Been a while since I've been on this forum talking about DKS. Bought Dragon Commander due to the fun I had with it...
Completed the game (Dragon Commander) today with a 13-hour playtime on Normal difficulty, latest patch of course. Overall not too bad. It's more than the sum of it's (sometimes mediocre) components, sadly some rotten apples do tend to add a wrench to the whole system. I did have a lot of fun the first 7 hours, but afterwards, yeah. From Act II onwards I stopped doing RTS, and just the TBS and talking is a bit too little. For a full report;
Politics and most generals... the good* The politics play, while simplistic, was a lot of fun. Talking about all their opinions, the fun the imps where, reading up again what they said after you voted. Definitely the best part of the game. Although the dwarves voice did get on my nerve, the others didn't. Although when furthering into the game, the quality of these decisions dwindled. I don't mean the topics, or the councillor's reply, but that in the endgame without question everyone that didn't put up the vote was against it. Kinda defeated the whole purpose of the whole fraction reputation when you can simply swap one -5 for 4 +5's. The only reason too why my reputation with the dwarves and undead dwindled, yet I still ended up with around 75% with them in the end. And I did even agree a few of those anti-all votes, based on my personal opinion.
* The queen. I had the lizard one. It was fun changing her. But overall it felt really short with only a few conversations and no real conclusion. Once she changed clothes, I could visit her all the time instead of only when something was up, but it where just a few lines repeated. And when the 'He killed that rapist, I must hang him' I was so wanting to tell her "That wasn't how I raised you!" but no such option. And when I won the game, I didn't even get a game-over conversation with her like with all the other NPC's? What was up with that?
* The generals. That is, Edmund, Henry and Scarlet. Although Henry spoke a bit too slow for my desire (I like the voice, but talking to him just takes so much longer than the other characters). Their decisions where often the most interesting, their personal progressions very nice. While the other characters stayed the same from start to finish, here, like with the queen, you could actually press your stamp on them. Which, from a C&C or RPG view, are the best decisions, not just some statistical bonusses and penalties and that's it.
** So yeah, the talking was definitely one of the strong points, less so having to click everyone in the bar till you get the 2 new stuff talkers (I don't want ! or ? pointers, and it's really easy to click out, but after 60 turns it's getting rather tedious). Also I wish when one VO-line was over it could automatically continue to the next line without using continue. Allows you to just sit back till the choice (or convo end), and avoids those akward animation weirdnesses when they go from the animation for that line, to completely neutral, back to the animated state for the next line. Just looks a little sloppy and amateuristic, which should have no place in the title.
* I rather liked the TBS and auto-resolution with cards. Never used a single dragon card ingame though, but the others got their use. Except genocide, since I am still not sure of it's effects. Tried if twice, noticed nothing, decided to not bother with it then. While the AI can be quite stupid at times (4 loaded transports all in the single occupied slot of 5 juggernauts. That's rather stupid, you know), it overall can be quite the challenge to overcome the enemy, hold ground and take new ground. Well, except if launching an act with 100 cards and 1000 gold (act III, guilty, just wanted it to end then). The act II start was interesting with the enemy capital so near, but I really soon just blocked it's sea, and then it send suicidal transports once in a while giving me free kills, and ruining it's army. I've seen people complain of it's buildup, but yellow and green where harder since they didn't let their forces be killed off so easily. Also, balloons are really rather overpowered... in the end I only used them (great movement, seas wont block and extremely good attack power? Überunit on TBS alert!), then just ran melees to mop up the deserted areas. Although admittadly, that was late in the game.
I've had my wins, my crazy losses, and overall it was also quite fun.
Catherine on zerg-modus... the badSo, it's time for... the bad.
* With a game only featuring 2 options for all choices (even outside the yes/no with your generals and queen) sometimes a lot of finesse in your choice has gone away.
Now, since the introduction of the mass-effect wheel I haven't become a stranger to making a choice and then the game giving you a completely different line or standpoint you think the option would give, but it can still be rather annoying, especially if so many choices are part of the game, and the feeling just gets bigger and bigger the more these cases pop-up.
The biggest offender of this is, of course, Catherine. Her personality is COMPLETELY hate-able. She insults you time and time again. While Egmund may be stuckup and racistic, he atleast has some finesse in his language, and when dealing with him, you can make him change his ways or hear he isn't as stuckup as he wants to make out. Not the same for Catherine. It's also a shame the makers have made all the generals one-issue.
* Egmund is all about being less racist to other races. Fortunately Larian has formed this into some fun scenario's like the newspaper article and his hatred for equal opportunity for all meaning tax-raises for other races. He's a one-issue, but it's masked well, so it works.
* Henry is all about loner vs. teamwork. Again a one-issue. Again though the devs managed to work it well into incounters that seem different, but aren't. And it's hard not to root for him when family's at stake.
* Scarlet didn't really have a lot to tell me in my game, but her one-issue was gay. I don't know why her being lesbian was a big relevation, considering it was pretty obvious within 5 turns of the game. I don't really know how well this one-issue was handled since I didn't get her convo's very often.
* But then... then comes Catherina. Her first topic is... she wants a raise. Since she hasn't done anything, she's insulted me constant, and I really disliked her already, obviously I denied HER the raise. Sadly the game decided for me that it wouldn't count for her, but for all woman. Not what I want. Throughout the game she then came with more proposels merely for HER own benefit. But if I rejected them it suddenly was applied to all womankind. If I berated Edmund, it wouldn't suddenly be on all lizards. And when talking about things like the orc-newspaper, it wasn't merely his own self-interest. Also, some of the ideas... FIRE half the military top, my war's heart to employ females, untrained, fresh, new. Does that make sense to you? Are you a general, does that make sense to you? Hire them, yeah, but suddenly from nowhere take toppositions. I wonder how many real companies would fire male CEO's just to hire untrained, unknown new females ones just for some quota. I rejected more for the fire part, but no, I was a chauvenist.
Thinking about it, how did her AND scarlet even get General if woman where completely banned from the military?
I think that's why I and a lot more people with me hate her. Not because she's a feminist, but because the options are written so bad, that she is like womankind herself.
* The RTS.
Much has been said about the RTS, but I think it's fairly clear that more people dislike it than like it. As stated I dropped it in Act II. A shame, since the Dragon gameplay was really fun (as Divinity II also showed us), sadly it was only packed in that RTS, rather than anywhere else. Maybe also made my game less fun midway in, no Dragon. But I couldn't take doing the RTS. I wouldn't know how to fix that, but I do know some ways that I hated the RTS that I will expain here;
** Using charged abilities can become very problematic. You usually control a variety of units, and then you can't use any. Clicking individual units or unit groups in the heat of combat can be difficult, so eventually I stopped caring about them completely. Allowing those abilites to be on the Hotbar even if more types are selected, and when used only the unit in that group which can do use that ability would eleviate much of these control and micro-managent issues. Only problem might be the slots. Does it have a scroll-bar possibility?
* Resorting to cheese. There are really only 2 situations. Either the enemy lets you roll over him, or they amass a huge force for you to deal with. At which point is basically becomes kill/dragon until the population is up, mop up, the end. That's the main winning strategy. And it sucks. It's usually not even intentional, but populations run out very fast, that you can be in that fase 4 minutes in a match, and it's pretty much a given by the time you capture the first settlement on the opponent. Turtling the AI is so overpowered.
Perhaps my lamest win was when my base was crushed, I just had a transport and 5 troopers on an island the AI apparently couldn't get to... and 12 juggernauts. Just killed everything from the sea, and while it was 95%-5% just killing enemies with them big-ranged juggernauts made me win the game. 12 minute total gameplay.
* Because the RTS is so meh, I really hoped the Dragon could turn up in other ways, alas, it's stuck to that. If only there where instances like the Divinity 2 expansion ending, where you could be a dragon, but not needing RTS segments. It would re-add the very entertaining Dragon gameplay to the lot of us simply hating the RTS. And it would actually require us to get Dragon skills, rather than just upgrading our troops for research points, leaving the AI far behind in that regards, and then TBS becoming easy cause you line your 3-star troops to 1- or 0-stars.
Larian did it REALLY well in FoV (even though some disagreed), so it's a shame such kind of dragon-play is not in THE Dragon title.
* As stated before, the AI (on TBS) sometimes could be a little odd, sacrificing many of it's troops in vain. It also seems very fond of transports, it usually produces loads, then simply uses them to shuttle troops between 2 countries, sometimes even the same type. Or use them to transport 1 trooper into your heavily defended fortification. I think transports are the biggest worry of TBS AI. I also saw someone mention round robin instead of player-always-first, and that could indeed definitely add some spice to the campaign, requiring the player to defend much better, and perhaps have some unexpected offsets to deal with, adding to the tactical gameplay required compared to the mopup (on normal) it sometimes is now.
Conclusion:* I really liked the political, sadly in the endgame the 1 vs 4 mentality ruins a vital part of the game, fraction standings. Also, it's when truly crazy ideas arise, which are so easily rejected (and then you get the other fractions +) based on their out-of-worldiness, it degrades the system. Hopefully more 3vs2 will get added to splinter these up to become less likely to happen.
* The TBS was also a lot of fun. It can be tricky at times, but the AI slips up quite a few times giving you a lot of breathing room. It doesn't really help that your ending cards/money on Act I and II make such a big difference, that it could potentially stop your game deadtrack if you end too soon. Or get too much if you stretch it too long, wheter intentional, or you need to amass a fleet for an assault. Also, I got way too much research points, allowing me easily to max everything mid-act II. Not much choice if the choice is everything. Lowering this amount could be a welcome addition. Overall it seems this fase simply needs some balance tweaking in the numbers and AI-fixes. Which means it's in pretty good shape.
* The RTS? The less said about that the better. That I gave up on it completely doing only 8 matches should speak for itself. It also makes me pretty unqualified to specifically point at it's weakpoints, besides that TBS is more fun, less frustating, and a LOT faster. It doesn't have a dragon though, I miss my dragon.
* The game desperately needs Dragon modues outside of the RTS part of the game. Seriously. Get some DLC on this ASAP!
THE BUGS:* Revenue Increase lvl 2 cards claim a 2 turn duration, while lvl 3 cards only do 1 turn. Of course, the 2 turn doesn't even work (it's only 1 turn) too.
* Some political decisions reset statistics rather than ammending them, sadly I never really paid that much attention to it, but I do know some +gold or -gold got removed, and the one I do recall:
** Imp allowed to use ratmilk lowers population by 10%. Banning smoke sticks increases population by 1%. Final tally, +1%...
* Very often the enemy will load people onto a transport and then not move it, or move it and not unload. This makes for easy kills when arriving, since the cargo can't join the fight, and still get destroyed.
Like I said, didn't paid that much attention, hence the short list.
*****
Here's some Steam Achievements I think I should have gotten, but didn't, based on the title and description (do mention if I am wrong);
Summary Justice; Asked my lizard wife to save the elves with rangers rather than release the dictator, achievement still locked.
Hop To It!; Edmund's dismissal of the word hop still remembered by me, but the achievement is still locked.
Dragon Knight; I got every research in Act III, imp and Maxos, and research points went to waste, but the achievement is still locked.
*** and based merely on icons from Steam;
Requiescat In Pace; Has no digging icon. I dissallowed digging on elven graves. Still locked.
Duuuuu-uuude!; Public health-care, still locked.
To the 2 people who read it all, thanks for reading this long post. Hopefully it's some use to Larian, or other readers.
EDIT:
Just watched the documentary in my Imperial Edition... seems they spend a LOT of time actually adding the dragon combat, and the airbone battles in that documentary look awesome. Make it even sadder there's no non-RTS Dragon sequences in the game...
Also listened to the music, and I don't think 'Where Demons Dwell' the song is I hear at Cormac, or I ever heard the awesome 'Afterburner' (who would use the jetpack for 3 minutes anyway?)...
