A few improvements are present in KKnD2: AI is slightly better; a bit more balanced (but there's still balance issues); more game options (like game speed, built-in unit editor, more rounded-out skirmish mode, etc.); soundtrack is slightly better; utilized a (rather archaic by today's standards) form of facial capture for cutscenes; a "sell" function; lots of content, but... Everything else is demonstrably worse... For one thing, the game is rather butt ugly, like me; for starters, units look like they were drawn in MS Paint. While it has some environmental features (like bubbles in water/toxic waste oceans, for instance), the environments are at best serviceable. Evolved I can forgive, but the rest look horrendous. The 21st Century units got hit the worst of them all; the "railgun tank" looks like a fish out of water for the entire game, and it doesn't shoot a railgun but rather bright-yellow globs of sperm. Bugs are horrid, and you NEED to modify the game in order for it to work half-right. Be wary of crashes that come out of nowhere. Still no way to change soundtrack, but at least it cycles. AI still kinda stinks, getting stuck on the environment often. Balance is still a bit off. Every team has a unit in a certain class that is demonstrably better than its counterparts. Evolved Missile Crab, for instance, is markedly better than the others of its class; Barrage Craft is better than others; Flamer is better than others. The Series 9 has one of the worst units ever designed for RTS: the Radiator. It is a close-range unit that actually takes time to attack, whilst the others will wreck them in little time. The Mega Beetle is the only non-turreted unit of its class and suffers greatly for it. Oh, and Series 9 infantry cannot get run over at all. Poor audio, namely the unit lines. Campaign is garbage for the most part, because it's too long and there's very little mission variety. Story is, once again, practically non-existent. Such a shame, this one.
I've been playing this series for a very long time, if only to pass said time. It's no C&C, StarCraft, WarCraft, Total Annihilation or whatever, but it gets the job done just fine. But that's about it: it's just fine. There's some good ideas here but there's plenty of "meh" aspects all around. The Good: + Just works as a mindless, action-oriented RTS game. + Can be a little bit funny, in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way, from time to time (mileage may vary). + Sometimes challenging. + Some of the soundtrack is alright + Contains bonus units + Serviceable skirmish mode + Has features that eventually became regular features of the genre, like: units that level up, queuing unit production, a (rudimentary, for this game anyway) 'depth' to the game world where buildings and parts of the terrain can affect a unit's ability to target another. The Meh: * No slider or option to toggle game speed * Some of the soundtrack is there I guess. Nothing good, nothing bad about most tracks. * Art style is hit-or-miss. Infantry got hit and not in a good way. * Story is just there, doesn't mean much. * Little mission variety * Not all animations are smooth (only for 'Xtreme' version, like the one here) * Some unit balancing issues (fixed either with editing, trainers [yes, there is one], or OpenRA) The Bad: - Truly pitiful AI in almost every way. Bad pathfinding, AI doesn't react properly to all threats (just rush toward your base or to an enemy's base), friendly AI is especially dumb. Units don't move for others. You must babysit your forces at all times, including for movement. - Very few options for commands. Just the basics. - Queue only up to NINE, not ten. - While understandable given the average hardware setup for its time, the limit on how many units you can have is rather pitiful and there's nothing that keeps you aware of it. It doesn't even scale to CPU, and there's no option to raise or remove said limit. - End missions are simply unfair and not actually challenging.
