King's Bounty: The Legend demo is out

[pkt-zer0]

You can only cast one spell per round, so whats logical? You`ll always cast your best spell.

I don't see how this is a serious flaw in itself. As long as spamming a single spell over and over is not the way to go, and they're relatively balanced, what does it matter whether you can cast one or two a round?
There's the Higher Magic skills for mages that let you cast two spells in a turn, by the way.

In short: If you liked Might & Magic, this game could be for you. I`ll have to pass though, it consumes too much of my time.

I actually dislike HoMM, but found KBtL pretty fun.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Yet the idea is that turn-based games are good because you can stop playing them anytime to go eat or sleep.

Those who think that usualy play real-time games.

Eat & Sleep? More like Shit & Phone. /nextgen

I don't see how this is a serious flaw in itself. As long as spamming a single spell over and over is not the way to go, and they're relatively balanced, what does it matter whether you can cast one or two a round?
There's the Higher Magic skills for mages that let you cast two spells in a turn, by the way.

Let`s say:
Fireball - 7 Mana ; Slow enemy down - 4 Mana; Raise Speed - 2 Mana; etc.

You got usually 5 enemys on the battlefield. So what`s smarter, throw some fireball which can kill them or hurt them badly or some lowmagic spell which only raises your speed of one character for 2 rounds or something. I have played the game and always used fireball in Round 1(and i always could attack first), you can call it respawn killing.
The game makes no difference if you use a strong spell for 7 mana or a low spell for 2 or 4 mana. The formula is: 1 spell per round. I don`t see the point why i should use a weaker spell instead a stronger one, but i would use two or three weaker ones instead of a stronger one.

 

[made]

I don`t see the point why i should use a weaker spell instead a stronger one, but i would use two or three weaker ones instead of a stronger one.

I dunno, you run out of mana faster spamming your fireballs? Might be more of a concern in longer battles rather than the tutorial of the demo.

 

[Hamster]

Let`s say:
Fireball - 7 Mana ; Slow enemy down - 4 Mana; Raise Speed - 2 Mana; etc.

You got usually 5 enemys on the battlefield. So what`s smarter, throw some fireball which can kill them or hurt them badly or some lowmagic spell which only raises your speed of one character for 2 rounds or something.

Do you know that spells can be upraded? Highest level Raise Speed spell will raise speed of all your units by 2-3 hexes, which will allow all your cavalry units to charge in the first round.
What's smarter, teleport your weak unit out of danger, or use powerfull attack spell, or maybe use spell that makes important enemy unit always suffer crtitical hits?

Btw, if you are playing a warrior, using attack spells is pointless, they are too week due to your low intelligence, but support spells work ok.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Hey, i haven`t figured out everything yet. I think they mentioned it somewhere that you can upgrade your spells, but isn`t that costing you some runes? If not, then it´s a pretty good solution. I have mana points around 50 or so, a fireball costs 7, but i get 2 mana points every round, so mana points aren`t a big problem to me. But i think maximum mana points per round is really more flexible, say you only want to make 2 or 3 units faster and not all of them, then my suggested system works better.

 

[Hamster]

I think they mentioned it somewhere that you can upgrade your spells, but isn`t that costing you some runes?

In the spellbook, there is an icon near the picture of each spell, it consumes magic crystalls.

 

[Wintermute]

Actually the turn based combat is a true spiritual successor to Heroes of M&M.

You do realize the original King's Bounty was the precursor to HOMM. Both were designed by the same guy, Jon Van Caneghem of New World Computing.
It is good to hear a remake/sequel is keeping the gameplay intact for a change. Downloading the demo now...

 

[pkt-zer0]

You got usually 5 enemys on the battlefield. So what`s smarter, throw some fireball which can kill them or hurt them badly or some lowmagic spell which only raises your speed of one character for 2 rounds or something.

Note the "as long as spamming the same spell isn't the way to go" part.
Fireball seems overpowered initially, but once that 100 dmg isn't terribly murderous, it balances out somewhat. Also, Chaos Magic is further down the skill tree - I didn't even get it to level 1 with my mage, actually.
I agree that mana seemed plentiful, but I wouldn't want to draw conclusions on game balance based only on the first 3-4 levels of character advancement.

 

[Zhuangzi]

Yeah, I found myself spamming fireball a fair bit, but it balances out later on because you can upgrade the spell tree. There are three types of spell (Order, Distortion and Chaos) and Distortion is fairly easy to upgrade in the demo if you are a mage. TheChaos tree seems harder to access. Therefore, game balance.

The great thing is you get the normal spell tree and the Rage spells as well. There is one called Shoal of Fish which is a MASS killer. Great fun.

Damn, I can see that this game is going to be a massive time waster. How many demos have been replayable? I've done all I can do with two classes, so I'm moving on to the third.

You can just tell that Katauri have nailed their game here. Respect.

 

[Ausir]

So, is it a better HoMM game than the last 2 HoMM games?

Damn, I can see that this game is going to be a massive time waster. How many demos have been replayable? I've done all I can do with two classes, so I'm moving on to the third.

Years ago I was addicted to the HoMM2 demo.

 

[Heresiarch]

So, is it a better HoMM game than the last 2 HoMM games?

I haven't played HOMM5, but KB is much better than HOMM4. As I said before, it plays almost exactly like HOMM3 but only with better stuff.

About the "fireball overpowered" comments, anyone who have played HOMM seriously before (especially HOMM3) can tell you that isn't true at all.

Just like all the HOMMs, early on direct damage spells are powerful, when armies are small and units are weak, but as the number of troops in armies increases, and more powerful units with more HP appears, DD spells efficiency will quickly diminish. By that time, support spells like Haste and Bless can bring you truly strategic advantage.

Do you prefer to slow down or even paralyze a very powerful enemy and let your archers pepper it with arrows, or shoot a fireball which does (comparetively) pathetic damage on it?


About the gaming time: you can check out the rankings in the main menu. You can get a pretty good idea how long the game last if you try to play it fast.

 

[feta]

The "i only cast fireball" issue is completely moot.

Yes, in the very beggining casting fireballs and that hatchet-thing seems to be the most efficient thing to do given your mana and your forces.
But the game and the number of troops scales pretty fast, and as in HoMM the damage spells soon become useless compared to the "cheap" spells that before seemed crap.

500 points of damage is nice, but when you have 500 griffins a speed/initiative or defence/attack bugg spell is WAY better both in damage output and tactical issues.

Oh, and this game seems to be one of the hottest games out this year.
I simply can't wait till the 23rd (damn you faggots posting sweet demos before the game is out).
I'm attempting to get the russian version and then phone a friend of mine to come translate for me.

Hey, maybe there's something that can be done with on-the-fly translation? I remember a friend of mine playing those jap rpg's with some proggies on the side that hooked and translated text as it was being displayed.

dasvedania.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

Stop spamming fireballs.

Oh, and this game seems to be one of the hottest games out this year.

+1

I might get it Christmas, don`t have the financial input and time to play it now/later.
It`s only about 38 Euros here, if you preorder it on Amazon. Good price for a new game.

 

[Zhuangzi]

I've never played the HOMM series so I can't comment as to whether it's better or worse.

I DID play the HOMM 5 demo and found it quite tedious and stupid. It was a bitch getting it to work as well. So I didn't get the full game.

I've played all three classes now, and all are equally fun. The game feels balanced and chock full of things to do.

Looking at the worldmap, there must be at least 4 sectors on the main continent, and there are five continents in total. There must be dozens if not hundreds of hours of gameplay in there, and it seems somewhat randomised in terms of the items that are available in different locations.

Plus the three different classes of character = hundreds of hours of gameplay. :twisted:

 

[Elwro]

Can GF 6600 run this game without retardation inducing lag?

yes

Buying this ASAP then. Support good games!

 

[Balor]

Like I've already said, the game is very undemanding, unless you want to max out everything and play with mods that allow you to rise the camera to sky-high levels.
Otherwise you must have P2 with Voodoo to suffer serious perfomance problems, I guess.

 

[made]

mods that allow you to rise the camera to sky-high levels.

Link pls?

 

[Balor]

http://kingsbounty.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=273

In Russian, of course.
The specific link you want is:
http://kingsbounty.ru/mods/1.6.4/mod_164_camera.zip

You should unzip it into your 'mods' directory.
Not sure how would it work on English demo version.

 

[feta]

hmmm, it seems that copying that data file onto the russian game AND changing the language to "eng" in the app.ini actually turns the game to english.

I was hoping they'd have all the dialogs in the demo, but it seems I'll have to unpack the data file and put it through babelfish.

I CANNOT WAIT TWO MORE DAYS DAMMIT.


On the plus side, you will never have to mess with the silly copy protection since just installing the russian game and applying the latest patch (without ever starting the game) skips the whole deal.

Raise your hand if you want securom.

EDIT: crap, the text is encoded somewhere. Can't find it

 

[MetalCraze]

the game is very undemanding

Right, now that paying beta-tes... uhm russian gamers tested it.
In Soviet Russia consumers do a QA

 

[pkt-zer0]

EDIT: crap, the text is encoded somewhere. Can't find it

It's just the .lang Unicode text files in the main data file, at least in the demo. (Don't remember the name, it has a .kfs extension, it's actually a plain ZIP archive)

the game is very undemanding

Right, now that paying beta-tes... uhm russian gamers tested it.
In Soviet Russia consumers do a QA

Are you just bitching to ensure the percentage of sensible and well-reasoned criticism is kept to a minimum on the forums, or do I have to pirate the Russian version to see just how much of a resource hog that is?

 

[MetalCraze]

No I'm simply disliking the way this game became so "undemanding" and such optimization is not something you can praise it for.

 

[pkt-zer0]

No I'm simply disliking the way this game became so "undemanding" and such optimization is not something you can praise it for.

So, any proof or at least illustration of just how much worse the original game was? Speed comparisons, translated changelogs showing massive optimizations, etc. I don't really see a game built with SM1.1 to 2.0 support becoming the next Crysis in terms of resource consumption.

 

[MetalCraze]

When it first came out (and even during 1.2) it had some serious memory leaks and also lagged on a certain videocards more than a game with such graphics should've. Only with 1.6 Katauri really fixed those flaws. Heh KB originally managed to put even 6800 down to its knees considering that KB's graphics are somewhere near WC3 - and Balor writes about P2 and Voodoo

 

[vazquez595654]

I played the first mission to kill the dragon, then I got the second mission to kill the... and I realized I just witnessed 70 percent of the gameplay. I stopped immediately.