There are two DLC packs for KB2, a pre-order bonus DLC with the Firehand Golems, Flaming Eagles, and the Armored Princess's Shield. This DLC is almost a must-have, especially for achievement hunters who need to fight 10 battles with units from 4 ideologies without wasting a whole lot of skill points on morale boosts. I don't know if the pre-order bonus DLC is already in the base game or in this Lord's Edition. The other DLC, described above, is less useful. Most of that gear are two-handed, thus conflict with the Armored Princess's Shield, and the King's Watchdogs are much less useful, obsolete before you even leave the introductory area really. The Armor of the Hollow is just out of place. If you are looking to support to game, buy the Duke's Edition. If not, this is just a waste of money.
This is the first time I could not fit my review in the review box, and I don't want to. I got an initial bad impression of the game in the starting area, but then got addicted to it in a big way. You can find my full review in the game forums in my post titled "How I fell in love with King's Bounty 2." So feel free to disagree or point out inaccuracies there. (I accidentally made a duplicate post that I could not delete. There is no meaningful thought in that one.) The short of it is, despite some rough edges, KB2 offers rich tactical combat gameplay motivated by a fun if predictable narrative. I have one big issue with the combat, related to magic. The narrative is actually very good on the micro-scale; it's only the general direction of the main story that is predictable. You can read more details in my review on the forums. If you liked King's Bounty 1 and don't mind the KB2's presentation (which you can check out on YouTube), or if you like 1C (sorry, Fulqrum) games generally, you will find a game you like in a better wrapped package in King's Bounty 2. Give it a chance, until at least after the introductory area.
Everyone who have reviewed before are all correct. You can see a couple pages of comics in the screenshots, and more screenshots of what look like Sudden Strike with muscle cars packed with big guns. This game is exactly what you think it is. I will share a few random thoughts. Desert Law is irreverent. It is B-grade, campy, and proud of it. Some of that poor English translation might be on purpose. It's never so bad that it makes no sense. There are almost 30 missions. The devs tried to make them different. There are missions where you control just one or two of your heroes, consistent with the plot that see your group split up. The game may be campy, but the devs made an effort. The pathfinding is as bad as others say. The good news is because you are not fighting seriously in WW2 with combined arms and a dozen tanks with asses made of paper, it won't bother you as much. As far as I remember, all the cars have the same armor everywhere. All the cars have tank controls and can turn on a dime. And you can pause anytime. It'll still bother you, so don't be shy about reloading. Oh, yes, Bred will get to have sex. Look forward to it. P.S., the Russian voice acting is pretty good. You can incorporate it into the English version of the game. P.S.S. I encountered no bugs or crashes.
Within 5 minutes of starting the Japanese campaign, I saw one of the most cringy cutscenes I have seen in a game. One thing struck me though. Who is Kawai Chiyoko? It turns out she was a favored geisha consort of the great admiral. One YouTube video even claims he sometimes kept her with him onboard the Nagato. Whether that part was true or not, Yamamoto-san's fondness for the geisha was well known except, it seemed, to me. One thing Strategic Mind does better than any other WW2 games I have played is these bits of personal insights revealed in its ridiculous cutscenes. Not so ridiculous after I have played several missions. It's strange. After a while, I cannot imagine Yamamoto appearing any other way in a video game, especially the way he speaks in this slow, sometimes clunkily deliberate way. I feel the same about the other characters, even Hideki Tojo, who gave a surprisingly rousing speech in the opening minutes of the game on why Japan must fight the United States. The actual gameplay revolves around a very nice balance between strategy and management. Each scenario I played presented some thoughtful choices. How much should I support the friendly AI army's push on New Guinea? How should I confront the American task forces at Midway that outnumbered me 2-to-1 in capital ships and destroyers and even outnumbered me in aircrafts? To help you, you can teach your units a new skill at every level up, give them all kinds of equipment, and have several very strong leaders you can assign to units. SM: P wears its Pacific General inspiration on its sleeve, and it does the classic proud. I recommend Night Phoenix's playthrough if you want to see the game in action. The game has its problems. Supply, which is so important to you, is a non-factor for the AI. It can be hard to select stacked units. Tip: select their health bar. I couldn't see all the planes on an airfield. No crashes or bugs though. I'd like to be friends with other fans of this game.
House Party is a must play for porn game aficionados/nadas (the game features actions for both genders and is LGBT+ friendly but cis hetero men like me will not have diversity shoved in their faces) because of how unusual the game mechanic is. To put it simply, House Party is a 3D first person point and click sandbox adventure game that has full voice acting and some fully explicit sex scenes (if you buy the adult rated content DLC). Think a 2022 version of Leisure Suit Larry + the Sims. Like LSL, the draw is not the sex but the characters you meet and situations you run into. In my first party, I had many hehe funny moments and several haha funny moments (when you are offered the chance to try the VR mode of Compubrah, you do it!). Like the Sims, House Party puts over a dozen simulated NPCs in a realistically sized middle-class two-story American house. The NPCS are constantly on the move and talking to each other in real audible language. Surprisingly, I did not notice their conversation beginning to mostly repeat until several hours into the game. Then again, because I was slow, I did not see my first sex scene until several hours into the game, though I saw boobs within 30 minutes. I was not bored because it was an adventure game with dialogue choices, finding/combining/using items, and a lot of modern humor. This isn't a game with such beautiful 3D models and well crafted sex scenes that you can, eh, masterbate to. Instead, it's a game you play for a bit at the end of a long day to have some laughs and maybe do something wacky like flashing everyone in the house or prank your best friend and his girlfriend with the help of a porn star (really cool character). The game also lets you make, share, and play custom stories, though you need an account on the dev's website. A few are included with the GOG version, but I haven't tried them. Still it is promising.
The Forgotten Sanctum received a lot of praise, and some of it is deserved. It has the most elaborate and unexpected plot of the three Deadfire DLCs and a couple of interesting characters. It has some challenging fights but not as many as SSS. It feels like more of the good stuff from Deadfire. Therein also lies one of its weaknesses. It's just more of Deadfire. The Beast of Winter shows snippets of a few key events from Eora's history, on maps with novel puzzle mechanics. SSS has a variety of combat encounters with all kinds of gimmicks. Nothing in FS stands out. The little bit of puzzle in FS is rudimentary even by Deadfire's standard, and the combat is sometimes challenging but overwhelmingly uninspired. The writers stepped up, but the mechanics devs just gave up. Nowhere is the shortcoming of the mechanics more eregious than npc encounters, and it is FS's other major weakness. Gone are the secondary npcs that can be dealt with multiple ways. Ok. Technically many still can. But the peaceful resolutions either require prohibitively high skill checks or quest items hidden in other parts of the DLC when I did not know such an item was expected or even existed. Admittedly, it makes sense that meeting even initially non-hostile npcs in a dungeon carries risks. However, the narrow and sometimes impossible peaceful alternatives run so contrary to how Deadfire plays, indeed how almost every Obsidian game plays, that the more I played FS the more grotesque it felt. Most consider FS to be the strongest of Deadfire's three DLCs. It certainly has the most content. However, I think it is clearly the least unique. Standing alone, it is more of a good thing. Compared with BoW and SSS, ironically, it feels the least consequential. Together with its questionnable npc encounters, I assume to increase its replay value, it showed me once again that there can be too much of a good thing. I gave it 3 stars at first, but added 1 for Tayn, cameo by a third wizard, and my ending.