melkathi

That sounds a lot more fun than at release. Killed all those bosses without them even having a chance to act back then

Not at this point of Early Access. Possibly not later either. Franchise background (you may want to skip ahead) Neocore's King Arthur as a game franchise started with King Arthur: The Roleplaying Wargame. It was mostly a Total War knock off with far deeper roleplaying aspects: more stats, skills and equipment than any TW at the time, choose your own adventure quests, and a morality chart that tracked the player's alignment on two axes - Righteous/Tyrant and Christianity/Old Faith - unlocking extra skills and units. It got two campaign expansions Saxons and Druids that allowed you to play the game as two different rulers with their own campaigns. Two smaller expansions added some units, items, and two more knights to recruit. A fifth, stand-alone expansion, Fallen Heroes, had a stronger rp character focus and was badly received. The game was followed by King Arthur 2 and it's pre-order bonus prequel stand alone dlc mini campaign Dead Legions. King Arthur 2 basically slimmed down everything from the original game. Players now had 3 specific heroes and only those three could lead armies. This gave the devs more control of what players could, but more importantly couldn't do. As every army in the game had a max size, this meant the devs could always know the max number of units a player would have in the game. They also simplified the game's economy, removing taxation of provinces etc. The decisions alienated a lot of fans of the original game. Combined with smaller enemy variety, as you spend a lot of time fighting the same line up of fomorian daemons over and over and over again, meant that the Steam forum at the time wasn't very positive (though not as toxic as Steam fora can get). The fact that Neocore is terrible at optimizing their games didn't help. The game got a couple of patches but no DLC. A promised patch never showed and the community manager disappeared. From a fan's point of view it appeared to be a complete failure. After Van Helsing and Inquisitor Neocore returned to the franchise. Knight's Tale was advertised as: "a Role-playing Tactical Game - a unique hybrid between turn-based tactical games (like X-Com) and traditional, character-centric RPGs." Most kickstarter backers and customers stopped reading right there and said "take my money". That is a problem that is now coming to bite Neocore, who had followed up with: "The story campaign puts a huge emphasis on moral choices, which have significant consequences in a rogue-lite structure" using a term that may not mean what they think it means. Keep the term rogue-lite in mind though, as we'll come back to it. Anyone looking at the kickstarter had to scroll down a lot to read this: "Reloading is not an option in Knight’s Tale – as you make your tough choices, the fun comes from dealing with severe consequences. " I hadn't read that. If I had, maybe I would have stayed away. Because Neocore proves they are who they have always been - a dev studio that does not care what the players want. Not because they are protecting an artistic vision, but because they *know* what is fun and what is right. Probably why they did not really look at the games of the genres they are dipping into. If they had, they would have noticed that Iron Man in XCOM for example was an optional mode. They would not have needed to go from Autosave at the beginning of a mission and at the end of a mission, to making a game mode where you are allowed to save on the world map. What they have not implemented and are not sure they will ever add, as it does go against their vision of the game is: Save & Exit during missions. Once you are on a mission, you either play it or quit and start from the last autosave. It is part of the "rogue-lite" aspect mentioned earlier. Neocore believes you do not need to save during missions, because missions are short. 20 minutes at most. Only, they are not really. Not always. A specific story mission lovingly coined by the community the "nightmare mission" (because of the nightmares you fight, not because of the difficulty of the mission) can take a lot longer to figure out. But let's talk actual Gameplay: The game is split into two parts: the world map and the missions. On the map you upgrade Camelot, assign heroes to be healed, to train. You buy from the merchant. You level up your heroes and manage their inventory. You make some choices (do you execute the surviving brigands from the last mission or do you give them a second chance? Do you let Christians build roadside shrines?). You spend little time here as you just do the in between missions stuff and move to the next mission. You take up to four heroes onto missions. During a mission you run around with your whole party using WASD. When you meet enemies the game goes into turn based. Sometimes you can then choose your party positioning. Most of the times they will just step up based on how they were running at the time. Party formation is controlled similar to IE games and similar to IE games heroes don't really always stick to their spot in the party... Heroes have action points - on average around 8 it seems. A normal melee attack costs 3 Action Points. Some Action Points can be reserved for the next turn. Heroes have Armour, Health Points and Vitality. HP and Vitality is similar to Pillars. Once the HP are gone, you start losing Vitality, which you can't heal with a potion. Armour reduces damage but can be shredded similar to XCOM. Every attack in the game shreds armour. Whenever you take vitality damage, you hero suffers an injury, giving them a persistent debuff until you heal them at the cathedral in Camelot - unless your hero has an Injury Token and can spend it to ignore the injury. Mission difficulty comes mostly through self reviving Lost, totems that keep spawning enemies, and waves of enemies. It likes spawning endless archers, who will always get some shots in before you reach them. As a result difficulty is basically a matter of "how much damage can you soak". I got lucky and my Mordred got loot that lets him restore one point of armour on kill, meaning my main tactical thinking is how can enemies attack him and my other heroes reduce the hp of those enemies so he can kill them off and get armour back. As encounters are in small areas with minimal cover and most of the time you don't get to deploy your heroes, any real tactical planning is rather limited. You try to efficiently take out opponents before they can damage you because there is nothing you can do about them damaging you other than killing them. The game has limited healing during the mission. Every hero can carry one healing potion. There are limited campfires around the map that allow you to rest and regain either a percentage of lost armour or of lost health. Heroes can level up between missions and equip stuff. Leveling up allows you to spend skill points on things like a Cleave attack or a Power attack or a passive damage boost. Equipment is rather boring. You do not find new weapons or armour. You find new runes for them. It is the same as equipping a new sword, only that thematically you put modelling putty in the old rune and inscribe a new one. Basically it means that the game only needs one model per hero which does not alter based on equipment. It does take part of the fun out of new equipment, as all you loot is new sets of stats for your existing equipment. It also means your hero will never differ much: Mordred will always be the dude with the sword and shield. Balin will always be the dude with the two handed ... axe? Tristan will always carry two swords. If a hero dies they are dead. Unless they were critical to the mission, then you fail and need to restart from the autosave. Mission failure is not an option: once you are in a mission you either keep trying until you succeed or you restart the campaign. Or uninstall. It is funny how devs never realize there is that third option. There are planned to be around 30 unique recruitable heroes in the final version, though based on your morality only some will be available to you. Currently, early on, when you only have a handful of heroes, if a hero dies you may as well restart from the beginning. Writing: The writing is not up to the standard of previous Neocore games. The English needs some proofreading. But even then, that can't fix the content. Mordred is a brat. "Are your sons as ugly as you?" does not make me feel that I am playing the dark knight who brought down a kingdom but a brat. It seems to mellow down a bit after the intro mission. Possibly because the very first feedback they got on releasing the EA was me saying on Discord that "I like the setting, but I don't like playing as Mordred" who isn't dark but a jerk. Most narration comes from the mission description and some comments by the Lady of the Lake during missions. Heroes will have a bit of story in the mission they are met and may trigger events on the world map after missions (whatsherface wants to host a tournament - do you host it for her so she doesn't get all the fame? Do you say no? Do you let her do the hosting? (+1 loyalty with all heroes / -1 loyalty with her / +3 loyalty with her)). And that's it. As tactics games go there isn't much tacticing. It is better than cash grab XCOM clones like Falling Skies or Narcos. But it is also not memorable or does anything to recommend it. And the writing early on just isn't strong enough to recommend it for the setting. King Arthur: Knight's Tale - It's a game. It Exists.

I figured out what bothers me the most about King Arthur: Knight's Tale (the turn based tactics game in Neocore's King Arthur game series). The premise of the game is that King Arthur and Sir Mordred fought in an epic final confrontation which left both dead. The dying King Arthur's was taken by ship to Avalon but it sunk in a storm. Something happened to Arthur, and now the land is twisted and grimdark and people rise from the dead. Most of the knights can't die. Or they do die, but then they get back up. So does Mordred. And you play Mordred freshly raised from the dead, tryign to figure out what is going on and how to stop it. On your way you collect a band of other knights, all basically dead and risen again and again and again. The reason they tag along with you is simple: they hope you aren't very good at the game and will let them die. Because in Knight's Tale death doesn't stick, unless you die during a mission with Mordred, since those have permadeath. A game who's main premise is that the characters can't die has permadeath as a main feature.

reading the patch notes for Phoenix Point. And looking at the previous patch notes I had missed. So in the previous patch they implemented this: "In order to prevent misfires due to flinching, targets will now freeze during the firing sequence when shooting in Free Aim." Funny how during the backer builds we told them about missing shots because after the players aimed, the target would move due to their idle animation, causing shots to miss. Back then we were of course mistaken and just hadn't figured out how to aim properly.

Having a goofy grin allowed me for the first time to reach the Greybeards in Skyrim.

How is difficulty? At launch it was incredibly easy and they supposedly did a balance pass to make it somewhat challenging?

Maybe having a freaky grin will finally allow me to play this game Choosing the FONV start I didn't do it! Be the person you would be glad to see peak out behind a bush Having a chat with the locals:

Puking to open a door was definitely memorable.

They have the legs for it.

Dev reply to someone asking on steam whether it was Battle Brother with legs: Wartales features a very sophisticated leg system at launch, with the ability to walk, run and stand (amongst a number of other actions that require legs) all supported and playing an important role in both the story and overall gameplay.We hope you enjoy the game and the tireless work of our dedicated leg team, who are still yet to be allowed to sleep.

I played the Wartales demo, which is described by some as Battle Brothers with legs.

That's cool. I enjoyed playing through the original with my Obsidian Forum Crew.

And charge $59.99 for them most likely.

Mordheim and Spellcaster University

Did they get Momoa to do a cameo as a security guard? (Yeah, you see the man later on and they did not, but the first appearance really has you wonder)

I liked the trailer for The Outer Worlds 2. That in itself is newsworthy.

This wasn't about gaming. It was an excuse to parade some poor devs on a stream to say how amazing the publisher is. "We pay for your game, tell the gamers how grateful you are."

Is it over? I quit when she asked the poor Encased dev how living in Russia affects the perspective on game development compared to western countries (the norm of perspectives and gold standard of how people should develop games apparently).

https://www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/Koch_Gastronom_Kuechenchef Scroll down and click the play button

"Why did you decide to make King's Bounty 2 an rpg turn based tactics game like the original King's Bounty? Is it because if you didn't it would no longer be a King's Bounty game?" Dev: "I don't need to answer that question you already did. King's Bounty is a turn based tactical combat game with strong rpg elements. It isn't an rpg that happens to be turned based. Then it would be high fantasy Mass Effect. But it isn't, it is King's Bounty."

I am commander Shepard and this is my favourite soap on the Citadel.

God, that media person is an idiot. I can't take it anymore.

Tali's - never take off this suit - sweat scented?

Saber is making Painkiller. Yeah, soap. According to the guy from KC:Deliverance medieval doesn't smell all that bad. According to the Koch community person it's pronounced scotch... It i painful. I can't listen to her ask another helpless dev: "What are the benefits of having us as your publisher?" (best answer from the Scar Above (sexy looking game) Dev: "Not wanting to downplay the financial benefits, but the benefit it hanging out with you guys" )

Basic news out of the Koch Media stream so far: Koch Media decided that Koch Media isn't a sexy label, so they now will publish games under the label Prime Matter. New Pain Killer announced. Kingdom Come Deliverance brings out a physical version of the dice game that is played in the game. They also are going to sell Kingdom Come Deliverance soap. Dolmen is described as a Lovecraft meets Giger hardcore RPG soulslike. (I think in obsidian forum talk that translates at: a game @Mamoulian Warwill play, enjoy though not being all that good at) Koch couldn't teach their community person to pronounce the company name. King's Bounty 2 release 24. August.