn't hurt either.
Yeah it really is fantastic. I’m enjoying My second playthrough immensely. I wonder if there’s any chance whatsoever this gets a sequel
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Eldrin
Novice
- Joined
- May 28, 2024
- Messages
- 90
Yup, this game is a rough gem - it does have its shortcomings, but it did so many things well.
It's one of the few "new" games that I actually enjoyed, so much so that I even replayed it multiple times already. And I do plan to revisit it again in the future!
GloomFrost
Arcane
And having absolutely none woke shit in this game is like a nice sweet cherry on top of delicious gameplay pie. King Arthur and JA 3 are some of the nicest surprises they game industry produced in years.
In what meaningful way is it even rough? Yeah the voice acting is scuffed and the story is whatever, but there are very few bugs, the systems work better and have more intuitive design than many mainstream games and the pacing between mission/management is dammed near perfect.
I’d say for me the only mark on the game is later difficulty and class balance and after playing 2.0 I can attest that both of these have improved a fuckton - especially class balance has been vastly improved by all the new abilities and the complete slaying of AP generation.
Eldrin
Novice
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- May 28, 2024
- Messages
- 90
My main gripes with it:
- Endgame Difficulty was one of them, yes. After killing the last aspect of Arthur, the game became a complete slog with fuckton of chunky enemies (Potentially fixed - haven't played 2.0 yet). I was kinda annoyed that we haven't had Mordred's VO narrating the intro to the missions for that last act + for the most part, the only objectives were to annihilate the enemy, without anything else to do on those maps. Yes, we had to gather shards for new equipment, but I wouldn't necessarily call it an exciting, captivating mechanic.
- Samey Skill Trees on most heroes. (Reworked on 2.0, but again, haven't played yet, cannot comment much about the changes.) Hopefully they added at least a few completely new skills and not just skills copy-pasted with slight tweaks, and switching around the order of acquiring them on heroes. Up to 1.3, some were completely useless, the variety of them was a bit lacking, some combinations were duplicated on heroes, especially Sages, and certain heroes were clearly superior to others. Traits were a bit imbalanced too, for example Ector incentivized not bringing him to get gold, and was the MVP for acquiring artifact dust, so you really wanted to have him in your active round table for every Knight's Tale run. And you really wanted to fix Black Knight's 'Mercenary' trait, or you would be losing 20% gold per mission.
- Morality System awarded only one-sided path focus - would have been more fun, if we could balance our choices out, sometimes go Christianity over Old Faith, sometimes go Tyranny over Righteous, and get partial rewards from both ways. Maybe it wouldn't unlock all the rewards from one path at the end, but we could have the earlier benefits of both.
- Character in-zone interactions. Heroes have all kinda the same voice-lines commenting campfires, treasures, money, etc. Yes, they are affected by their own morality, but that for the most part only modifies how the VO is spoken out, the cadence and intonation... I really would have loved if our companions had more unique commenting voice-lines and additional interactions depending on missions we take them on. It was possible to do, Kay had a comment in Ector's mission. Dindraine had a few lines in the Guinevere quest where you couldn't take Mordred - but the other characters sadly never acknowledge her talks. Merlin had some lines on later missions if you recruited him, and his in-zone comments had more personality to them. Would've been great if the developers leaned a bit more into it, fleshing the heroes out post their recruitment missions. Not even full-blown banters, but a few lines here and there in relation to the current mission or NPCs therein, some comments to other party members chosen for the mission - at least other than to Mordred.
- World events. Again, a great system that could've been expanded out more. There are many events that only play out if you recruit certain heroes in the early game - that's why it's better to get both Balin and Balan, you get more events - I tested it out on replays. Dindraine even has a special new Mission too, like Guinevere later. Tristan unlocks Isolde. But most other heroes, those that feel more optional, like Yvain, Lanval, Brunor, Tegyr, Boudicea, Faerie Knight ... and those recruited through Morality don't have new events tied to them, only one that comes to mind are some from Old Faith's Morgana. Adding more events tied to different companions would have given more incentive into changing up one's 12 heroes per playthrough - and it shouldn't be even that hard to add them, just some writing that isn't even voiced, and gives you some simple choices to choose from.
- Writing-wise, it wasn't the highest prose or deepest plot line, or whatever, but I really liked the execution. Had more of a simple, less overwritten, punchy, Conan-esque feeling. And the main voice actors did well to sell it. Liked the world, liked the story, the characters were fun enough in their recruitment quests (still laughing about the Geraint mission or Morgana's) - although the last bit with Arthur shard being mind-controlled(?) to summon Balor and the game not ending after it felt more weird and disjointed than unexpected.
- There were some annoying bugs, like the snow on later maps having weird artifacts, flickering and disappearing, or +1 skill books only adding skill points if you always used them when you got them, otherwise all skill books became skill reset books. But nothing game-breaking.
- Cinematics were great (I think Knight's Tale is the only game that actually made CGI cinematics in recent years?), Music was great, Gameplay satisfying.
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My main gripes with it:
Other stuff:
- Endgame Difficulty was one of them, yes. After killing the last aspect of Arthur, the game became a complete slog with fuckton of chunky enemies (Potentially fixed - haven't played 2.0 yet). I was kinda annoyed that we haven't had Mordred's VO narrating the intro to the missions for that last act + for the most part, the only objectives were to annihilate the enemy, without anything else to do on those maps. Yes, we had to gather shards for new equipment, but I wouldn't necessarily call it an exciting, captivating mechanic.
- Samey Skill Trees on most heroes. (Reworked on 2.0, but again, haven't played yet, cannot comment much about the changes.) Hopefully they added at least a few completely new skills and not just skills copy-pasted with slight tweaks, and switching around the order of acquiring them on heroes. Up to 1.3, some were completely useless, the variety of them was a bit lacking, some combinations were duplicated on heroes, especially Sages, and certain heroes were clearly superior to others. Traits were a bit imbalanced too, for example Ector incentivized not bringing him to get gold, and was the MVP for acquiring artifact dust, so you really wanted to have him in your active round table for every Knight's Tale run. And you really wanted to fix Black Knight's 'Mercenary' trait, or you would be losing 20% gold per mission.
- Morality System awarded only one-sided path focus - would have been more fun, if we could balance our choices out, sometimes go Christianity over Old Faith, sometimes go Tyranny over Righteous, and get partial rewards from both ways. Maybe it wouldn't unlock all the rewards from one path at the end, but we could have the earlier benefits of both.
- Character in-zone interactions. Heroes have all kinda the same voice-lines commenting campfires, treasures, money, etc. Yes, they are affected by their own morality, but that for the most part only modifies how the VO is spoken out, the cadence and intonation... I really would have loved if our companions had more unique commenting voice-lines and additional interactions depending on missions we take them on. It was possible to do, Kay had a comment in Ector's mission. Dindraine had a few lines in the Guinevere quest where you couldn't take Mordred - but the other characters sadly never acknowledge her talks. Merlin had some lines on later missions if you recruited him, and his in-zone comments had more personality to them. Would've been great if the developers leaned a bit more into it, fleshing the heroes out post their recruitment missions. Not even full-blown banters, but a few lines here and there in relation to the current mission or NPCs therein, some comments to other party members chosen for the mission - at least other than to Mordred.
- World events. Again, a great system that could've been expanded out more. There are many events that only play out if you recruit certain heroes in the early game - that's why it's better to get both Balin and Balan, you get more events - I tested it out on replays. Dindraine even has a special new Mission too, like Guinevere later. Tristan unlocks Isolde. But most other heroes, those that feel more optional, like Yvain, Lanval, Brunor, Tegyr, Boudicea, Faerie Knight ... and those recruited through Morality don't have new events tied to them, only one that comes to mind are some from Old Faith's Morgana. Adding more events tied to different companions would have given more incentive into changing up one's 12 heroes per playthrough - and it shouldn't be even that hard to add them, just some writing that isn't even voiced, and gives you some simple choices to choose from.
So yeah, nothing that would make me hate the game, more like I saw the potential of how great this game could've become
- Writing-wise, it wasn't the highest prose or deepest plot line, or whatever, but I really liked the execution. Had more of a simple, less overwritten, punchy, Conan-esque feeling. And the main voice actors did well to sell it. Liked the world, liked the story, the characters were fun enough in their recruitment quests (still laughing about the Geraint mission or Morgana's) - although the last bit with Arthur shard being mind-controlled(?) to summon Balor and the game not ending after it felt more weird and disjointed than unexpected.
- There were some annoying bugs, like the snow on later maps having weird artifacts, flickering and disappearing, or +1 skill books only adding skill points if you always used them when you got them, otherwise all skill books became skill reset books. But nothing game-breaking.
- Cinematics were great (I think Knight's Tale is the only game that actually made CGI cinematics in recent years?), Music was great, Gameplay satisfying.
Endgame Difficulty: I was talking about the difficulty pre-Arthur, as it is (well, at least was before 2.0) too easy.
Samey Skill Trees: While this is still there, I'd argue it wasn't too big of an issue before 2.0, and it is way, WAY less after 2.0. Most heroes like Black Knight got completely revamped skills and some even scale different stats. Aforementioned black knight for example can scale damage with Hex Intensity. For some classes it is non-existant post-2.0. Arcanists, for example, are completely unlike each other. I'd say the biggest problem here is actually that some characters are downright suboptimal - like what they did already in the base game with Bedivere is interesting but it just doesn't work in terms of power level, which is a shame.
Character in-zone interactions: I regard this as a completely trivial non-issue. Would I wish there were more side-quests and interactions for specific characters? Well, yes, but that is an unreasonable demand from an already totally content-filled experience. I do wish they had made the DLC for this instead of stand-alone, though.
World Events: Well, this is the crux of the matter isn't it. Almost any criticism of this game is of the variety: "I wish there was even more of this awesome thing." Well, when that's what you criticize the game for, I think it's a mark of a great game.
My point was that calling this a "rough gem" isn't really fair IMO. It's just a gem - a gem that could be even better than it already is, sure, but it's already fantastic.
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