Is there any benefit to taking a pure single class Fighter over a Knight?
A minor one I just found after playing a bit: Knights can't sweep. Hardly relevant in the long run but there it is.
I finished the first floor of the first dungeon in CoN with my 2 Knights, Cleric/Ranger, Cleric/Fighter, White Mage, Red Mage party. I think I wanna redo it again and replace one of the Knights with a pure Fighter. The Knight is nice but their slow growth kind of sucks and they kept missing everything while the C/R and C/F killed everything. I now see the benefit of having a single classed Fighter as they'll just advance fast into a solid killing machine, which is something I want, and I'll let the Knight catch up later. I always find that the early levels in D&D are the toughest and most parties tend to even out toward the end, so having a smoother start is more important to me. Sweeping is a valuable skill to have as well since it might help me cut through the chaff and get to the more dangerous enemies hiding behind the back rows faster.
Anyway, having done the first floor of CoN there's a few impressions it left me:
-The dungeon design is a lot more complex now, which is nice. There are more events and things happening here.
-The world map makes overland traveling a more comfier experience. Wandering around and getting into easy random encounters wasn't that great in PoR, despite the world map not being
that big.
-Towns are menu based, this is something I actually enjoy. I don't mind if towns are abstracted as pseudo dungeons in my crawlers, but I prefer them as menus.
-Sleep and Hold Person aren't so reliable anymore. Seems to be almost 50/50 if enemies resist them. I'm not against this by itself as they were really overpowered, but this leads to a slight problem in my next point.
-The encounters are harder than in PoR, but mostly because there are a few fights that throw in a couple of Clerics and Wizards who will Hold and Charm you. The only way to deal with them is to do it to them first. A few times this devolved into me just having to restart the fight a bunch of times because I lost simply due to the enemy either getting their spells off first or resisting my control attempts. Both my Mages are Human, so I'm thinking that making them into Elves might actually be more beneficial for the higher Initiative given through Elven bonus Dexterity.
-The moon alignment affecting my mages is kinda meh. It just buffs/debuffs the other mage periodically. It seems like a system that hurts the player more at the beginning of the game and later on as your characters get more levels matters a bit less. Well, the extra memorization slots will always be nice I guess.
-A lot of Cleric spells seem to be missing. No more Harm or Curse. Sucks.