Finished the game at last

[Zhuangzi]

Phew, 80+ hours and I've finally finished my Impossible Skald game. I didn't want to restart after the patches so some of the quests were bugged and unfinished (I think I had 88 complete, although I could have finished a few more). The final battles were very easy although I did like the fact that you have to use different units for some of the final battles. A bit of diversity was much appreciated, but unfortunately there wasn't a lot of that in KB:WOTN.

I liked the game enough to play it through to the end pretty obsessively, but a lot of the time I was bored at having to grind my way through stack after stack of undead units. I wasn't too concerned with the bugs, but I did experience some CTD issues such as the Ice Dragon death problem (which is now fixed) and the Skald ability crash which isn't (at least not without restarting). I also had a weird issue where sometimes the battle would come to a halt between units turns, like the computer couldn't figure out whose turn it was or something. That always required a reload.

This game has some fairly severe pacing and difficulty issues, imo. There's far, far, far too much boring grinding. A lot of the quests aren't very interesting, and only a few of the boss fights are challenging. A couple of the new mechanics are okay (such as the runes in battle) and the Skald song is okay I guess as well. By far the hardest battle for me was in Rezo's tower - I actually had to do it about 4 times to win. I wasn't trying for no losses, and I'm glad I didn't bother because it would have taken much longer. Also, the final battles require you to use particular units, so I'm not sure no-loss is possible (anyone finished the game without loss?) The difficulty was okay in the first four islands and I had some fairly tough battles in Demonis/Verlon Wasteland. But Freedom Islands was a joke when I attempted it, and the latter part of the game was just ridiculously easy. Toward the end I had 40k leadership and maybe 40 each Attack/Defense/Intellect and I was finishing Very Hard enemies in maybe 3 turns with no losses.

Unit wise, the best of the new units was the Warrior Maidens for me and I ended up using them for 3/4 of the game. I did use the Rune Mages for a while but eventually I got bored of phantomed armies and went for direct damage units. I always use Paladins and I like Horsemen as well. I've always found that Lake Fairies and Forest Fairies are amazing damage dealers, so I used them too.

So, in summary, KB:WOTN is okay, and I assume a bit better after the patches, but it's nowhere near as groundbreaking as earlier games in the series. So much of the game felt copy pasted from TL and the magic of the first game is not really there. At least AP was a short campaign and probably my favourite of the series, but WOTN is neither short OR interesting. The Valkyrie abilities aren't so interesting and the new Rune Spells are a mixed bag. Unfortunately, in the end, WOTN is 'meh.' I still liked it enough to play it for 80+ hours in a month or less, but I can't get excited about playing it again anytime soon.