The Shard of Tellunos item says the player party from the last game canonically died defending Tellunos! But that makes them the First Company which inspired all the hero organizations saving the world in this game.
Goodnight sweet Ranger, Ranger, Ranger, and Ranger: And Runed Aetherweave Flights of Angels of Deftness sing thee to thy rest.
Besides minor nuisances like no speed-up button, this game suffers from being very badly thought through (despite all the boasts about deep strategy). Numerous options like specialist levels on Dexers are mathematically just inferior and never, ever worthwhile. Even potentially cool towers like Necros are often similarly worthless for their price when one actually crunches the numbers. The result is that nearly every level is best approached with a mindless swarm of low-level generalist mages of mixed colors with 1-2 specialists per color at the entrance.
@Nippapanca, the opponent already chooses their more or less totally randomly so locking down random selections of their cards wouldn't really affect them at all. That would just make the game even more luck-based since any time you made the opponent go insane as part of your strategy, you'd have to pray they got something that actually hurts them rather than the harmless Agoraphobia.
Alexnobody, I have to disagree: too much luck is a serious problem in this game.
Even if it was true that being a card game inevitably meant being mostly luck, this game has the following extra random elements on top of that for no good reason: starting sanity, AI moves, insanity types, Mad Experiment effects, and cards locked down by Agoraphobia.
Further, in most games luck balances out over time but in this one early luck effects can be felt forever. Getting lucky in the early battles -> a better score -> more level ups -> more HP -> a better score -> more level ups -> etc.
And of course challenge mode is terribly designed. On several challenges, you lose when your initial hand is dealt because the enemy will wipe you out with 100% certainty no matter which of your 5 cards you play. Your only hope is to restart until you start with something that can save you. And then hope for further luck from there.
I definitely agree that the slow animations are a nuisance too though.
@ Norrec_Vizharan, you're correct on the details, but Woerldedit's broader point is correct too.
If you fight every monster, you do indeed end up about 1 level above the enemy by the end of the campaign. That is indeed a (small) advantage.
But the enemies start off at your level again in the next campaign. So there's no long-term advantage gained.
Furthermore, your old gear rapidly becomes obsolete as you level. Even completed item sets must be discarded as the individual pieces become inferior.
Thus, leveling up gives no lasting advantage (after you have the good spells) and also imposes nuisances like needing to replace all your gear.
Plus the individual character level system makes it annoyingly hard to try new party members. And makes it annoyingly easy to stomp on campaigns by bringing along a couple of low level people in order to lower the monster level so that your high level people can crush them.
Although I love this game, I strongly dislike the level system.
Does anyone else have a problem where King Harold just disappears during the 3rd battle? Three times now I've maneuvered a knight and Duke William up around the top to try to take King Harold down early and it's been going well until he suddenly just vanishes from the board. The enemy doesn't lose morale as if he died or ran away or anything. Completely ruins my strategy.
Y'know, mathematically, giving a Dexer a level is special is NEVER a good idea. Every generalist level is +40% damage. Every specialist level is +5%. And that's on top of randomness being bad.
Finally got King on the first level on hard mode. The trick is to bring 4-5 archers, 2 varangian guards, and the rest warriors. Take your king and 1-2 warriors quickly along the top row to wipe out the enemy king who stays in the rear. Meanwhile your archers need to waste first the enemy archers and then the enemy charging king while staying behind a shield wall of warriors and varangian guards. Toward the end, your shield wall will be badly damaged, so to avoid losing a unit you must order the shield wall to break and have the most injured 2 guys flee while the last one blocks the enemy shield wall alone for a few rounds.
The rest is just a matter of aim, careful maneuvering, and making sure you move your king into range of the enemy king on a round in which the enemy goes first. That way he can't charge you but you can charge him next round.
Alright, so I've managed King rank on missions 2 and 3 and master general on 1 (all on hard mode). Has anyone managed to get King on mission 1 on hard mode? If so, how did you do it?
So I did a hard mode practice skirmish with the (norman) computer. Killed their king, massacred their army, had half of mine left and rushed to finish off their single remaining archer. Just as I neared him (staying out of range) my 2 varangian guards and 1 warriors all flee at once. So I tried to finish the map with just my king. He too decided to flee just as he got close enough to attack. So.... my whole army lost to a single unit of archers that didn't fire a shot basically. Seeing as my side had higher morale the whole time (dropped to 3 against their 3 on the last turn) I really don't think that should have happened.
Can't make the per turn damage of Obstalat's deck there, but a simple black deck of 5 Blackguard Leaders, 5 Drain Life, 5 Disintegrate, and 3-5 Blackguard Thug is quite effective and can beat all the challenges with ease. If you want to be really fast with the last challenge, use the black card that halves everyone's health once or twice too.
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 "Mytheria"){kind=icon}