King's Bounty II - Gameplay and Interview Video

I agree, it would be great if it was great.

It looks really good!

I thought only women and children and moths were attracted to bright colours? Are you guys eating lots of impossible burgers or what?

Europeans are supposed to like the realistic colour palettes. For eg, Warcraft does bright colours, Gothic does realistic colours. That's traditionally been the main difference between US and EU games.

You're all turning into American children!!

Originally Posted by SirJames
Europeans are supposed to like the realistic colour palettes. For eg, Warcraft does bright colours, Gothic does realistic colours. That's traditionally been the main difference between US and EU games.

You're all turning into American children!!

Erm…

Originally Posted by Farflame
I assume there will be option to show grid. So this shouldnt be a problem if I understand you correctly.

Not sure what you mean. You don't change to a specific battlefield anymore, the grid is placed where you are at that time when the battle starts. Each of your units has a number of individuals placed on each grid that relates to the total size of that unit.So, you have something like 6 archers, 5 swordsmen, 2 knights, etc. The same goes for your opponent.

A certain grid size is needed to place six members of a unit. This makes the grids relatively big and it can require quite some space. If I want to check out the entire battlefield, which I like to do to see what the opponent is doing, I need to zoom out. This results in the squads looking alike. You cannot distinguish the archers from the swordsmen anymore, because they usually have their weapons close them. That they are all dressed the same does not help either.
Zooming in helps, but you don't see the entire battlefield anymore. Selecting each unit gives you information and obviously you can try to remember where each of your units and the units of your opponent are.

This is an issue you did not have with its predecessor where the units were unique in style. I understand that it is more realistic in the way it is done now and it could very well be that it is just an issue I am having, but I found it annoying and distracting and because of that I couldn't really determine anymore if the combat was any good.

I really found the screenshots that were handed to me last August, to be not representative of what I saw on the screen, so there isn't a visual example to show you what I mean.
I did notice that Gamepressure mentioned something similar as I did, although I am not so negative as he is in my article around the same.

Oh my, that Gamepressure preview certainly didn't raise my hopes for the game. I've now gone from cautiously optimistic to severely pessimistic…

Man, that's the old article.
A couple months later they had a change of heart later after seeing some changes and spending some more time with the demo (3 pages):
https://www.gamepressure.com/editori…-my-mind/zc1d7

Overall, I must say I had a lot of fun. Not everything in the demo version has worked as it should, but it was still difficult to find fault with something particular. A few hours spent with the game convinced me that the development of the project is going in the right direction, and if only the Russians do not mess the core elements, this should be a good follow-up to the famous series. On the one hand, the sequel is diametrically different from The Legend, but still remains firmly rooted in the same premises that once made KB great. I expect that to be the case here as well.

Originally Posted by lackblogger
Erm…

*gasp* It's worse than I thought!!

The reason I liked the Kings Bounty games so much was because it was basically HOMAM without the need to return to your base every week.

I find I really like HOMAM early on when all the treasure is still there and you just walk from treasure to treasure and get XP from chests and level up often. But then, to play well, you need to start using multiple heroes and spread your troops between them and it just turns into a game of re-taking all the mines. If you leave a garrison without a hero its pretty much just a waste of units. All the exploration and fun gets replaced with maintenance chores.

Then along came Kings Bounty and the whole thing was like early game in HOMAM. You'd find new troops as you traveled and always be exploring new areas. I never thought much of the graphics but the gameplay was great fun.

I wouldn't care if it went 2D as long as it keeps the early-game HOMAM fun. These graphics are well beyond what it needs to be a fun game. However, I do understand the issue of the clumps of units being hard to distinguish from eachother. I had a lot of trouble in Age of Wonders 3 for this reason. I think if they can sort that out then it will be a very good game!

Originally Posted by joxer
Man, that's the old article.
A couple months later they had a change of heart later after seeing some changes and spending some more time with the demo (3 pages):
https://www.gamepressure.com/editori…-my-mind/zc1d7

Oh damn, that one was a lot more positive. Maybe I'll just stop reading about this game until it's actually released, otherwise I'll get a split personality.