Finished
King's Bounty 2 as Katharine (mage), took me 60 hours.
The game when it comes to gaming is great.
- It has a fair share of puzzles, some easy, some not (I had to brute force a couple).
- Tons of equipment you will have to micromanage very carefully as you can't buy everything - a hint, do buy resistance trinket when you see it, it's not expensive and will save your head in toughest fights.
- Choices matter for your character. Your skills depend on it and taking any "wrong" side can lock you out of final armor set piece that was a reward you can't get in the path you took. The story however ends the same way, regardless who you side with as the main villain cannot be manipulated.
- You can't become a master of everything like in Skyrim, you'll max just one skills "branch", only left will be a few points to put in others.
- Trials where you play predetermined units battle, a sort of a chess where you can't change what figures you have, some were easy, but two I had to replay many times in different ways to win. The point is you need to think outside the box and not care about losing units as in the actual game.
- And actual game combat is as exciting as was in old KB games. You need to outsmart the AI without losing too many units in your army.
Losing the whole stack happened to me more than once, then again, I loved to engage those enemies marked as UNDEFEATABLE.
I mean, really? Let's see how much undefeatable you are. And then I cry because some units are not available to buy any more and I lost 'em (ok there is a Summon scroll to mitigate this and also as the story progress you find those units offered elsewhere).
The game *is* challenging, especially if you don't care who you're currently engaging or decide to do a playthrough without losing a single soldier ever. I don't see it possible…
But when it comes to other stuff, it's not that great.
- UI is partially retarded, you can't do everything with the mouse but have to use silly keys. That, btw, are not remappable. In 2021.
- The engine version is some old one, thus character faces look as one's arse. The engine was not really designed for openworld exploration so it happens you get temporarily (frequently) or permanently (rare) "stuck on a rock". Which forces you to save often or not explore.
- To save often you will press F5 every now and than, right? No. There is no quicksave. Luckily, devs promised to add it.
- Oh, you will not explore? Well, then you won't find tons and tons of money you desperately need. This was IMO a bad design idea, instead of 100 coin purses with 100 coins inside, they should have put one so you don't risk getting permastuck. Because they knew the engine is not designed for this kind of exploration.
- The horse is utterly useless and your character runs/walks so slow as if was a Mass Effect original elevator. When it became unbearable, I hacked the game speed 2x and then it was all fun. Here's hope they fix it for future players.
- The music… Depends where you are either doesn't exist or is so worse than in old games.
To sum up, hack the game speed on double and you'll have so much fun.
Sadly you will not enthuse about it to all friends as some of it's designs are annoying.
But I am pressing a certain friend who loves mmos to try this one as it needs both wits and intelligence, one can't pay to win it.