Playing this for the first time, it's fucking amazing

Went completely blind so married the first girl (the zombie/brigand lady) cause I thought it was just a funny line to end the quest, didn't realize it was a game feature to have wife and kid. I don't mind, though, I feel I was doing okay in term of combat difficulty
Played for 47h, then suddenly dropped it the moment It opened up after the dwarf part. It forks in hell/skies and branch all over the place. I appreciate the more open/free roam world but it also lose focus a bit doing so. At that point the main quest had lost a bit of its steam. Still had a lot of fun.

didn't realize it was a game feature to have wife and kid

read the manual next time :^)

I'm after the dwarf part now, mostly mopping up old quests and fights/areas I avoided. I dipped down into demonis for a bit and made a team of demons and undead but they're too annoying to recruit when I take losses so it's back to the good ole swordman and bowman spam
Necromancers summoning + demons summoning + casting two phantoms on demons who also summon was ridiculous

I bought the whole bundle ages ago so I might try the sequels to make up my own mind at some point

Your funeral, but the post-CW ones weren't made by the original developer and are a huge downgrade in level design and writing. They're also buggy as hell.
As for KB2, it had to be made by people who loathed the original game, there's no other explanation.

As for KB2, it had to be made by people who loathed the original game

qrd?

I liked it when I played it for the first time long ago. Tried to replay recently and got bored of repetitive combat on first continent.

I played the viking one and that one is good too, except its long length.
Stopped playing Dark Side because I got burnt out by playing the games back to back.

Nah, going blind is half the fun
Yeah, I think the leadership + going back and forth for recruitment + limited pool for some unit was meant to encourage variety and switching units from time to time, but it mostly made me fall back on the same reliable units I could easily get access too. Royal Snake, or spamming the castle units. Although the Haste / Seadog run ability / cleave attack combo was immensely fun. Pure glass cannon

I tried playing Dark Side and it had horrible audio issues.

As a mage you're gonna suffer from having low army numbers but you can beat the game easily by spamming armageddon when you get it.

I was regularly switching units and even depleted a few recruitments, but having to go down into the demon realm and take those slow-ass floating platforms is just a bit too much
At the end of the day, the combat system is an economy simulator. If I lose $3000 worth of units and make $4000 back, that's fine. Especially as a mage which is a big power multiplier in a lot of battles
Armageddon isn't great against demons for the same reason Fire Rain isn't, fire resistance. It also apparently got patched soon after release to be less broken

I played Legend like 3 years ago and only with armageddon I could beat the campaign as mage due to lack of units.

Astral damage to all units and objects, friend and foe, with a chance to Burn. Friendly units only take 35% damage. Ignores Spell immunity.

Yes, I know, the game claims it does Fire damage, and you'd sure expect that to be its damage type given its graphical effects, but no, its damage only varies via randomness, not based on differing resistances.

Holy fuckeroli
Okay then, I'll use it more

As a mage you're gonna suffer from having low army numbers

isn't that a meme? I remember only the paladin had a skill for leadership and it barely mattered towards the end
the game just ramps up the enemy armies bigly at the end no matter what class you play, you'll always be fighting stacks with 3x the equivalent leadership you have

lack of units

How? You should barely be taking any permanent casualties in Legend after you learn Resurrection.

okay the battle is over and there's only 1 enemy stack with 30 HP left, time to spend 30 turns doing nothing so I can get the mana to resurrect all my units

FAGGOT

From what I remember, the issue is that the mage doesn't have buffs for the army in his passive skilltree and thus they are more vulnerable and deal less dmg than the warrior's army.
I never played cleric and can't comment on that one.

As for KB2, it had to be made by people who loathed the original game, there's no other explanation.

It was Ascension to the Throne 2 but then greedy publisher decided that KB name will bring more money so they rebranded it as KB. Obviously it has nothing to do with Katauri's KB.

mage scaling is FUCKED UP

I did a no-loss run on the highest difficulty a few months ago. Mage starts suffering from the lack of damage when you get to the undead area, and after that point even your ghosts and vampires can no longer outheal incoming damage. Even Armageddon will no longer be able to destroy encounters in a single round.
However, as long as you start playing with a single stack, the game becomes very easy. The Reaper removes %HP from the biggest targets, Lina constantly maintains your rage and mana, and green dragons restore enough mana to maintain permanent invisibility and cast any spells you need as long you understand how turns work.
Armageddon + the green blob of armor is still your greatest nuke, but fire rain is easier to use.

My biggest disappointment is that mind control and summoning become borderline useless near the end. I had high hopes for both initially.

That sounds like an annoying as hell challenge run

summoning become borderline useless near the end

Cause the summoned units just instantly die? I find them to be good distractions

Do things ass-backwards in a weird order to not brick your save

Nah, fuck games like that

Generally (unless you're able to put everyone to permasleep and create gorillion portals), it goes like this: you create two demon portals, both summon demons, and both groups of demons get destroyed in the same round. Everything else is even weaker.
Phoenix was absolutely amazing in act 1 and carried my ass though.

I found phoenix so late that it immediately got killed in one round the one time I tried lel
I think in general it's pretty sad how mage damage falls off, it should scale with leadership or something
That's exactly why I'll just be a warrior next game, so I don't get blindsided by sudden damage dropoffs

Much like with everything else in this game, it gets better with AP when you get a summoned dragon whose stats scale with your intelligence. That lil' flaming nigga carried me for 90% of the game since RNG went out of its way to not drop any essential magecore spells like Geyser until the very last act.

Don't tempt me into being a mage next game anon
Good to hear they kept the dragon relevant though, rage spells in this game fall off fast

Yeah, it's fantastic. Crossworlds is even better.

Good to hear they kept the dragon relevant though, rage spells in this game fall off fast

No, not that dragon, that one's actually pretty tame compared to top-tier rage bullshit like Reverse Time. I mean a summoned dragon as in a spell. I just forget what it's called, "Ember Dragon" or something like that. It might have been added in Crossworlds, I'm not sure.

I'm just posting this so I have an excuse to listen to it again.
youtube.com/watch?v=aVjOeTDerao

rage spells in this game fall off fast

Only the rock guy becomes useless. The others have utility spells that stay powerful for the whole game, and the reaper's single target attack scales with the target's total HP.

Yeah but it kills like 20% of a unit
Also the only utility Sleem has is the dumb armor which is only useful for cheesing
Lina is cool though

Meh, too loud and gets grating with time. I ended up replacing half the soundtrack with HoMM3/4 tunes instead.
This guy did some tracks for Space Rangers though, they were pretty neat.
youtube.com/watch?v=0c0lunK0QQE

green dragons restore enough mana to maintain permanent invisibility and cast any spells you need as long you understand how turns work.

How does that work? Using the mana-restoring talent ends their turn so how would you cast invisibility on them again after that?

It's a pretty accurate assessment of the game. Shit never ends. And the difficulty creep between zones is ridiculous.
My character stopped being able to do anything at the dragon isle and then there was still the whole orc thing after that which is where I gave up.

Paladin is the worst class.
You can't beat the game with it on hardest difficulty.

Yeah but it kills like 20% of a unit

You can level it to kill 20% with no cooldown and a tiny cost. Absolutely invaluable on a mage.

the dumb armor which is only useful for cheesing

It tanks any hit no matter how much damage it dealt.

You can't beat the game with it on hardest difficulty.

Why bother with that difficulty anyway, it practically forces you to cheese it.

Walked into the hardest encounter I could find, cast armageddon twice, and it only killed like 60% of all the demonesses. It's shit
Also, whoever thought a unit needs to have the ability to teleport my archers right into the enemy melee line can fuck off

have some way to increase their initiative to let them always act first

also have something to increase their speed, it decides who acts first if two creatures have the same initiative

round starts

cast invisiblity

wait until the end of the turn

every enemy acts before you

attack with your unit and lose invisibility

next round starts

act first because of the highest initiative and renew invisibility

It works against anyone except enemies who see through invisibility, like Audrey 2s and summoned books. The most important thing is to understand when exactly you're going to lose any buff and renew it before in happens.

You can't beat the game with it on hardest difficulty

Don't make me look for the video where a paladin annihilates the giant orc's army with a single squad of sneks.

I see, I thought wait just puts you back a couple of initiative tiers, not at the end of the turn

Actually, here it is:
youtu.be/b0H_0x6BzdI
It's also useful for you to see the invisibility trick in action.

I tried it and the emeral dragon ability only gives back like half the mana used for invisibility, so I guess in this strategy you really stall the invisible turns to get mana back

It scales with the number of emerald dragons and the number of enemies affected per cast. You should obviously also manage your mana and collect Lina's energy balls, but this combo essentially gives you infinite mana.

Its fun but its kinda linear and repetitive in a way

The main struggle is losing as few of your units as possible since you have to keep your army built up to progress anywhere

kek putin really is a joke

Also, you can hold Shift/Ctrl (or something close to them) to cast any spell at lower level. There is no need to level up invisibility in the first place, but sometimes you might also want to cast nukes with less damage at lower mana cost.

fight the same trash mob fight one billion times

nah I'm good

And you also play as a gigachad fairy tale hero who makes a succubus queen fall in love with him at first sight.

Also, you can hold Shift/Ctrl (or something close to them) to cast any spell at lower level

NANI
Well time to upgrade all my spells then, thanks anon

Is the ruby that buffs all female fighters + full elf army the meta build?