@Gihubb: Thanks for the compliment Nice that I seem to be entertaining. Interesting to hear from your friend's point of view, how these things are for a fresh player. For me, all that was pretty obvious, I didn't even read the tutorial and help. Agree, a short tutorial level, and/or hints/explanations popping up the first time you e.g. get the chance to do a backstab, should help a lot. On another note, my speedrun will end soon, I guess. After the Bountyhunter, only the Hero is still alive. I can only revive 2 of my 4 dead mercs right away, so I'll have to continue with a severely weakened group. But they are equipped pretty well; with some luck, I might be able to turn things around yet. Had to take Darion, went with his Protection skill. Made a mistake with Melic and took the +STR Banner instead of the damage soaker by accident. Ouch...
I personally enjoy figuring out game mechanics by playing. I don't mind failing in order to learn strategies. That being said, the tutorial could definitely be better and I can understand that the vagueness of the rules can cause frustration. I just hope people don't give up too easily as they may miss out on a very fun gaming experience.
Speedrun is indeed over. My Hero died in the second fight against Barbarians after the Bountyhunter. And against the last Barbarian alive, to boot. Beelining for the stage end on Medium is pretty tough... Will work next on getting the other two forms of Velana, and the last Merc, before I try another speedrun.
I've only played once so far, died to the boss in step four a couple of weeks ago. One thing that I wanted to ask about: is there some rhyme or reason to where enemies will appear after combat starts? I recall there were multiple occasions where I set characters to Overwatch where I expected them to come from, but they invariably appeared from the opposite direction.
What Gihubb says: check where the greyed-out areas are, that's where enemies are staging. If you want a scout, make someone invisible (Hello, Jeda!) and let them teleport. Works great for me. Unfortunately I am ill, so the rest of my writeups has to wait for a bit. Can say that I do not like the bombthrowing lady: With the area effect that hits your folks as well, I find her way too dangerous to my own party. Does anyone know already what abilities her other two forms have? Also, did you know that the Armor Break runes stack? My Archer has two now, and does 4 Armor damage with each shot. Very helpful, he's my current playthrough's murder machine. Just the final battle to go, and I am confident I'll win this time.
I've heard some people complain that Easy mode isn't really easy and should've been named Normal and Normal as Hard. Well, I have to agree with the devs here - on my first playthrough I got to step 6, on my second got a victory on day 22, on my third got a victory on day 12, where I was just rushing along beating almost everything in sight. About the ending - SPOILER ALERT from below: Are there different endings for beating the game in less than 18 days? What I got is that after I released the king, he threw the hero to the dungeon to contemplate what to do with him next. Is that it?? Quite an ungrateful git I have to say!!
@Gihubb: Think about it from your friend's (the one you mentioned earlier) viewpoint. Or even better, ask him. Truly curious if he would agree that Easy really is easy. For us it might easy; but in my opinion that's because we have (a lot of) experience under our belts (just assuming that for you). By the way, 12 days I find quite impressive. Have to try sometime if I can get through that fast.
I'm assuming 12 day victory was on easy? I've only played on normal and my quickest victory was exactly 18 days and the ending was the same as yours. I tend to take much longer because I can't seem to resist exploring every location. One of these days I'll try to beat 18 days.
Nice to finally see a review of Crowntakers on TA. Quite a good one, too. I hope the exposure gets more people to experience an outstanding game.
This is a fun game, but it crashes so much. It also doesn't seem to be very good at saving data, and I lost the longest and best game I've played yet in a crash. Most of the time when it crashes it's after a battle, and then I have to redo the battle again. I've never used an iPad game that crashed so much. Does anyone know what the "really powerful weapon rune" is supposed to do? What about someone said something about special group attacks or something? I haven't seen anything like that, are there extra group attacks?
@brainbag: Odd, I didn't have any crashes so far, and don't recall any being mentioned here. Same goes for the save problems. What device are you on? iOS version? Jailbroken?
The only bugs I've come across are those concerning the Zoe (boomerang girl) and Valana (bomb thrower girl) locking up in combat. None of the ones mentioned above.
No crashes for me either. I'm using an iPad Air with iOS 8.2. The bugs I've encountered are freezes when either being defeated or when winning the final fight (had Zoe in the party and the game froze after I defeated the final boss). I've also noticed that when I try to manage the inventory, items I put in the right trash icons, sometimes appear to get multiplied although they aren't really once you place them back. The 12 days run was on Easy mode, on my 3rd attempt. I need to get into Normal now. But alas, family life does cut into my iPad time.
I've gotten the egg to hatch as well, but now every game I start I am carrying around the hen. Does anyone know if it actually does anything or does it just take up an inventory slot (it has zero value with merchants)?
The Hen didn't do anything for me (yet). Maybe the dev could kindly chime in here? Personally, I think it should be another merc, like this:
I'm on an iPad 2. Unfortunately, it just crashed again, and this time set me back to before I beat the Spoiler Barbarian boss. Now every time I join the fight, it's in a really bad position. The first time I beat it, it was an expertly done match that was my favorite fight yet, and now it feels like a slog to do again. I'm going to have to pass on this until the constant crashing is fixed, or the auto saving is better.
@brainbag: sounds like it might be iPad 2 specific. Which iOS version are you on? Jailbroken yes/no? You should have crash reports. Sync to a computer and send them to the devs, ideally with the savegame as well.
I've started thinking that maybe one of the reasons this game has gone quite unnoticed is because of the hexes - hexes usually spell that you're going into a deep wargame with convoluted rules, so many people who are intimidated by hexes, assuming this, steered clear. Yet the niche that does love hex wargames, saw this as too simple and steered clear as well. Too bad really, because I'm in the opinion that it definitely deserves greater attention from the masses.
