I own both Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms and Shadows: Awakening. I played the starter dungeon in the former before I realized the latter title also contained all the same content and furthermore finished the story.

However, there are some differences. One thing I noticed is that the prologue section with Carissa Cantrecht was missing from Awakening. This section did a LOT to help tie in the game with its predecessor Kult, as I had just finished that title and still had the events fresh on my mind.

Can anyone who's played both titles speak to the differences between the two? I know, updated engine and all that (framerate takes a nosedive in Awakening compared to S:HK), but I'm thinking more in terms of story and characters, is there more missing stuff like the prologue with Carissa and Krenze at the Oracle?

Thanks for the link. I've decided to find out for myself since I own both games anyway I might as well play them. And the chances of me playing both are higher I think if I play S:HK first.

I've now played through all the overlapping content of Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms, and Shadows: Awakening.

I'm glad I found out for myself, so I'd never have doubts, but my advice to any new player is to skip S:HK and go straight to Awakening. The newer title is superior in every way. It feels more complete, stable, balanced, smooth, streamlined, and overall more satisfying

The only things I miss from S:HK are:
* Having 4 spell slots instead of 3 (WTF).
* Darker, more contrasted dungeons - much more menacing atmosphere.
* More individual graphics options to tweak in the game menu (would be nice to turn off bloom).
* The missing prologue section linking the game to the original Kult: Heretic Kingdoms from 2004.
* This is an extremely minor nitpick, but they swapped the music between Thole and the Outlands Oasis in Awakening. The Oasis music was goofy and I hate hearing it in Thole constantly. Thole's music was awesome and now you only hear it for a few seconds when you go to the Oasis.

The list of ways that Awakening beats S:HK, on the other hand, is huge, and would take pages to list in detail. The models and textures, the characters, the attribute, skills and talents system, the level designs, the interface, the crafting system, the loot, the healing/mana system, all handled much better. Even my earlier mention of worse performance in Awakening ended up being moot (performance is roughly equal between both games).

In brief, Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms, feels like an unfinished, buggy, early access version of the "real" game, Shadows: Awakening. It boggles my mind that it's still being sold at full price instead of making it a free bonus or at least a cheap DLC.

Thanks for listing these.

The reduced number of skill slots is truly mind-boggling.
Ruined dungeon atmosphere is probably connected to the more consolized graphic options (read none).
I might actually have to play the previous version because of the prologue. Like why the hell would they remove this?
And pointless changes like swapping area music will probably never be explained.

Why is it so difficult to keep the good things and just add on top of that? Why do later re-releases of games always have to be worse in some aspects? :/

Yeah it can be painful. I remember when Divine Divinity came to GOG and they remastered it and fixed some bugs, only to almost immediately mess up in the next patch by reverting the game back to a very old version, losing several releases worth of fixes that are still broken to this today on the digital releases. They could never fix them because apparently the original masters got overwritten.

Luckily Heretic Kingdoms games are not in so bad a shape.

If you or anyone else is interested I did a review of the whole Heretic Kingdoms series, including some side-by-side screenshot comparisons of S:HK and Awakening.

http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/topic/24018-heretic-kingdoms-series/

I had a feeling I remembered you from somewhere and it was the Sacred forums of course. I used to post there a bit couple of years ago before I decided to stop playing.

I have just now started S:HK just to see the it for myself and some things are actually better than in Awakening.
1) Day/Night cycle.
2) Lighting effects.
3) Shadow realm looks MUCH better.
4) You actually have to decide what to build when it comes to skills.
5) The prologue. While very short, it gives a VERY important context as to what is happening. Especially if you played Inquisition.
6) The healing system. It actually makes you feel like a Devourer of Souls, using their essence to heal instead of an arbitrary charge based health potion (soulstone in Awakening).
7) There is actual blood when stuff gets hit and enemies do not constantly flash white when getting hit. I hate the hit flashes in general.

I might do a playthrough to see everything. From what I understand, the game ends where Awakening chapter 3 ends? That shouldn't take too long, especially since I already finished awakening.

But even from what little I've seen so far, I can already tell that I would have liked Awakening more if it had been done in the style and with the systems of Heretic Kingdoms.

Yeah S:HK ends once you complete DuraTyr.

I actually prefer the Shadow Realm aesthetic and Healing system better in Awakening. But, I am biased towards choices that more resemble the original Kult.

Well, to be honest, I consider the health system in Kult one of the worst I've seen. You just bind your healing item to 1, permanently spam it during combat and you are pretty much immortal unless something 1-shots you. Once you get within 1-shot range from normal enemies, you just rest and repeat.