Lore behind a paywall? Rants and impressions...

[Kamamura]

First of all, let me tell you that in case of Fantasy General II, I like what I see. The core seems solid - the phase-based combat system, the tactical opportunities provided by terrain and unit placement, the upgrade paths, the updated graphics, it all seems very promising.

However, there are some quite glaring omissions one cannot overlook when starting playing. The first is the absolute lack of flavor texts for units. That is a HUGE missed opportunity in my opinion, since the game has no intro animation to speak of, the manual does not tell you anything about the lore and the world the game takes place in. Who are you (besides being a generig viking-ish tribe/clan?) What is the way of living of your people, what are their believes? Are they craftsmen, nomads, farmers, or ruthless pillagers and slavers? Who are their friends, and who are their enemies? It's quite obvious that the game considers this an afterthought, which is a pity considering the fact it wants to have narrative choices as part of the gameplay. Games like King of the Dragon Path rewards players for knowing the lore - if you know your gods and your customs, your chance of making the correct decision improves drastically. The whole fantastic lore of Dark Souls is told mostly via item descriptions. Here, you are not told anything. You meet a group of other vikingish tribesmen fighting trolls who "may have been wronged", which side will you support? How should I decide when I don't know any details? Who are trolls in the context of this game? Barbaric cannibals humans fight to the death, or honorable savages defending there dwindling territory? Who are the tribesmen fighting them? Do I recognize their insignia, have I met them, do we have diplomatic relationships? The game tells you nothing!

I have been told by the devs that there are flavor texts for units, but they are in an artbook. Well, the inconvenience of paging through a physical book while playing instead of just right clicking aside, I don't have the artbook, because it's behind a paywall that doubles the already steep price of the game! For 60 - 70 euro/dollars which is the price of the ungimped game, you can get the top AAA titles like CA Total War games that contain encyclopedias full of lore and information, tables, rules, everything described and explained. Dominions 4 and 5, technically very backward games, do have flavor texts for units. Fantasy Empires and Elven Legacy, much cheaper games made in very similar spirit as FG 1 and 2 do have flavor texts, even FG1 has them. So what happened, guys? The dev told me they are "looking for a way to get them into the game". Well, ask the authors of the other games how they did it! You ask top dollar for your game, you should provide top quality!

Speaking of content, the game feels very thin on that front. There is only one campaign featuring a single nation (FG 1 had four heroes, if I remember correctly, each fighting for different side). Fantasy Empires had 2 campaign, men and orcs, I don't remember exactly, but I remember there being a choice. Map/mission editor is nowhere to be found. Random map skirmishes are nice, but the one game I tried, the game told me I have lost before I found the enemy in the fog of war. Not sure why. Everything screams "DLCs!", well, I am not buying an expensive game to wait for future content that may or may not come.

Other than that, I would welcome some visual feedback from combat - for example floating numbers from each phase of combat with corresponding sound to give you better impression on how things are going - for example, whistling arrows, floating numbers from missile phase casualties, then javelin thuds with numbers from skirmish phase, then shouts and galloping hoofs and numbers from charge phase, then the sound of clanging swords with numbers from the melee phase. Detailed and simple combat predictions should be a toggle button, that Ctrl method is very clunky.

That said, despite all my complains, the game feels good, challenging, I feel compelled to play, if only the missing parts were sufficiently fleshed out so that the buyer would have a feeling he got adequate value for his money (which is currently definitely not the case). Cutting content for standard edition buyers in an already content-light game was IMO not a smart decision.