An awesome and worthy sequel. I'd like to throw out a suggestion: can you add the option for WASD movement? I want to be able to keep a hand on my mouse and pretend to be working...I mean...I prefer the feel...of...er...
Please get rid of the (virtually) invincible kid that hides under your gun after he latches on to your truck. For others having this problem you can kill the kid by shooting straight up and letting the ice cream fall on him. But whether it's a glitch or it's intentional, it's lame. Please remove it.
Hmm, this has one of the same problems I felt #3 had: You reach (and beat) the final level feeling like you've only scratched the surface of the game. Buckling in for the long haul, I maxed out my wisdom and had only 1 in most of my other stats. Turned out I didn't need any more than that. I've hardly tried out any units besides a select few I already know work because A) there's still no way (outside of walkthroughs) of figuring out each unit's abilities, B) my leadership is only 6, which makes me hesitant to try out new heroes, and C) you can only take 3 heroes into each battle anyway. All in all, experimentation feels like more work than it's worth, which kind of defeats the purpose of having such a wide variety of units/factions/abilities to begin with. I give this game 4/5 for being fun while it lasted.
All in all a great game, and much better than #3, which I found agonizingly grindy. There are some flaws, however, and the biggest one at this point is loot. It's a mess. Some way of sorting loot by stat increases or hero element changes would be great, as well as sorting equipment and consumables. I'd also prefer it if you'd cut the randomness and make it so that every piece of loot with the same name does the same damn thing. Speaking of sorting, I'd also like it if the talents were better sorted. You've got the 8+ elemental "affinity" talents, a couple of 15+ elemental skill talents, some random storyline talents, and a skill scroll talent, in no particular order, and that's just the first row. It gives me a headache. As awesome and thorough as this game is in most respects it should be a given for the developers to do some trivial organization and clean-up and make the interface as user-friendly as possible.
Ok, geniuses, I created my own level for you all to try. Can you solve this one? ?ctm=Triskaphobia;Accept_only_multiples_of_3!;bb:*|br:x|:*|bbrbb:*|bbbbbbbr:x|bbrbrrrrrbrb:*|rrrbbbrbbbrrrbrbbrbbr:*|rrrbbbrbbbrrrbbrbbrbb:x;11;3;1;
You know, a "class" option or some other way of customizing your character build would greatly increase the replay value of this game. Classes could affect your initial stats and the frequency of finding specific stat gems. For instance, a "fighter" would find more attack, defense, and HP gems, a "wizard" might find more intelligence and MP gems, and a "thief" might find more agility gems. Treasures and artifacts could be tailored to drop more frequently for certain classes. Right now it's just a hodge-podge, and a magic-based strategy is almost completely unviable. It's far better to go with physical attacks and save your MP for healing spells.
There seems to be something wrong with "saving" quests. Nothing happened when I clicked on "Load Game", and when I gave up and chose "new quest" it erased my save file. :(
I just want to say that all in all this is the most enjoyable programming/logic game I've ever seen. So good, in fact, that I stuck it out long enough to complete every single level (well, still working on the bonus levels) on my own without looking up walkthroughs, borrowing other people's solutions, or giving up, and that's a first for me. Kudos, and I wish people wouldn't vote games down just because they require higher thinking, because this game deserves to be rated much higher.
Freaking finally. I don't why Judiciary! wasn't the last non-challenge level, because I really feel that it was the hardest. In fact, I had to combine the solutions to THREE other levels to make it work: Police! (to find the midpoint of the string), Academics! (to reverse the second half of the string; if the original was a repeated string, the result would be symmetrical), and Engineers! (to see if the resulting string was symmetrical). The resulting ginormous 119-part monstrosity takes more than 13 minutes to complete, but it works. I'll paste it into the next comment for fear of running out of space.
Hmm, still having some issues with "Police!" and by extension "Judiciary!." I've managed to create a procedural solution for Police! that finds and marks the midpoint of the string, but it's way too big for me to turn around and reuse in "Judiciary!", and without marking the midpoint I'm not sure how to determine if the string repeats. What have other people come up with?
 "ACTION TURNIP!!!"){kind=icon}
 "MARDEK RPG: Chapter 3"){kind=icon}
 "LARRY and the GNOMES"){kind=icon}
 "Kids Vs. Ice Cream"){kind=icon}
 "Protector IV"){kind=icon}
 "Zombies Rebellion"){kind=icon}
 "Doodle God"){kind=icon}
 "Manufactoria"){kind=icon}
 "The Enchanted Cave"){kind=icon}