King's Bounty II - Duke's Edition

I wanted to give 6 stars for this complete edition, but I finally uninstalled the game, bored with invisible walls and expensive reset of bad gameplay skills. I could endure bad horse handling, but was finally fed up with 2 others.

Honestly, I don't get it why people don't like this game. It has everything that a good game must have - relatively short gameplay, at least okish story, good save system, no grinding, adjustable difficulty... Yeah, sure there are some flaws, and I'd prefer relying on traditional fantasy creatures instead of trying to invent new ones. But the game is one to play, enjoy and be done with it. I remained with a good impression and in the end that's what matters.

Refunded. It has nothing over the previous King's Bounty games, not even visuals. The combat is extremely simplistic, pacing is horrible (e.g. too slow), there are only a few fights on each map. And the 3rd person over the shoulder camera kills it, in my opinion. How do you want to navigate a KB game like this, when 80% of what you do is exploring the map? Absurd design choice that made the game unnecessarily clunky and hard to read, and effectively destroyed this game, all to appeal the "broader audience" (who didn't give a damn in the first place). Save yourself the time and money and go re-play Armored Princess or Dark Side with a different character. Both 1000x better games than this abomination.

I really only came to review the bonus items. I wrote a review on the forums, which is mostly a wordy and not even as complete version of what Evaneself wrote below, and I already gave rated the game 5 stars there. I agree to an extend with idbeholdME's review a couple more posts down. The bonus units, expecially the Flaming Eagles and the Firehand Golems, punch above their weight in mid and late-game respectively. Together with the Armor Princess's Shield (all of which are pre-order DLC bonus items that I am not sure is even in the Duke's version, may just be in vanilla), these are pretty essential for achievement hunters who have to fight many battles under harsh handicaps I wouldn't know about the other bonus gear since I didn't use them. As for the art book and soundtrack. The soundtrack brings back fond memories of the game. The art book does not do the game justice. I love the art of KB2, and the 20 some pages art book is just underwhelming. I remember looking for the collector's edition on Ebay and almost decided not to buy because of how small the art book is. For shame! Anyway, 4 stars because you get this edition if you want to support the game but the art book is not 5 star material. Not sure if the pre-order bonuses are even in the Duke's edition or the base game.