Griffins, Dragons, and Bears, Oh My! - Let's Play King's Bounty: The Legend

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Griffins, Dragons, and Bears, Oh My! - Let's Play King's Bounty: The Legend

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

IAmTheRad posted:

Hopefully watching this will help me suck less at the sequel of Armored Princess. Not really a spoiler when you can find out there is a sequel to this one.

Armored Princess is quite a bit more punishing than The Legend in my experience - if you can't build effective ways to waste your enemies' time, they grind you down something fierce. I typically play one difficulty level lower than I would be playing The Legend on if I want the same challenge.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 19:42

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 01:22

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

In my experience, humans are pretty squarely Good Enough. Horsemen and Swordsmen are pretty damned sturdy beatsticks if you're not afraid to take casualties, and Bowmen/Priests are respectable-but-squishy ranged DPS. Knights aren't literally the best tank in the game, but they're easily in the top 5 (and their Armored Princess palette swap is a serious contender for #1). There are always units I'd rather have, but that's true for the vast majority of units in this game. If I'm going into a fight where I know I'll take a bunch of casualties, I'll often stuff my special snowflakes into the reserves and get humans to power through.

I agree with you that Archmages are bad though. Their shock effect is crazy powerful, but even with their battle trance they deal so little damage they're hard to take seriously.

Doopliss fucked around with this message at 20:30 on Jul 22, 2016

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 20:23

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

Deeply disappointed that you won't be showing off this game's ultra-deep, Witcher-esque system of choices and consequences - though I guess I'm not one to talk, since I never wound up fighting the Royal Thorn either.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2016 23:47

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

One thing that you can miss in an SSLP is that this game is a thing of beauty in motion. Most notably in this case, Thorns have less in common with the Zerg than they do puppies.

So goddamn adorable.

Koorisch posted:

So should I get a few Pirates early to get more money or is the boost not really that good?

I wouldn't bother. You'll typically have enough money to keep yourself set with whatever troops you'd like, and while it might or might not help you afford some fancy equipment earlier it's not at all worth filling one of your only five unit slots with a sub-par choice - particularly since Pirates don't really have any survivability tricks, meaning you'll be paying quite a lot to keep your squad count up.

Doopliss fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Jul 27, 2016

# ¿ Jul 27, 2016 02:43

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

One of this game's eccentricities is the ability to use random-rear end quest items for equally random-rear end effects. For example, here's what happens if we were to use those bear-taming herbs we got a while back:

This actually increases your max Rage by 2, which is pretty good! Here's what happens if you use that princess doll from the first update.

This game's incredibly stupid Elvish writing is one of my favourite things about it. We'll be seeing a bit more of it if we make it all the way to Dark Side.

Doopliss fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Jul 28, 2016

# ¿ Jul 28, 2016 15:35

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

Not much to explain, really - it's just some Swedish Chef-tier quasi-English. Near as I can tell, the joke goes something like:

-Ele'cri has a crush on D'sai. Not really any other way to interpret "loverra" given the "smutty" description and the other lines.
-Ele'cri confesses their love to D'sai. Or maybe propositions D'sai. I can't get anything out of this line at all on its own.
-D'sai shoots Ele'cri down mercilessly. The repeated questions, vaguely-negative "Nori" and exclamation point suggest a "Me? Date you?" kind of format to me.

I read it as a really uninspired joke, but frankly that just makes me like it more. As we'll be seeing later, the elves in this setting are kinda dumb.

Doopliss fucked around with this message at 14:38 on Aug 1, 2016

# ¿ Aug 1, 2016 14:31

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

Loxbourne posted:

What a lousy way to screw up a promising troop type.

In my experience they're really not a promising troop type. As Gully mentioned, Werewolf Elves basically don't do anything, and Werewolves are really squishy without making up for it in flexibility or firepower. They can stall the hell out of a low-level (vulnerable to mind effects) army if you don't have low-levels of your own, but even under its ideal circumstances you'll probably wish you had something with more punch.

Also, don't get tricked into thinking that the "you have to defeat the pack leader before the curse overcomes me" stuff is the usual RPG bluster, because you can very much fail this quest by putting it off. Trey is a bit miffed about turning into a werewolf, but he's remarkably chill about it and will sell you some animal units afterward.

EDIT: Dammit, beaten by the edit.

Doopliss fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Aug 31, 2016

# ¿ Aug 31, 2016 23:38

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

meristem posted:

How long? I've never had that happen to me.

Couldn't tell you. I've only ever seen it on no-casualty streams, where the streamer was exploring as many areas as possible for the all-important stat-boosters before fighting anything remotely menacing. I doubt you'd run into it if you just shunted it to the back of your Darion list, but who knows?

# ¿ Sep 1, 2016 21:58

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

Man, I never actually tried talking to Sir Foritop after sabotaging his cauldron. New vistas are opening to me even today.

I'm not sure I'd call Royal Serpents a top-tier unit, because I typically want either targeting flexibility or some amount of tanking ability out of a straight damage unit, but these fellas are damned close. Always such a pleasure to see in the early game, especially in such large numbers.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 19:41

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

Gully Foyle posted:

I'm sad to say that I'm pretty sure we are done with the Frogus family. We do have our quest for Feanora to rescue the other frog-princesses though.

A while back we had the option of saying "screw this" to their crap, storming Squelch's and Bagaba's castles and making them raise King Mark's flag instead. Not sure if the option is still available to us, but if we did so they wouldn't actually hold a grudge about it. Frogmen have a pretty good appreciation of who's in charge, after it's made suitably clear to them.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2016 22:34

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

Now Necromancers are one of my "top-tier" picks. Not only does their direct attack deal a good chunk of damage, but the AoE on it raises your rage like just about nothing else in the game. I typically ignore plague and magic lock (it's better as a spell anyway), but being able to raise undead 3(!) times per-battle anywhere on the map makes it a strong contender for the best enemy-disruption in the game. Pick off some of the weaker stacks, raise them and watch the enemy waste copious amounts of time dealing with them. These fellas are a strong reason to go for an "unholy" unit comp (has morale come up in this LP yet? I can't recall), and go fantastically into just about any lineup if you have Tolerance.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2017 21:22

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

Poil posted:

I don't think I've ever used vampires in this series. The difficulty to get them and I believe you get morale penalties for bringing undead.

Well that's an easy solution. Play more undead. Playing more undead is never a bad idea. Demons are also very good, and get along fine with them.

Or, more conveniently, play a Paladin. Then you can take the Tolerance skill, and your units will oddly enough get along no matter how unholy some of them are. They're like mages, except you get to cast things other than direct damage spells and summons :P

# ¿ Jan 20, 2017 01:11

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

Slaan posted:

Are any of the later games worth picking up? I played through most of this one but never bothered buying the sequels

Armored Princess is indeed the pinnacle of the series (albeit a fair bit harder than The Legend), and Warriors of the North is indeed hot garbage. Aside from the whole "buggy and poorly balanced" issue, the game is grindier than ever, and while your mileage may vary I even found the writing less charming than usual.

Dark Side is... A genuinely interesting game. With three games down Katauri got really creative with their tools, and while it has the most recycled assets of any of the games they're recycled in such interesting ways that it's hard to be angry (the goddamn ship graveyard). It almost feels more like a top-tier fanmade mod than it does a full new release, with all the awkwardness that implies. Some of the puzzles are really obtuse, you get to play with different unit comps than you usually can (and really early at that), and the writing has a mix of this game's upbeat snark, some shockingly-morbid turns and a few flashes of full-on narrative brilliance. I hope Gully gets to it, because it really deserves to be LPed as a capstone to the series.

I'm sort of shocked that everyone's talking up the Mage class - I typically found it the weakest of the three, because all you're really doing is compensating for decreased unit firepower with increased spell firepower (which also means you're sort of locked into attack and summon spells every turn). Maybe I've been playing the class wrong.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 03:13

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

Poil posted:

In Warriors of The North I got stuck at some point and couldn't motivate myself to try any further.

If you're thinking of what I'm thinking of, that's basically the final boss. I'm not saying there's much worthwhile after that, but if for some reason you're interested in seeing it through you can take as many casualties as you please with the other generals and finish it off.

quote:

The narrative is not "good is evil and evil is good", it's "everyone in this bloody world is horribly evil and the two competing flavors call themselves light and dark".

I'd sort of be tempted to sum the narrative up as "violence is a band-aid solution at best". The forces of darkness rise and terrorize the world pre-game, they're smacked down by the noble heroes, and then the "noble heroes" carry on oppressing the dark-labeled beings after the threat is gone. The fact that your jolly, edgy freedom fighters wound up turning everything just as much to poo poo is sort of just a reaffirmation of that - "You didn't really think this would change anything, did you? I mean, we openly announced we were evil."

On the other hand, I might just be giving the writers credit that they don't deserve. Like I said, the game has some flashes of narrative brilliance, but a fair chunk of the writing is indeed kinda janky.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2017 18:37

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

Clearly we also need a "senseless deaths" counter to represent those defeated and lost in some of this game's goofier encounters (that still result in armies clashing with one-another).

Fare thee well, tutorial knights. Your sacrifice being headbutted to death by a captive dragon shall catapult us ever onward.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2017 18:54

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 01:22

Doopliss: Nov 3, 2012

For those who might be interested in playing along, the Humble Store's currently selling a King's Bounty collection (every game but Dark Side) for $7.50, and Dark Side for another $5. It's a good series! At least, this and Armored Princess are good, and Dark Side is debatably good. I liked it.
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/kings-bounty-collectors-pack
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/kings-bounty-dark-side-premium-edition

# ¿ May 13, 2017 21:21

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > Griffins, Dragons, and Bears, Oh My! - Let's Play King's Bounty: The Legend