Hi all,
Firstly, a Happy belated New Year's to all my readers/fans/thralls !!!
I had been taking a break from my campaign for these past few weeks, making way for Shell's new DnD adventure. I was enjoying typical end of the year festivities (read: lots of sleeping, tennis, tuition-ing). But there were of course, exceptions from the boring same-old same-old. For the past week, the twitchy fingers of mine were occupied by the best game I have played in recent memory -
King's Bounty: The Legend.
This little gem of a game comes from the demented Russian makers of Space Rangers 2 - Katauri Interactive. They bought the engine of the game from a small company that was running out of resources, and added their own unique tongue-in-cheek humor/quest touch to it. Add the title "King's Bounty" to the mix and you got yourself a cult hit. (Only reason I can think of for now that KB:TL is not bigger, is due to the inept distribution and customer service of the crappy Atari distributor brand.)
It may look like a rehash of Heroes of Might and Magic and all its related TBS/RTS brethen at first glance, but after playing it for a couple of hours, the depth of KB:TL is astounding. I have to admit after countless hours on it, I am still learning new stuff and concepts e.g. stacks, race, morality, in the game itself.
Yes. The game has the morality concept floating about in the midst. And does it really well.
Some of your items are affected by the actions you make in the game, making them "living" items, with mood swings attached. The elven artifact that I retrieved in my particular game was not happy with me at all at first, due to my non-elven ways. I had to stop hanging about with undeads in my army, and killing random elven troops in the game to appease it. That did not stop the artifact from stopping its effect completely at times, forcing me to "suppress" it forcibly to maintain its effect.
Your actions e.g. helping/killing a tyrant, influence the game greatly, thus making you think twice before doing anything. I for one, roleplayed a vastly charismatic Paladin who was bent on ridding evil using Evil itself, except that the said paladin is now divorced and newly married, with his new wife correcting his ways e.g. a goodie Human/Elven army. KB:TL did not slap a "Role-Playing" tag to its genre, but yet makes you want to do it. Amazing stuff I tell you.
Pros: Humor,Off-beat, Deep, simple yet beautiful graphics
Cons: Time-consuming, some bugs that crashes you back to desktop
Rating: 9/10 ("Jizz in my Pants" standard)
Enough about KB:TL for now, before this post rapidly turns into a game review. You really have to play it to do it enough justice. Thank Caiphon for this to restore my faith in computer games after how Fallout 3 disappointed me greatly.
Back to Real Life. Last week, on a random trip to my local gaming store, I was lucky enough to find Shadowrun: 4th Edition propping up the shelves. Years ago, my friends and I had a blast playing the game in its 2nd Ed incarnation. The rules were rather clunky at parts and we had to constantly refer back to the rulebook for clarification. No longer is that the case.
The current edition boast award-winning credentials (Game of the Year 2006: Gen Con), and is basically a "reduced fat" version of the previous. The clunky was trimmed down, while the exciting (read: brutal combat, realistic wounds/death system, tons of firepower, immersive world) kept at its gory best.
I am still reading through the book but it bodes well for the future, and I am having thoughts about DMing a short campaign one day. Shane, Alex and Pongtau have already made characters for the game, and as they all say in 2070, we might be making a 'run soon! (More on this in a later post.)
And finally, Shell's campaign! These few sessions, our party of five had been hacking and slashing our way to gain Crowtel's "respect", and have reached character level 3 as I write this. We will be uncovering the mystery of the tainted corestones and their effect on the world, as the campaign goes on I presume.
I am playing Kharisma K. Karpenter, an intense mindflayer starlock who went to Crowtel to find out more about Caiphon- her patron star, when she met up with the other four ( Grim, Oshamus, BBW and whichever character Lex is playing that week), and instead, got herself embroiled in a world-changing plotline.
We are still looking for the city to give us due respect as they have been rather coy with their rewards and praises thus far. I cannot blame them for not trusting an illithid like me, but our numerous exploits should be able to speak for themselves.
Okay, this has been a long post, signing off here and I will be back very soon with more news regarding Shadowrun, Shell's adventure and my Caen adventure (which is returning after the New Year!)
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