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Russian Federation4235 Posts
Does anyone play this? I'm quite interested at the foreign community for this russian-made game and particularly interested in people from TeamLiquid who made it.
The reason is that there's quite a developed russian modding community for it, and since I'm in charge of two large projects there I would love to know if english-localized support is needed for them. I have the localized versions in my disposal, but I have exactly zero known foreign player base for feedback since the community resides on a russian website.
If you don't know what it is, you might as well try it. You can find official reviews in like 3,5 seconds with proper use of Google, so I'll just jump to my own impressions. This game is somewhat of a remake of the original King's Bounty by John van Caneghem, although in an entirely different setting. It's basically a very good fairy tale - you won't expect any "epic" quests there, but a strong sense of humour and a large amount of "things done right" here and there. This game rewards those with attention to detail. It's not formally done, if you're mentally handicapped, you will have trouble playing it (just check the review at IGN, the author describes right clicking on an object to get info popup as something he took hours to figure), but for those with keen eye and basic tactical game experience it's quite easy even on the Impossible difficulty (once again, the fucktard at IGN doesn't know anything - don't start at "easy", it's for retards. Everyone I know who started at that difficulty had to restart because battles got too easy and boring). Battles are strongly reminiscent of HoMM series, with minor changes about the AP system.
What I must say about the game is that it has an unigue atmosphere - all locations are hand-drawn, the colors lush and even though you at some point realize that the locations are quite small, design makes them deep and they look huge and ready for exploration. Just like when you're a kid - even though that little meadow is only a few square meters, it seems huge and menacing, tempting for exploration at the same time. The graphical engine itself is not top-notch, but the design is wonderful. As soon as I saw the game in action, the thing that immediately came to my mind was "HoMM 2" - it's characteristical lush colors, simple, yet polished unit art and animations are reinvented here. Don't expect photographic realism - this is a fairy tale.
Considering one big disadvantage the game has - it has a (at least rumored to have) pretty bad translation. The original had a nice part of it's charm in humour in dialogues - subtle and far from childish. I honestly don't know how it fared after the translation, since it might be quite hard to translate.
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is awesome32263 Posts
I just read a review and it looks nice. The artwork is very pretty and it looks interesting :>
I might try it
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I played both the russian and english version and i must say Kings Bounty The Legend is a worthy successor of the Might and Magic universe created by NWC. It keeps the MM spirit alive (although it's (almost) 3D), and has great additions to the gameplay that make the game more interesting (buff/debuff objects on the battlefield, the rage system etc.). If Katauri made Heroes 5 as well instead of the crappy Nival/Ubisoft it would have been the greatest hit in the HOMM series since Heroes 3 *sigh*.
On topic, I'd love to try some mods for Kings Bounty but unfortunately i dont have much time for games atm  .
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
On February 10 2009 22:31 MER wrote:I played both the russian and english version and i must say Kings Bounty The Legend is a worthy successor of the Might and Magic universe created by NWC. It keeps the MM spirit alive (although it's (almost) 3D), and has great additions to the gameplay that make the game more interesting (buff/debuff objects on the battlefield, the rage system etc.). If Katauri made Heroes 5 as well instead of the crappy Nival/Ubisoft it would have been the greatest hit in the HOMM series since Heroes 3 *sigh*. On topic, I'd love to try some mods for Kings Bounty but unfortunately i dont have much time for games atm .
Well, considering HoMM V it's not that simple. Clearly, it's a design failure. The game just doesn't look good enough compared even to HoMM IV (which, in turn, had weird, but sometimes brilliant design). Nival hadn't really beaten the battle tile system (square tiles were a complete FAIL, with every unit unbelievably small, all artwork details went to hell), and map design was generally uninspired as well. However, with addons, they somewhat redeemed themselves, some of the taiga maps there are just marvelous. Weak storyline and completely idiotic AI didn't help.
But where Nival failed at 3D, they succeeded at 2D. The 2D artwork for HoMM V (including trait icons and stuff) is completely gorgeous. But even more importantly, it features an outstanding hero development system that actually makes the game worth playing. The amount of hero builds you can make that rely on completely different units, spells and battle paradigms is huge. The amount of unique and unconventional special abilities that actually make impact is huge as well. In Heroes V, aside from the usual unnoticeable "+10% magic resistance", you will meet strategy-changing "heals from destruction spells", "ignores defense at point blank shots", "50% ranged damage reduction for self and adjacent allies" and many more abilities that augment each race and hero build with unique tactics. Warlock elemental chains is one of the more remarkable (unfortunately, due to poor map design it's hard to use as you rarely have more that one castle) trait that completely changes tactics - for your opponent it almost looks like you're striking random targets instead of tactically preferable. The orc race is also something quite unseen in HoMM series with a slew of units that look completely useless without rage, but are monsters with it (like that Orc Warlord, a 5-level unit with puny 32 hp, a complete monster when enraged). Battle and hero mechanics in HoMM V are the best of all series, unfortunately bundled into a clumsy interface and questionable 3D-graphics. But enough of offtopic. =)
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Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
It's a really great game indeed, though I have too played it only in Russian.
However, I would gladly help you with translation work if you decide it is worth it 
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I played it for a bit. A LOT LIKE HEROES! It was a good timekiller, although I had to go back to starcraft after a few hours.. The game got kind of repetitive as well because combat was the same, and the quests gave you little incentive to complete them.
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On February 10 2009 22:24 IntoTheWow wrote:
I just read a review and it looks nice. The artwork is very pretty and it looks interesting :>
I might try it
Don't bother (especially if you're into Heroes series). It's a remake of Heroes predecessor, it looks nice but gameplay is much worse and it failed to entertain me for more than an hour.
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i played it, but i'm stuck in demonis. did most of the fights with 0 unit losses with my mage hero and mostly ranged army, until i came to demonis world. my style is totally debendend on rain of fire and black dragons and both do suck vs. demons, so basically the game is over for me there. :[
pretty sad after like 50 hours of playing.
other than that i liked the game. maybe i cheat myself through demonis. anyone can tell me whats coming after that? is it worth it?
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The problem with all Heroes style games (and I really love Heroes 2 and 3) is that they make for better tactical RPGs than they do strategy games, but the developers think they should be strategy games :/.
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Sweden33719 Posts
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
On February 11 2009 00:33 Corvi wrote:
i played it, but i'm stuck in demonis. did most of the fights with 0 unit losses with my mage hero and mostly ranged army, until i came to demonis world. my style is totally debendend on rain of fire and black dragons and both do suck vs. demons, so basically the game is over for me there. :[
pretty sad after like 50 hours of playing.
other than that i liked the game. maybe i cheat myself through demonis. anyone can tell me whats coming after that? is it worth it?
This is definetely not the end for several main reasons:
1) Try using a spell that sets a unit's fire resistance to -50%, i guess you have High Magic, so you can start nuking at turn 2. You don't really need to lower resistance for all creatures, just some of them to make your dragons/RoF useful.
2) Change army composition. Some units do better vs demons, some don't. I must tell you that dwarven armies with their huge defense/hp and physical/acid damage deal with demons quite nicely. Just don't neglect the low-levels, they deal and stand a lot of damage. Speaking of other troops, Evil Eyes simply rock at disabling large low level stacks, like Imps.
3) The only fight you really have to do in Demonis is Castle Nexi (or whatever it's called in english translation). Demonis is really the place where the game stops being a cakewalk for mage (you just get used to killing everyone with RoF in Ellinia, that's not really the way it should be), but it's doable. Anyway, Castle Nexi is definetely possible with some creative spell usage, and you can just skip the rest if you don't want to fight them, you are likely to get lvl30 even without killing everyone in Demonis.
Later on you will go in the Dragon Labyrinth and Murok, both should be easier for a fire mage (but there are several really really hard fights in the Labyrinth), especially since demons have +50% stats on familiar ground which makes them even harder.
Everything should have a relatively easy solution unless you're playing on Impossible. For impossible, you just have to know some tricks. One of them is Invisibility + Mana Pool + Armageddon with Last Hero for style. That tactic alone can theoretically make the game beatable with one 5 initiative (with +3 Rush) stack of one unit. A fairie, for instance.
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I probably wouldn't be interested in mods for the game because I uninstalled it. Unless the mods were very unique and excellent I wouldn't bother.
My impressions on King's Bounty were that it's HoMM (I think original King's bounty is the prequel? Not sure.) but only single player. I got close to the end of the game but got bored and quit. The artwork is quite nice but the game is really very boring. You run around doing regular army gathering and generic battles until you get to a cool looking boss, who's too easy. I wouldn't recommend the game unless you like HoMM a lot.
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this game is simply too good and too addictive 
every time i want to launch it i know what it means: 3, 4 hours of play
just to beat this monster, just to see whats in this cave ...and of course my army need to be constantly at max i need to go back and so on.......
help me ;]
edit:
King Bounty is a superb revamp of shitty homm imo
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I really liked this game, but it was too long and tedious so I stopped playing about halfway through. Having to sacrifice/resurrect your army constantly or travel to the other side of the world to replenish got old pretty fast. I probably should have played the wizard, but playing him felt like picking protoss.
I heard the original English translation was terrible, but I played it about a month after it came out and it was flawless. I guess one of the early patches had a new translation.
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Thank you FrozenArbiter, now I just HAVE to play this game =)
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i ve been playing it lately. Pretty good game and it it not hard but im playing normal difficult, i dunno about impossible. im a warrior and pretty strong. i have 10k leadership at lvl 15 and im a great mage too lol kinda imba imo... gotta try impossible soon.
i m currently at kordar searching for the king's daughter... i added giants to my army. sooo cool =D
i cant wait to have horsemen and knights cause of the -20% leadership requirements! going to be strong. sorry for my bad english btw
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and i think it is a shame not to put multiplayer, just 1v1 at a random scenario would be great
no multiplayer suux hard
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
On February 11 2009 02:27 Durak wrote:
I probably wouldn't be interested in mods for the game because I uninstalled it. Unless the mods were very unique and excellent I wouldn't bother.
My impressions on King's Bounty were that it's HoMM (I think original King's bounty is the prequel? Not sure.) but only single player. I got close to the end of the game but got bored and quit. The artwork is quite nice but the game is really very boring. You run around doing regular army gathering and generic battles until you get to a cool looking boss, who's too easy. I wouldn't recommend the game unless you like HoMM a lot.
There are many good mods, however, most of them are interface enhancements for those who'd like to play the game once again, like extended hints, colored messages etc.
There are several content mods for those who want a new twist, they mostly deal with being able to play with an extended pool of starting units, like demons or undead. There's is also a large mod that implements several new units with pretty unique features, they spawn on the map, are hireable etc, and also a mechanism to upgrade some of the players' units into their evil versions. It's called Army of Dark, it's afaik translated and definetely worth a try if you want to go through the game one more time.
I am responsible for two mods. The first is called KBMaster and it's purpose is solely to make the mods compartible between each other. It's usage for a player is as simple as it could theoretically get, you just install it and never think about it anymore. For a modmaker, however, there are several limitations your mod must adhere to be KBM-compliant, but they are not necessary for the end user to know. Currently, most of the mods made by the community are KBM-compliant (the same thing makes them unusable stand-alone) so you will have to download KBMaster to make them work. That includes Army of Dark and some other mods. It also provides a compilation of the most useful and uninvasive interface mods like a new section of the spellbook called "favourite spells", improved damage hints (shows critical hit percentage) and other minor stuff.
The second is a mod that gives you a special item at the start of the game. This item serves as a magical prison for a specific character - a summonable unit that fights alongside your troops, gains experience and improves his abilities. As he gains levels, his stats grow and he can learn skills. The item is equipped in the shield slot and provides leadership and mana penalties to preserve balance. There's a rather simple storyline connected with it, but I'd rather not give out details to avoid spoilers. Not that it's some sort of a complete game overhaul (well, game experience changes alot, but not like RPG to RTS, lol), you will have to understand that King's Bounty in it's current incarnation has some resources open, but does not directly support mods, so all modding involves quite complex text editing (from fairly simple Lua scripts to brainkilling item decompilation), besides, we're limited to the API King's Bounty provides to it's Lua scripting shell, which does not contain many of the things people would like to have there. Anyway, I think it's worth a try and it got a lot of positive feedback in the russian community.
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Just beat the game during this long weekend, starting on Friday.
Invested a good 60~ hours.
I played on Normal as a Mage, and finished 79 Quests. It was decently challenging.
The second half of the game, I just used Armageddon + the "Poison Shield" thingy from the Rage Box as a combo and mowed through 75% of the stuff I face.
When I was midway through the Elf part (about 70% progress of the game), the tediousness finally got to me, as I didn't want to spend an extra 20 hours finishing up all the side quests and go through the same ol' battle for the 1000th time, I proceeded to cheat my level and stats, just to speed run and finish up the main story.
The game really has a lot of depth, but sucks that you can't do "quick battles" and have to go through every single one of them.
I personally would rate this game a solid 8/10.
Thanks to BluzMan for introducing this game to me(us).
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United States12210 Posts
Well Bluz, I wrote a review post about this game and I totally forgot about this thread. A friend just told me about this game over the weekend so I checked it out, and it is basically everything I loved about HoMM3 (with the exception of multiplayer) in an RPG setting rather than a turn-based strategy setting (for the adventure map, anyway). That's very cool that you are involved in the modding community for this game, I should have expected it really because you're one of TL's members who knows a good game when he sees it.
One thing I really like is how intricate each of the unit attributes are. It's like HoMM3 to the nth degree. The AP system makes much more sense, units can have charges or cooldowns on their abilities, undead take double damage from Holy attacks from Priests/Inquisitors, heroes can be upgraded according to a predetermined logical path rather than random chance, etc. Everything is customizable and there are just so many options, it's fantastic.
If there's one thing this game needs badly, it's multiplayer. It doesn't even have to be competitive multiplayer, just something I can play with my girlfriend working together to beat enemy heroes or tough quests or something. That's what made HoMM3 so great and replayable... it had custom maps and randomly-created maps, and this game deserves to be the successor to HoMM3.
I read a couple of reviews this morning, and I was pretty surprised to see they all weren't impressed by the graphics. I think the graphics are pretty amazing, actually.
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EPT
