Pex
02-07-2011, 07:08 AM
Well, This Time Last Year :p
I know, a stupid name for a topic, but I'm trying to get some attention here ;) I wanted to share with you guys my gaming experience from the last year, or so.
It all started when I asked my wife to get me Assassin's Creed 2 for my birthday last year. She couldn't find it, so she got me a gift voucher instead. Now, for some reasons I didn't get a chance to spend that voucher immediately, so, by the time I decided to buy the game, it was the end of financial year sale, so I ended up with Assassin Creed 2, Majesty 2, Medieval Total War 2 (lots of 2s there) and Mount and Blade. And since then, I also bought Guild 2: Venice and Disciples III Renaissance. So let's start from the beginning.
Assassin's Creed 2: If you liked the first part, you'd love this one. You get same action and gameplay with much more interesting storyline, more weapons, different quests and lot's of side quests in the bargain. I never used to play this type of games before the original Assassin's Creed, but since then I love it. I have yet to play Brotherhood.
Majesty 2 – I never played the original game, although I heard a lot about it. Obviously the fact that you can't directly control your heroes was a great challenge (although Dungeon Keeper 2 had that as well) and I had to admit it was enjoyable. But the game itself… Well, other than controlling bit, the game has nice graphics with cartoonish feeling to it, nice sense of humour (although sometimes it's too much) and quite a few missions, but it's still far from a great game. One thing that should be mentioned here is poor balance. At the beginning of every mission you are so weak that it's a struggle surviving first twenty minutes or so of playing. And it doesn't change depending on the mission's difficulty. There was a mission labelled as 'average difficulty' which I had to restart a few times for this reason. Then, once you get a few tough heroes, sky is your limit and you finish the mission easily. As for indirect control, although adding an extra challenge, it tends to get annoying too, when your weakest heroes go for the toughest mission (even though I put high price to encourage tough heroes) and get themselves wiped out. So, if I was grading it, I would say 5 from 10.
Medieval Total War 2 – well, it's obviously very different than its predecessor. Since I played Rome before, I wasn't surprised by the change in graphics and different gameplay (walking the map instead of moving from one province to another automatically, line of sight, assassins can't jump from one town with a port to any other and army can't invade province on different side of the continent just by having a ship in every square between). Battles on the tactical map didn't change that much, nor did sieges, although the fact that some provinces now have a castle and some a town brings variety. Also, very important difference is commanding structure. Your dynasty has limited number of generals (family or adopted sons, sometimes just captains), unlike in the first part, when any unit you trained could act as if having a general (so you could give title to a captain of peasants if you liked it). Here, you don't have titles to start with, and your generals automatically get a cavalry unit of bodyguards assigned to them. One thing that didn't change, though, is my favourite tactic from the first part – winning by assassination. Train your assassins well, spread them around and bye bye generals, princes and kings. Then bribe remaining forces turned rebel. I remember playing first part, I would wait for Mongols to arrive to the map, kill the Khan (who didn't have any heirs at that time) and then bribe his forces to join me (and depose of the generals that accepted my bribery, since they'll get 'easy to bribe' characteristic then). So, the only thing I don't like about the game is that in the main campaign (without The Kingdoms expansion) you can choose only between England, France, Spain, Holy Roman Empire and Venice. First part had much more choice.
Mount and Blade – now that was a hidden gem for me. Such a great game, superb battle experience, both on the map between two armies and sieges. I accidently found the game since I haven't heard about it before, read the back of it and thought, hmm, this sounds interesting. I was so glad I bought it. I don't know what I liked the most – battles with riding my horse into enemy archers, slashing once right, once left, once right with my sword and three of them ending up dead once I pass. Or those lucky shots when in a full gallop you score a headshot on an enemy lord knocking him flat. Or when I stand on the top of the battlements swinging my sword left and right like a lunatic and repelling enemy besiegers. Tournaments are also heaps of fun, although they should make them more fair so both finalists get the same weapon. It worked sometimes nice for me, to end up with sword and shield against an archer, but sometimes it was other way around. Superb game. The only fault I find is respawning of reinforcements, especially when besieging a castle – defenders forces respawn close to the fight while yours have to come all the way from outside the walls. But it works great when you're the one defending ;) I got Warband expansion since, but I have yet to play it, obviously the main difference is that you can eventually become a King and an additional faction, which both appeal to me.
Guild 2: Venice – I already had a big rent about this game (made a whole topic about it) so I won't repeat myself. Except to say that it sucks big time.
Disciples III Renaissance – to start with, this is the first game I ever played in the Disciples series so I have no predecessor to compare it with. However, I believe the series were often compared with HoM&M ones, so I'll do the same and go for HoM&M V. Like Heroes V, Disciples III improved graphics, going to full 3D map with very nice graphics, which are more enhanced with change of seasons (each turn is a different season, with the total of four seasons, of course ). You again have cities where you build different structures that allow you to recruit different types of units, but unlike Heroes, here you do it only in your capital city and that works for other ones as well. Saying that, number of structures (and units) is very limited, but at the same time, in disciples you don't lead an army, but a group. Depending on your hero's leadership, you can have several members in your group, and they are single creatures (for example a squire, or an archer, or an apprentice wizard), not stacks. You can have more than one squire, for example, but they will each take one of your leadership slots. With experience, your units progress, either to different class (if you have available building in your Capital) or just gain levels and more hit points or cause more damage. Your heroes actively participate in the fights (which are turn based on a tactical map) and with gaining levels they get three points to allocate on their stats and two to get special abilities. Unlike heroes again, magic is cast on world map, both offensive and beneficial (healing or bonuses), while in the battles, you can use runes or potions, which you can create (runes only), find or buy. As for resources, there are only two material – gold and stone and three different 'mana' things to collect. You don't capture resources production facilities by tagging them like in Heroes. Instead, you tag some kind of nodes and then every turn, land you control spreads from those nodes and once production facility is on the land you control, you get bonuses from it. All in all, very interesting game, but not without faults. The main one is lack of anything resembling a marketplace from Heroes. With already mentioned very limited building part of the game (only several buildings in a single city) you'll be finishing the game with next to nothing gold (which you spend on items and units, not just buildings) and heaps of useless stone. Another thing (though this might change when I play more), is very disorganised enemy factions. They seem to send random armies that appear from the edge of the map (not from cities so far) and attack first thing they come upon (usually a node which is protected by a guardian). They go against impossible odds and I yet have to lose a battle against them.
So that was my previous year gaming wise. Oh, I also played quite a few abandonware games on my dosbox (Colonization, Setlers 2 Gold, Masters of Magic, …) but you already know everything about them.
I know, a stupid name for a topic, but I'm trying to get some attention here ;) I wanted to share with you guys my gaming experience from the last year, or so.
It all started when I asked my wife to get me Assassin's Creed 2 for my birthday last year. She couldn't find it, so she got me a gift voucher instead. Now, for some reasons I didn't get a chance to spend that voucher immediately, so, by the time I decided to buy the game, it was the end of financial year sale, so I ended up with Assassin Creed 2, Majesty 2, Medieval Total War 2 (lots of 2s there) and Mount and Blade. And since then, I also bought Guild 2: Venice and Disciples III Renaissance. So let's start from the beginning.
Assassin's Creed 2: If you liked the first part, you'd love this one. You get same action and gameplay with much more interesting storyline, more weapons, different quests and lot's of side quests in the bargain. I never used to play this type of games before the original Assassin's Creed, but since then I love it. I have yet to play Brotherhood.
Majesty 2 – I never played the original game, although I heard a lot about it. Obviously the fact that you can't directly control your heroes was a great challenge (although Dungeon Keeper 2 had that as well) and I had to admit it was enjoyable. But the game itself… Well, other than controlling bit, the game has nice graphics with cartoonish feeling to it, nice sense of humour (although sometimes it's too much) and quite a few missions, but it's still far from a great game. One thing that should be mentioned here is poor balance. At the beginning of every mission you are so weak that it's a struggle surviving first twenty minutes or so of playing. And it doesn't change depending on the mission's difficulty. There was a mission labelled as 'average difficulty' which I had to restart a few times for this reason. Then, once you get a few tough heroes, sky is your limit and you finish the mission easily. As for indirect control, although adding an extra challenge, it tends to get annoying too, when your weakest heroes go for the toughest mission (even though I put high price to encourage tough heroes) and get themselves wiped out. So, if I was grading it, I would say 5 from 10.
Medieval Total War 2 – well, it's obviously very different than its predecessor. Since I played Rome before, I wasn't surprised by the change in graphics and different gameplay (walking the map instead of moving from one province to another automatically, line of sight, assassins can't jump from one town with a port to any other and army can't invade province on different side of the continent just by having a ship in every square between). Battles on the tactical map didn't change that much, nor did sieges, although the fact that some provinces now have a castle and some a town brings variety. Also, very important difference is commanding structure. Your dynasty has limited number of generals (family or adopted sons, sometimes just captains), unlike in the first part, when any unit you trained could act as if having a general (so you could give title to a captain of peasants if you liked it). Here, you don't have titles to start with, and your generals automatically get a cavalry unit of bodyguards assigned to them. One thing that didn't change, though, is my favourite tactic from the first part – winning by assassination. Train your assassins well, spread them around and bye bye generals, princes and kings. Then bribe remaining forces turned rebel. I remember playing first part, I would wait for Mongols to arrive to the map, kill the Khan (who didn't have any heirs at that time) and then bribe his forces to join me (and depose of the generals that accepted my bribery, since they'll get 'easy to bribe' characteristic then). So, the only thing I don't like about the game is that in the main campaign (without The Kingdoms expansion) you can choose only between England, France, Spain, Holy Roman Empire and Venice. First part had much more choice.
Mount and Blade – now that was a hidden gem for me. Such a great game, superb battle experience, both on the map between two armies and sieges. I accidently found the game since I haven't heard about it before, read the back of it and thought, hmm, this sounds interesting. I was so glad I bought it. I don't know what I liked the most – battles with riding my horse into enemy archers, slashing once right, once left, once right with my sword and three of them ending up dead once I pass. Or those lucky shots when in a full gallop you score a headshot on an enemy lord knocking him flat. Or when I stand on the top of the battlements swinging my sword left and right like a lunatic and repelling enemy besiegers. Tournaments are also heaps of fun, although they should make them more fair so both finalists get the same weapon. It worked sometimes nice for me, to end up with sword and shield against an archer, but sometimes it was other way around. Superb game. The only fault I find is respawning of reinforcements, especially when besieging a castle – defenders forces respawn close to the fight while yours have to come all the way from outside the walls. But it works great when you're the one defending ;) I got Warband expansion since, but I have yet to play it, obviously the main difference is that you can eventually become a King and an additional faction, which both appeal to me.
Guild 2: Venice – I already had a big rent about this game (made a whole topic about it) so I won't repeat myself. Except to say that it sucks big time.
Disciples III Renaissance – to start with, this is the first game I ever played in the Disciples series so I have no predecessor to compare it with. However, I believe the series were often compared with HoM&M ones, so I'll do the same and go for HoM&M V. Like Heroes V, Disciples III improved graphics, going to full 3D map with very nice graphics, which are more enhanced with change of seasons (each turn is a different season, with the total of four seasons, of course ). You again have cities where you build different structures that allow you to recruit different types of units, but unlike Heroes, here you do it only in your capital city and that works for other ones as well. Saying that, number of structures (and units) is very limited, but at the same time, in disciples you don't lead an army, but a group. Depending on your hero's leadership, you can have several members in your group, and they are single creatures (for example a squire, or an archer, or an apprentice wizard), not stacks. You can have more than one squire, for example, but they will each take one of your leadership slots. With experience, your units progress, either to different class (if you have available building in your Capital) or just gain levels and more hit points or cause more damage. Your heroes actively participate in the fights (which are turn based on a tactical map) and with gaining levels they get three points to allocate on their stats and two to get special abilities. Unlike heroes again, magic is cast on world map, both offensive and beneficial (healing or bonuses), while in the battles, you can use runes or potions, which you can create (runes only), find or buy. As for resources, there are only two material – gold and stone and three different 'mana' things to collect. You don't capture resources production facilities by tagging them like in Heroes. Instead, you tag some kind of nodes and then every turn, land you control spreads from those nodes and once production facility is on the land you control, you get bonuses from it. All in all, very interesting game, but not without faults. The main one is lack of anything resembling a marketplace from Heroes. With already mentioned very limited building part of the game (only several buildings in a single city) you'll be finishing the game with next to nothing gold (which you spend on items and units, not just buildings) and heaps of useless stone. Another thing (though this might change when I play more), is very disorganised enemy factions. They seem to send random armies that appear from the edge of the map (not from cities so far) and attack first thing they come upon (usually a node which is protected by a guardian). They go against impossible odds and I yet have to lose a battle against them.
So that was my previous year gaming wise. Oh, I also played quite a few abandonware games on my dosbox (Colonization, Setlers 2 Gold, Masters of Magic, …) but you already know everything about them.