Kohan II: Kings of War
Monday, September 27th, 2004 - 4:57pm
First impressions, based on playing 3 Tutorials.
Interesting; enough of the old elements of the originals to pick up very quickly; adjustable speed slider; Just "Normal" and "Hard" modes for now.
The graphics are pretty nice- and it IS a nice change to see your cities/towns grow with the new layouts. Same as before, each race has a different-appearing city/town.
The structure upgrades are a little different- and the ability to research technology is new (done at the stucture you are examining).
One very new element: there are now "technology lairs"- defended by monsters- that you can conquer in order to gain new techs.
So far, I'm liking it a lot......
"Eat Keel, Hellbug!"
Damnit, I want this game, and I want it now...must get game...
Updated comments...
I''ve played about 5 scenarios of the campaign as of today. I''m still liking it, though I confess it''s a little hard to get used to the new, smaller scenario maps. One of the things I always disliked about K:IS and K:AG were the enormous maps- which meant extended playing times.
This new version resolves that....and I think it also helps keep the storyline on track, as not so much time seems to pass from one scenario to the next.
Character/figure animations are nice; the units still rout if their morale falls too low (and that is now tracked, so that when you click on a unit, you see its efficiency and morale). As in the other versions, if you decided to withdraw from a fight, you can retreat to a set spot.
One of the things I''m rally liking is the integration of weapons and unit upgrades through the town buildings. Nicely done, especially in that you must first upgrade the basic structure before the research capability is unlocked. Too, the various mines can be upgraded now, which adds yet another element to economic management. Don''t get me wrong, though; for all of the different types of mines and inprovements and all it still is the slickest and easiest to manage game economy I''ve met.
Towns and cities seem to last longer wihile under attack; again, I believe that is an improvement over the originals, where cities seemed to fall pretty quickly, even when upgraded and given maximum garrison capacity.
"Eat Keel, Hellbug!"
They had these in Ahriman''s Gift as well.
My days of not taking you seriously have certainly come to a middle.
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Is the story more accessible? My only complaint with Immortal Sovereigns was that it just kind of dropped you into this narrative with little to no explanation or setup. I kept asking myself, ""Why do I care?"" up until the 8th scenario where I just kind of quit playing. Never made it to Ahriman''s Gift.
I reinstalled it yesterday when I found it while cleaning up the office. I was able to pick up where I left off. It''s suddenly fun again, and I started wondering why I quit playing at all. RTS-weariness, I guess, but better storytelling would have kept me in, I think.
Psychotic Foreign Teenage Chicks are so hot. - Legion
I find it ironic anytime a healthy vaccinated person bitches about science...on the internet. - MaverickDago
I think it''s a little better than the originals in the storyline department; I confess I never quite ""got"" what the relationship between Ahriman and the Kohan was (gee, sounds like a vaudeville act or a bad teen band)....
In Kohan II, after the tutorials, there is a cutscene that shows the fall of Ahriman; the storyline sets off then, 2 generations later, with Ceyah again on the rise, but with something else behind them....tainting the Gauri, for example (who this time have a steam juggernaut unit that''s nifty).
Since the scenarios are shorter, and the narrative more tightly written, I believe it''s much more effective. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the integration of scenario/cutscene/storyline that Blizzard did so welll in Warcraft III and Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.
"Eat Keel, Hellbug!"
I picked this one up last week but it''s going to have to sit unopened for awhile since I want to spend some time with R:TW first.
WoW Baelgun: Omusa, Spits
I had a good time with Kohan II. That was until RTW came out now I doubt I will go back to Kohan.
I still want this one, but since I played so many skirmish games during the Beta I figured it could wait until Christmas. Or maybe Birthday. Or Gee-I''m-bored-what-can-I-play Day.
Graktar, Orc Hunter
sh*t this was my must buy RTS for the season and instead I ended up getting R:TW and Codename: Panzers. I blame all of you for the R:TW purchase, but I''m still not sure how I ended up with Codenam:Panzer instead of Kohan II? Guess I''ll just ask for it for Xmas.
"Beer is proof that god loves us and wants us to be happy." - Benjamin Franklin
*feins mock surprise*
Isn''t this par for the course slambie?
SteamId = RevenantKel
I read somewhere she still has Warcraft II unopened somewhere, but maybe that was a rumor.
Blog: GameFinance
Twitter: justinmwhitaker
Pretty much. Whenever I buy a game at EB the manager always tells me to let him know how it is when I get around to opening it up in 8 months.
There are excpetions to the rule, though, the Sims 2 and Rome: Total War being the current ones.
That''s a rumor! I never bought WCII and I''m stickin'' to my story!
WoW Baelgun: Omusa, Spits
Thought I''d give you all an update on my progress in the game, as well as some more impressions....
First, I''m playing it on ""Easy"" so that I can finish the darn thing and feel satisfied....
Second, the game definitely has a ""rhythm"" to it; last night I pushed through Scenarios 7-8-9-10 and viewed the beginning of 11.
Well. Scenario 10 was an unexpected surprise....
I try not to think ahead as to what is going to happen in a storyline; even if I *had* done so, I doubt if I''d have guessed what happened in 10.
Hee.
I really believe that the shortened scenarios are better (than the old enormous ones in the older inacarnations of ""Kohan"") and are better for the development and furthering of the story in ""Kohan II"". I really feel, ah, ""vested"" in this game, now, and I believe it is coming together nicely. I''ve read that some of the later scenarios are hard, but we''ll see....
Some of the extra stuff- custom companies, technology upgrades, etc. probably have more of a place in skirmish or on-line play. In the scenarios, there just isn''t enough time (in some the case of some scenarios) to fiddle with those things. You''ve got to go in and explore and attack aggressively to succeed- in that way, it is very similar to the originals.
**Spoiler Alert**
I''ve never killed a god or become a god in the same game.
"Eat Keel, Hellbug!"
Since I''ve had some more intersting experiences with the single player campaign over the weekend, I thought I''d update again.
I hit another frustrating stalemate-like scenario Friday night; played till 2:30 AM; could NOT win. Tried repeatedly Saturday; no like. In frustration I shut it down and read for a couple of hours.
In the course of that, I processed the scenario and layout of the map; and some stuff I''d seen happen, sort of subconsciously during the plays and re-plays of the scenario. After sifting through all that I came up with an entirely new strategy.
Sunday AM I booted it up and implemented the strategy...15 minutes later I was done; a complete victory was mine. Swift action combined with overwhelming force, applied at a pivotal point, won me the scenario. I can''t begin to describe how utterly satisfied I was; I''d applied real tactics and strategy to a problem and won.
On the whole, I''ve been very pleased with the game; I think that it is a much better system for the changes they''ve made in it, and it seems very well ""balanced"".
So I''m now working on Mission 18 of 25; I can see that it is a toughie, indeed.....""Saadya, light my way!""
"Eat Keel, Hellbug!"
Mid-week update:
It was a dark and stormy night....out of the depth of the storm came The Fallen.....
Will begin scenario 22 tonight; looking good. The latest one to give me trouble (20, I believe) I overcame last night, early; the succeeding one I concluded very late. Sort of a trick to that one, but I stumbled on the correct axis of advance early on, and so was able to complete it in one go.
I remain impressed by the graphics and the gameplay; I''m enjoying it much more than I did Warcraft III, that''s for sure. Tactics are such a strong part of it; for example, at one point last night I pulled three regiments out of line and set them in place on a wooded hill where they would be behind any enemy attack on my main force. Sure enough, the Fallen came ""hey-diddle-diddle, straight up the middle"" whereupon I threw the three reserve regiment to their rear, across their line of retreat, and eliminated all three enemy regiments. A decisive victory, it opened the way to seizing several more resource points and pushing the fight to the very seat of The Fallen''s power .....
I don''t know if Timegate will end up putting a cap on outposts/forts, but for now, it appears that you can build unlimited numbers of them. Still expensive, though, and, in the final analysis, they aren''t going to be the element that wins the scenario. Helpful, undoubtedly.
Oh, and an FYI for anyone playing; watch out for the Rifts. They are very hard to defeat. The simplest and most effective tactic I''ve found is to pu an outpost or two in suppporting range, then launch a force of about 8 regiments around the Rift. That way, as they retreat they can re-group quickly and go back into action. Rifts are grinder points....
I remain impressed witht he integration of the cutscenes, both before and after the scenarios. I believe the story is a decent one and I like some of the story information that gets dropped in them. Really nice.
Anyway, 21 down, 4 to go....
"Eat Keel, Hellbug!"
Sounds like it''s going well, and 25 scenarios for the single player game is very solid. I''ve been happy with WH40k, but I''m already at the beginning of scenario 10 (should be almost done, but while I paused the game and went into the kitchen my wife exited the game so she could browse the internet. Waah!)
Graktar, Orc Hunter
So they tell a better story this time around, I take it? Are there any references to the previous cataclysm?
Psychotic Foreign Teenage Chicks are so hot. - Legion
I find it ironic anytime a healthy vaccinated person bitches about science...on the internet. - MaverickDago
Yes; but in a funny way. Oh, and, incidentally, with 4 scenarios to go, I think it will be safe to assume an expansion pack with more story in the next year; I''m not certain how they can satisfactorily resolve this in 4 more scenarios. Mere speculation, of course.
*Possible Spoiler Alert*
Apparently there are creatures known as ""Guardians""- which look to be ""elementals"" like Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind, and they reveal themselves in the course of the campaign.
The Cataclysms which so destroyed Khaldun in the past were their work, in an attempt to defeat Shadow and prevent it''s seizing the world. In the campaign, they are a device to move the storyine onto a different track.
"Eat Keel, Hellbug!"
My weekly update brings bad news; there appears to be a major flaw in the programming of Kohan II: Kings of War. With 21 missions down, and four to go, my install broke my Win2K desktop.
I believe it somehow corrupted my profile and I went from crashing (totally) only when playing Kohan II to crashing all the time. I finally on Wednesday reformatted my hard drive and re-installed Win2k with all of the Service Packs and updates (good thing I have DSL...).
Reinstalled Kohan II and....CRASH...I haven''t turned the system on again. Reading in the Matrix forums, it''s clear I''m not the only one having problems- and they are definitely working on a patch.
So...be careful if you install it; and it might be good to wait till the patch is issued before installing and playing it.
"Eat Keel, Hellbug!"
Sorry to hear that, CE. Your posts had inflicted on me the first instance of GWJFE [1] and I had got the game.
I find that on running, it reboots my machine. Every time. No joy from Matrix. Not even a reply from my post.
Let''s hope they find a solution...
Thanks for the posts cewargamer.
Appreciated the insights you were giving into the game as well as the details regarding it breaking XP.
Sounds like a definite pickup if they fix this.
Correction: I accidentally said ""Matrix"" when I should have said ""TimeGate"" in the forum where I saw others were having the same problem.
Apologies to both MAtrix and Timegate (I was trolling both forums about the same time).
Ooh, Moggy....this is pretty bad, isn''t it? Oddly enough I''ve read nothing on major gaming sittes about these problems. Just noticed a review on Avault today.
Oh and S77- it broke my Win2K.....but I''m sure it will break WinXP as well...
"Eat Keel, Hellbug!"