My thoughts about crossworlds
 

I picked up KBL last year because it was priced off and i was looking for a new game. im not really a fan of turn based games but i thought it wouldnt hurt to give it a try. now i really started to love the series. and was eagerly awaing for crossworlds. but in all honesty im very dissapointed in crossworlds.
let me explain why

- Champion of the arena

seemed a very nice idea and a new character is always fun. but i really thought it was immersion breaking to. play arthur that used the same portrait as bill gilbert had in KBL. i couldnt get into the character because i was always stuck with bill gilbert in the back of my head

then again. evry boss was recycled from the previous kb's wich isnt exactly new content. also the story of it was very thin. and after i completed it. i had no idea what the real motivation of it all was.

- Orcs on the march.

Uses the same lands as AP. wich has loads of new units. but again
recycled and recolored units. a new quest here and there but thats it
like the blood shamans. its just a red orc shaman. or the wich hunter wich is a black painted robber. wich gives me the feeling de devs have been a bit lazy on this regard.

- armored princess

yes its good but we already completed it

Defender of the crown. yet another linked boss battle chain
not a real continuation of the KB story.

the advertisement of kb Crossworlds says 3 new campaigns.
wich is a bit misleading. it all feels like a small dlc patch instead of an expansion.

also the same music is used for CW.

dont get me wrong i really love KB

but the games never had the quality where i loved the legend for so much.
i really would love to see a big campaign again with a addictive story like KBL
what do you guys think?

I think that for a simple expansion to an ongoing product, this is a game that's well worth the money.

1. It opens up hero/boss battle campaign - Champion of the Arena - which lets you try various tactics and strategies. Almost awesome - it would have been completely awesome it there was a way to use your rage at least in hero battles.
2. It opens up a mini-campaign with great replayability and the option to try various lineups against various strong enemies - Defender of the Crown.
3. KBAP has been expanded with new tactical possibilities and new content. To the regular player it may not seem like much, but to the hardcore player who relies on various army setups, strategy and cunning, this is a completely new game.

Yeah, it is pretty scary and it is sooo clear they wanted people to use the Paladin Hero with Rune Mages due to that synergy. Allowing blacks to be revived by the Rune Mages.. .ah...

That said, the Crossworlds game manual says there is a new armor bearer called Goblin Rakush (the same guy who gives you a mission to kill the frog, sells items, etc).

I can't seem to unlock him though. Any luck so far?

Rune Mage Revive works on Blacks? But... Black Dragons are supposed to be immune to all spells and abilities...

Rulero - who cares that units are recolors. They play IMMENSLY differently then the units they are recolored from. Witch hunters are specific anti-Mage units that are fast too, while robbers are slow units with a 1-hex attack. Imps are strike-and-return demons with fireballs, Fauns are elven ranged units who resurrect plants and put the enemy to sleep. They play wastly differently. If you want to complain about recolors, do it for games like WOW where they just put in the same enemy in green without changing anything of its mechanics.

I agree with the champion arena Bill Gilbert thing. The problem is that you have a generic knight as a walking character but the icon and the character on the Heroscreen is princess Amelie. They couldn't even import the original Bill Gilbert model.

On the other side, I think it's an overall good expansion more in the way of a "edition of the year" which adds content and brings something new than a full game (like AP).

@ BB; I think you're right in the fact that even if they are recolored units, they play completely or very different. It's not like a hack'n slash where is the same thing just stronger. It seems Blizzard is the master of recoloring XD

@Rulero; I'm also waiting for a full and proper KB game. The first was more enjoyable in terms of story (quite more funny and original) and situations (some clever jokes or references there) instead of just the same thing. But AP and CW have expanded the formula and perfected it (better gameplay, mechanics, abilities, units, balance, items, spells, blbalbala, etc.) so KB2 should be THE game in terms of everything.

Come on Katauri, now is time for a proper KB2 game!! (Don't let us down)

Plague works on blacks too. Dancing Axes work on blacks (to heal). It is awesome. AWESOME!

Yeah, I know about those two - but they work because they are area/all creatures effects that do not manually target them. Revive would target them... odd.

Also, anyone tried the Paladin's Prayer in Crossworlds? The description says it revives plants and mechanical units as well...

Onepiece: KB2 will be AWESOME. In fact, I wish Nival bought the HOMM licencse from Ubi and made the next Heroes game. Although I am Hungarian, and HOMM VI is supposedly developed by a Hungarian team, I'd rather have experts who made such awesome TBS games do these then a company who made only RTS games before.

Plague is a target spell. Anyways, I think it is fine that it works on them. Black Dragons need a weakness... :) Haha.

Well then you might be happy that Nival is acting as producer of Kings Bounty online :-))

@BB; I don't think Ubi will sell them that license and to be sincere, King's Bounty beats the **** out of M&M. I was playing the fifth when I first played TL and I though "get the **** out out me bad game!! King's Bounty here I come!

But if Katauri (or 1C) wants to develop it into a full franchise, they will need to:

-Release a full proper game
-With better translation (hire some professionals or ask us devs)
-Correct their mistakes (come on, why does the paladin prayer ability says the same thing?) and bugs and
-Better implementation of their editor

(Optional): Don't do so much "expansions" but less as to not saturate the franchise and fanbase.

Now that would put them on the big leagues.

I don't think Katauri, nor King's Bounty, will ever hit the "big leagues", and I don't think it's their fault. It's more to do with, in my opinion, turn based/real time games like this are a niche market. If you look at Disciples III, which one could argue was the highest profile release in this genre since HoMMV, that completely bombed and I guess it was partially due to the genre just not being overly popular.

I do think King's Bounty 2 would be the best bet. The graphics are looking a little dated and it'd be nice to see a better engine and perhaps bigger worlds. Also, I'd like the dialogue to go from walls of text to something a little more interactive. I think that'd be nice, personally.

I'll agree with onepiece's suggestions completely, though. I think 1C and perhaps Katauri could do with a better translator, along with more thorough proof reading of their work. It's not uncommon for a pluralised word (As an example, Warriors) to be referred to with the singular term, leading to slightly odd comments in the combat log such as "Warriors is..."

And again, he's right about the expansions. KB:TL > KB:AP was fine. KB:AP > KB:C was bordering on being a bit poor. There's some meat to it, I won't disagree there, but I personally felt that it was a bit on the thin side for a £15 game and that it was little more than a collection of mods.

Well, I do, and I'm sure there are others out there who do as well. Gameplay, visuals and sound/music are all parts of immersion in the game. Certainly, gameplay is the most important of the three, but the others are important as well. So the new units "just" bring different gameplay to the table, whereas the sounds and visuals are practically the same. So yeah, for me that does take away from the immersion somewhat.

Yep, polish is probably Katauri's biggest challenge, and other Russian developers' too, if I may venture to say so.

That sums up my thoughts on the game as well.

Metathron, KB-CRossworlds in an expansion... to a game that was pretty much an expansion to the KB Legends game. It's more like a mod, but it turned out to be much more then that, however I think you have had too high expetations.

Armored Princess WAS the expansion of King's Bounty - it had new units (graphically too), new skills, spells, etc. - but the main game and about 85% of the units were the same, just recolored. So yeah, AP was an expansion -a standalone expansion, but expansion nonetheless. Crossworlds on the other hand, was a not-standalone mod to AP.

I was expecting frankly a lot less from Crossworlds (I thought Orcs on the March will be another short campaign) so I was pleasantly surprised. I think they made the main AP game much better without taking away any of the old game's fun factors.

I was never expecting new unit 3D models - making those would have meant this expansion would have taken more then a year to make.

Regarding translations - I found some errors in the english version too (sadly there is no Hungarian for AP yet), but seeing as the text in the game is in an extractable format somewhere, even us fans could fix that easily. I love KB for it's open attitude towards modding. Makes the game stay in circulation much, much longer thanks to the community. I mean, look at Titan Quest - the company is long defunct, but people are still making mods for that game.

After steamrolling past the two short campaigns (which have a lot of replay value by themselves, since I would love to retry them with different strategies and they are short, so no major commitment), I was really shocked to see Orcs on the March looked like a re-skinned Armored Princess.

I was almost sad... until I played it.

I highly suggest people to simply try playing it and you will be surprised. The new training schools, the new items (integrates new items plus the old gift pack mod), the new unit skills, and new spells, all open up NEW strategies.

They really did mods to the game to help eliminate some really old standing issues.

At a high level, the major changes was eliminating the near requirement to kite (or luck) and to help make far more units viable in the game. I am talking about Impossible NoLoss games.

I lamented that the game devolved heavily into using only a handful of units.

a) royal griffins and black knights were the only units with more than one counter attack, making them verrry ideal for certain combinations. Now this is no longer true!

b) black dragons were deadly and awesome, but there was no way to resurrect them, among a lot of other level 5 monsters (cyclops) and even level 4s (royal thorns), etc. Now this is fixed with rune mage.

c) rune mage also helps condense many units into one, thus allowing people to use more varied units while maintaining the old gameplay style. Plus the level 5 resurrect ability is great.

d) the orc team is totally revised, allowing for incredible combinations and now, much harder enemies.

e) training school allows you to AVOID needing to kite or worry if your game randomly generated enough units.

I don’t think it is fair calling any of the King’s Bounty games unpolished. There were a very few minor inconsistencies but overall I would rate all 3 as having above average polish. I never crash.

But beyond polish, and as a programmer myself, I’m amazed of how thoughtful the programmers and designers were in putting so much thought into every nuance of these games--the design, the interface, the playability, the graphics, the spells, the items, the creatures ,etc. I’ve never seen a game that had so many useful spells and items that you have to change up depending on the situation. I’m really impressed with the Kings Bounty series.

That said I have one disappointment in the Crossworld’s expansion so far. Previously I enjoyed playing as a mage the most and was able to get through the games with just the right amount of difficulty. However I gave up on playing March of the Orcs as a mage--it was just too much of a hard, old slog and I while I know I could have eventually got through it I was not having fun. However it is great fun playing as a warrior.

@ckdamascus; then how many rune mages and mind runes would you need to resurrect a BD? 5 of them according to me and 20 mind runes, which may seem like a lot but if you play carefully that may be enough (but that seems to take resurrection skill into consideration so maybe a little less)

There are new things but most of them are very small compared to what AP brought. Only the orcs are almost totally different and even some spells are the spirit's abilities from TL. That's why hardcore fans are a little dissapointed and maybe angry XD

@Dwagginz; you totally get what I want to say. Of course this type of gameplay may be very niche like but that doesn't mean they can open to a broader audience if the do a better work (maybe more marketing and voices)

@metathron; agree with you on the cost (maybe they are gathering resources (gold?XD) for KB2:shock:?. I also agree that recolored units don't allow for a better immersion but I also agree with BB that they allow for very different strategies so it's not as bad as it could have been (think generic hack'n slash)

@fld88; Yep. Most of the spells, while you may not use them, are very varied and allow for very different type of styles and you will have them because you know, sometime, you will need them.

Although I think the more spells there are, the mage class gets the most of them (more mana and easier to develop mage skills and do more damage with spells)

I wouldn't call the game unpolished but more that the developers don't look at the game after they finish it (and we have pointed almost all the issues here in the forum) so it's more that they are being lazy.

Now I'm playing as a mage in hard and made a kite run. Couldn't believe that you could get to level 21 without fighting and whoever said it is right. You can even get up to level 23 perhaps.

Technically one, practically, a handful. Or, if you have shaman to heal th black dragon, just one.

If you can heal the unit to max, then use a resurrect, then you can revive the unit. So if you lost one black dragon, and it was fully healed, you could get away with one.


I really don't know what it is. I usually have a hard time beating impossible mage no-loss without kiting, but this time it was MUCH easier. No need to kite at all, and I didn't even farm out specific items.

The better unit distribution, ability to pick the right units with training schools, and rune mage really have altered the game quite a bit to make Impossible No Loss games easier.

The mid-game is trickier though since the orcs are ridiculously overpowered.

Regarding polish, admittedly the game does seem a little unpolished (AP) but it was super solid and stable (AP).

Crossworlds has some bugs unfortunately. (the shaman trophy pop up bug) and dialogue bugs too on Debir, etc.

That said, it is still pretty darn good and I highly recommend it to everyone.

I'm not disagreeing, but I think all KB could manage (In my opinion) is roughly the level of HoMM, and that's if the series is lucky and somehow Katauri or 1C (Who owns the license?) can get a deal with a bigger publisher, ergo more money for development.

The polish point I think changes on what you apply it to. In terms of gameplay? For the most part, KB is polished. Visually? It's polished. The translation? Good at best. It's not perfect though, and suffers from a number of minor mistakes and poor translations.

The problem is that there are not such high profile games from eastern Europe and Russia (except Metro 2033 and The Witcher (great game)and some others) so I think it could be hard to get a publisher with a game that already has a niche style of gameplay. But since it's way similar to HoMM, maybe Ubisoft or someone would take it into consideration (of course that depends if the ones who own King's Bounty want to)
But iIf they get one, they would get an immense increase in popularity worldwide.

The only problem from the visuals comes from the fact that many units (as in almost all other games) are very repetitive. I would ask for more unique designs and not copy/paste design and change colors (inquisitor/priest)

I, personally, think Katauri could take another bit of inspiration from Nival's HoMM V and make the second/upgraded unit look similar, but different. I'm sure that very few unit upgrades were straight recolours, and once you added the expansions you had two or three different models per unit (Succubi, for example, came in 3 variations), even if the major difference was the removal/addition of visual effects.

I see your point about high profile games, but on the other hand if you look at, as you said, UbiSoft, publishers are looking at "outside" talent. HoMM V was Nival, MM:H VI is by Black Hole (Budapest). There's a lot of talent in Eastern Europe and Russia with studios like Katauri and CDProjekt RED and hopefully over the years we'll see a bigger uptake of them.

@Dwagginz; Yeah I remember that they had this crazy idea of adding to almost all the units a second variation with little colors changes and tweaks (or was it a mod?)

Over the years they will look at new countries to develop games, not just in eastern europe or Northern asia (Russia). They are cheaper to produce and the people there have ideas that are fresh or add variety to a saturated market.
They will also make games that appeal to other audiences (adults or older people) with more mature themes (not tits XD). Think of Wii but done correct.

Official expansion, I think it was the second one. It added units like the Paokai (From Dark Messiah Might & Magic) and a new upgrade per unit, which was usually a very nice remodel of the base unit. They did differ from the original upgrade, but I think it was often more of a "One has higher defence and morale, the other has higher attack and crit chance". I've got a booklet somewhere detailing all of the units :p

I'll be honest - I enjoyed Divinity 2 and KB:AP more than quite a lot of non-European/Russian releases. I think European/Russian games have a charm about them that's lacking in the more popular releases. I think Kirill Pokrovsky had something to do with the excellence of Divinity 2, though :p

The thing is, if you want to do such things, you need to make a detailed model, and then make some of its "parts" disappear by deleting the alpha layer. In fact, KB did this too. Check Thorns and Royal Thorns - Royals have these spines and spikes on them. Or the various spiders - each one has different extremities. Orcs and Veteran Orcs differ by Veterans having the totem pole on their backs.

@Dwagginz, Probably since the soundtrack for Divinity 2 is awesome. Love it.

Must be because in those territories the way of seeing things and the mythology associated with it is different and it allows for games different than the usual american/japanese ones we've had for the last 20 years; which are seriously most of the same know and you can count the original ones with the fingers in one hand (not for the indie games which are more innovative and fresh).

@BB; I suppose you're right since a good portion of the "upgraded" units have some more/less details and small changes.
The thing is that when you have a lot of units and many are very similar, you fell as if they just have like 10 basic models and with that they create 30 units (not in the game just an example).
I suppose it makes it easier and cheaper to program and work for the developers but it tends to get a little bit tiresome. And since most of the models where introduced with TL, they fell "heavy" now.

Funny thing is, for a long time I thought the red and emerald green dragons were the same 3D model - I only realized they were totally different when once I faced all three in battle. Nice work, Nival! :)

That should be enough of a reason for a "KB2", if we're going to call it that. I'm sure Katauri have learnt a lot from these three games, and if they apply it to a KB2, it'd be great.

I hope they'd give us a better choice of characters, though.

More customization (maybe change the appearance of the hero or different models for each class; both male and female).
A new class would be very appreciated (because now the skill tree looks very saturated; maybe expand them?)

More classes of "helpers", not just from the other sex (like the guild heroes from the arena, so you can "buy" new "helpers"?)

I don't know of you fell about this but I would like a more complex role for the "helper" in battle (control some units of his own maybe) and would ask for more 2 vs battles.

Make some battle more "special"; 10 turn limit or the enemy get new units every x rounds, no magic/rage, etc.. to add a little variety

More funny situations (as in TL) but also some more serious things (as in AP/CW). More engaging second characters (is there even 1 in the games?)

A better exploration system that takes the ships from AP (fast movement) with the big settings and continuity from TL. Some new lands never seen before (jungle, desert, etc.)

Better description for the items