I'd have to disagree. When I first got to Greenwort, the fights were generally fairly difficult. The same was true when I moved to Arlania and Verlon Wasteland. I didn't have any losses, thanks to resurrection exploits, but I often had a few rounds of resurrecting at the end of each fight indicating I'd lost quite a few units. Certainly, I wouldn't say I was in danger of actually losing any of those fights, but I wasn't simply steamrolling the enemy.

The fights in Demonis were substantially harder, but I hadn't figured out how to get to the Freedom Isles, so hadn't got all the XP from the fights there. When I finally got there, yes, all the fights were quite easy, but I'd over-leveled them by doing the Demonis/Hades stuff. Had I done those in the reverse direction, I suspect the former would have been easier, and the latter harder. I suppose I should include Merlassar in there, as it was mixed in with the Greenwort/Arlania/Verlon stuff.

I suppose part of the issue is the very mobility that implies. You have a lot more areas to work with at that point in the game, so you aren't forced into fights you might not win. This, of course, is especially compounded by the ability to fly - giving you the ability to skip any fight you don't want to fight. So you end up in a situation where you've got superior resurrecting troops, with large amounts of fights to choose from, in a situation where you aren't roadblocked for quite some time. That definitely is going to give the impression of being significantly easier.

Well now I understand why you say the Ghoul in Greenwort is a threat to no-loss. In my second playthrough, I moved around Darion, Merlessar and the Isle of Freedom and I see that Greenwort, Verlon Wasteland and Western Isle have roughly the same enemy strength. Merlessar, Eastern Isle and Arlania is the same, too and stronger than these previous areas but not much. So if you do them before Demonis but after finish all Darion stuff, it's not much different.

You were right about mobility, there are many easy fights to pick and you aren't forced to fight "Impossible" fight.

Sure, because at that point they were level appropriate. If you just do Darion, and then go to Demonis, it is a generally difficult progressions.

This is the point. All the fights in Freedom Isles and Merlessar are 'before' Demonis in difficulty. And if you do them in order of difficulty, you end up doing a huge amount of really easy fights. By skipping the easy ones, you just artificially make the rest of the game harder.

I stopped using Runemages after doing a chunk of Darion, because they completely sucked the fun out of anything. Didn't use any resurrectors until Demonis, when I picked up some Demonologists. So, yeah. At the end of all things, the game is still very easy and ress or not makes no difference. It's just one way of arriving at ease.

Well, yes, because the game design seems to indicate you should do the Freedom Isles and Merlassar before Demonis.

Well, not, that's not the point I was making. My point was that they were easy because I did Demonis first. Had I not done Demonis (and Hades), those fights would have been more challenging simply because I wouldn't have had the extra levels from Demonis/Hades. And had I done Freedom Isle before Demonis/Hades, yes, the latter would have been easier, but probably not substantially so.

If I recall correctly, you are using a mostly level 5 army composition (dragons figure prominently, don't they?). Yes, that's another way of making things easier. Resurrection abilities aren't the only way that can be accomplished, just the most visible.

Basically, the units in the game aren't well balanced. Unit resurrection abilities again rank high in that list, but there are a lot of other areas. I suspect that if someone were to try a playthrough and (past the first 4 islands) only play with level 1-2 units, it would be considerably more challenging.

At this point, however, barring a complete rebalance of units/spells/skills/abilities taking place, the only way to make things "harder" is to give the AI more units - which is only a marginal improvement - or make the AI make better decisions - which is also only a marginal improvement.

Summoned units count towards the heartless achievement. While i was in verlon wasteland i used royal thorns (and summoned lots of thorn warriors/hunters) and got the achievement, without ever losing a "real" unit.

@Kel
You`re f...ing kidding me !!!
In previous games battle to improve/suppress items didnt count toward Strategy medal (+lds) , or did summoned units counted toward Trapper medal , and summons also gave only 1/4 of mana for transmutate skill.
And now they are viabile way to get some achievement, what a load of crap.
But since achievements are totally useless anyway, it doesnt matter does it.

What can I say... This is such an unfortunate and distasteful phrase. Speaking of killing people and wars this lightly is very disturbing.

On the topic: Even though I haven't finished the game yet (so my experience may change later), I'm finding the game's difficulty to be similar as the previous KBs:

o - Enemies: Bosses, you need to prepare and adapt for them as usual; the other groups, you just grind for xp and gold, but once you find a strategy that works, you rarely need to change it.

o - Money: You could argue, like I read somewhere, that in previous versions you didn't have as much gold as you do now, at the start. But, as a offset, here you are restricted to a certain kind of units for some time and, some, in lower supplies. There's also not a hell of a lot to buy: Being so limited in the places you can go, there are fewer shops available. Later on, money was never a problem.

o - Items: I would say that they make the game more difficult now. Not because of their power that is more or less the same as always. But because, this time around, you don't have wives/companions that can equip them.

o - Spells/Rage abilities: Barring balance problems that will, hopefully, be corrected: Same as before. The more you have, the easier it becomes.

o - Units: Same as Spells/Rage abilities.

A note on balance: Even though KB always provided ways to take advantage of powerful combos (which I find it fun!), this time the game feels as it was not fully tested. Rune mages break the game, Creator and Artificer are very powerful, etc.

tl;dr: This is a KB game. Once bugs have been fixed and glaring balance problems corrected, difficulty is what you make of it.

your examples a re bit touchy

first you say the res abilties making it to easy
(there are some builds that don't even need RESU or level 5 units)

the units are just okay ( only wotn made some mistakes by making some overpowered)

you should check in the AP forum where impy and some others tried finishing the game with low level units and that is even possible(although not in a no loss run)

I really find it very amusing how people keep saying units are unbalanced and stuff

but if you are here from the beginning start of TL
you could gradually see how people got into the heck of things and really made things easier!
but as today not alot of new stuff is being invented so they put some new OP units in and pretty imbalance the enemy strenght


and if you don't believe me just look at the early stages of TL when people found out how to get this game as no loss (which was then still unheard of)
then with KB:ap they put some new stuff in and some new combo's but pretty much the same

whereas in wotn the game is badly written there are hardly new stuff being invented (the viking race isn't so great) I find it kinda funny that we are forced to use crappy viking units for 4 islands long
whereas when u go beyond that people will still use their combo's what they used before in AP and TL
and prolly for the most medicore people they will just use the paladin/ingi combo because it easy and hardly effect morale penalties and therefore also not making the human race inferior

I mean people have finished TL:Ap:CW with one stack of a unit(dragons were most famous)

I bet people can do so again in WOTN if you had the ability of kiting or at least give some better unit selection

But you are forced to use the viking race LITERALLY and even with such a weak race your just obliterating the undead. There is hardly a chance of fighting vs other stacks unless u are really dedicated on finishing this game a sa viking(which requires a lot of traveling back for the right units of vikings


I will bet that most experts from TL/ap/cw will say WOTN is the worst installment of KB

I actually liked being forced to use the Vikings. They didn't seem that bad to me. Also, if I still retained most of the Vikings, they would be arguably borderline overpowered for me (Viking/Warrior class) due to the damage buffs they get.

I like the "easier" play. I tend to play more for fun/fast builds and there is a lot more room to do so in this game. I used to have to pre-scan lots of Armored Princess games just to find the right items to do my insane combos in Impossible.

Here, I am still using my first game and didn't have to scan and I'm still getting a lot of great items/combos.

It is funny how people are semi-complaining about the maps/islands. That was the biggest problem with Armored Princess. In some cases, you were literally stuck and the ONLY way to progress was to kite a very very very hard to kite enemy, fight a nearly impossible to no-loss fight, or just redo your game. And you had to do the islands in a somewhat specific order.

You now have the option to go to "hard" mode (skip the 'trainer' mid-islands), or take it easy and have a smoother progression.

Seems like you have more options now. If you want it hard, go for it. If you want it easy, go for it.

Since it is so easy to "cheat" or mod the game (I never did though), it isn't like there is some standard of difficulty that is getting muddied. So, anything that allows more options for mid-progression seem good to me.

Armored Princess had such a finite number of enemies and items that if you didn't do it in the right order, you could end up never getting some items 'freed' (50 fights) and you had to max EVERY battle to round 10 to make use of some Medal 3 rewards. It was good and bad... probably bad for new comers who weren't as hardcore.

I haven't beaten the game yet (level 42ish or so, just found the Kordar areas).

I just restarted my hard viking game because it was way too easy. Both the Pirate islands were ridiculously easy, armies were either very easy or easy, same for the elven island, thats 3 islands that offered no challenge what so ever. My Evil beholders were critting for 16k, at the start of each battle I crippled the enemy by casting Gudida's rage and Lord of the north on every enemy unit. Playing soothsayer now in impossible, haven't lost a fight yet but a bit more challenging, at least the first island was.