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Fantasy General II - Invasion is the reimagination of the strategy game classic from the 90s!

Armies once again draw battle-lines on the war-torn land of Keldonia, and a new generation of commanders will test their bravery and tactics against each other. Fantasy wargaming is back!
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Arent
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Post by Arent »

First of all, thank you for remaking Fantasy General! It has always been one of my beloved 'old' games and I am happy some of them are remade.

I like your remake very much, apart from some minor issues. It has nice graphics, a standard, but ok, story, and follows mostly the old game mechanics. It has also a certain replay value, which is, however, limited. The story is fine, but a little bland. Altogether it is a solid remake/reboot of the fanchise and I'll be happy to follow and possibly buy DLCs, expansions or sequels.

That being said, I also want to point out some larger issues, which are my personal opinion and might or might not be shared by others:

(1) I liked the original choice of different generals, which allowed a little 'RPG' feeling. I can customize Falirson a little, but that is of course less than creating or choosing your own warrior/sorceress. I have however seen that you allow such a choice in the upcoming 'onslaught' DLC. I'm especially happy with the abilities Ailsa seems to have, like uncovering the map and being able to recruit Trolls and beasts. That is a nice recreation of 'Mordra' in the original fantasy general.
(2) One of the fun parts of the original was to choose your own, personal army composition. I always liked to combine flyers and heavy infantry. One gripe I have with fantasy general 2 is that that choice is strongly limited. I have no flyers I could recruit, although in the upcoming DLC apparently in the middle of the campaign they become available. Right now, I'm basically forced to always play with the same army composition: Namely slingers + melee units.
(3) There is no research tree anymore. This has now been changed to unit upgrades and resources. It's fine, I guess, but it also takes away a little bit of 'customizing' your personal army. It would be simple to implement that upgrades have to be researched first.
(4) Magic units are severely limited. It would have been nice to have an entire upgrade line for female sorceresses and a good fit for the 'barbarians' against the more technically leaning 'empire'. It would also have made the distinction between male and female units more interesting - right now you have warriors and warriors, with a slight emphasis on berserkers and slingers for the male units and spearmen and cavalry for the female units. Giving female units a magic upgrade path and cutting some melee units or moving them to the males might make the choice to recruit male or female units more meaningful.
(5) The story was a little bland. There was not much treachery or life and death situations aka Tactics Ogre/let us cling together or Starcraft. For a reboot a casual story is fine and nothing wrong. But now that you have the basic game mechanics you can grow a little bolder and create a story where your heroes betray you, get captured, switch sides, you have to work with former enemies, face off with former friends etc.
OBG_primetide
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Post by OBG_primetide »

Thanks for the feedback!
Regarding your points, some of your points will be addressed with our upcoming DLC Onslaught due in March
1) - Onslaught campaign with more generals to choose from and procedural maps and branching missions for massive replay value.
2) 15 new aerial units!
3) We decided against that since the research tree was boxing you into having certain units (as you needed to optimize research for just a few unit types, most of the others became useless for you). We feel the current version is more flexible and allows more control over your army.
4) There is the Wolfmother but you are right, magic is mostly relegated to heroes. We may take a stab at5 that in future upgrades.
5) Compared to FG1 the story was massively more important, but maybe that is not a great measure ;). The DLC after Onslaught will feature an Empire campaign with a bit more of what you suggest.
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Arent
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OBG_primetide wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 11:33 am There is the Wolfmother but you are right, magic is mostly relegated to heroes. We may take a stab at5 that in future upgrades.
Nice to hear. I really think it would add a lot of flavor. In the original FG1 magic units were a whole upgrade path.
OBG_primetide wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 11:33 am Compared to FG1 the story was massively more important, but maybe that is not a great measure ;). The DLC after Onslaught will feature an Empire campaign with a bit more of what you suggest.
Well, yes, FG1 had not much story, so of course you added a whole lot ;) And strictly speaking, it's not necessary either. But asking difficult ethical questions - do I commit a warcrime to gain advantages, do I ally with people that betrayed me, do I break a formerly made promise - can add a lot of fun to a 'basic' strategy game.
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Post by stavros27 »

Love that there will be an Empire campaign in Onslaught! I like playing both sides and it adds to the replay-ability too!
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stavros27 wrote: Sat Feb 15, 2020 2:16 pm Love that there will be an Empire campaign in Onslaught! I like playing both sides and it adds to the replay-ability too!
After Onslaught. We'll have to wait a little ;)

By the way, the strategy guides online right now are a bit hilarious. I guess it's normal so early in a games lifetime. For example, some say that Troll chargers would be useless and Troll hurlers great. In truth, Troll chargers are maybe one of the best units I have come across. Especially because of a certain exploit most people seem to overlook.
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Arent wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 6:19 pmBut asking difficult ethical questions - do I commit a warcrime to gain advantages, do I ally with people that betrayed me, do I break a formerly made promise - can add a lot of fun to a 'basic' strategy game.
But the base game DOES HAVE all of this in one way or another. You also have to choose at one point whether to work together with your enemies or not. Seems you just missed the opportunity to take Princess Marcra's route.
Although IICR the very second mission allows you to pick sides in a conflict between humans and trolls - and that could lead to great consequences. Your earlier game choices do matter and reflect on the story and dialogues till the end of the campaign.

There's not many strategy games that give you that kind of choice thogether with non-linear story.
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ScarabPhoenix wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:26 am
Arent wrote: Thu Feb 13, 2020 6:19 pmBut asking difficult ethical questions - do I commit a warcrime to gain advantages, do I ally with people that betrayed me, do I break a formerly made promise - can add a lot of fun to a 'basic' strategy game.
But the base game DOES HAVE all of this in one way or another. You also have to choose at one point whether to work together with your enemies or not. Seems you just missed the opportunity to take Princess Marcra's route.
Allying with Marca was straightforward. It would have been an entirely different story if *she* had been the one to lead the expedition forces against the highlanders. Maybe even orchestrated the betrayal at the clansmeet and indirectly murdered your father. And then, in the middle of the game, she would have been imprisoned because she stumbled over some secrets of the Transmuters, who try to undermine her beloved empire. And then you have to work together, not because you like each other, but because you otherwise stand no chance against the necromancers.
ScarabPhoenix wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:26 am Although IICR the very second mission allows you to pick sides in a conflict between humans and trolls - and that could lead to great consequences. Your earlier game choices do matter and reflect on the story and dialogues till the end of the campaign.
Again, it would have been much cooler if the Trolls had actually attacked your clansmembers, slaughtered them and you would have driven off this dangerous threat to all clans. And then, later in the game, you realize the empire is draining mana from the lands and you simply have to enter an uneasy alliance with the Trolls that hate you, because otherwise you just stand no chance.

Another opportunity would have been the slightly boring storyline in the swamps. Right now, you simply plunder liquid mana and in the end, some reptiles join you. It would have been much more interesting to simply add a single dialog choice where you are allowed to either choose to completely exterminate the reptiles - gaining a lot of liquid mana in the process - or sparing some of them, who join you and give you the possibility to recruit sea based units. In that way you would decide to either commit a genocide and getting better upgrades for your units - or to cripple your upgrades, but gain special sea based units.
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I think the problem with the above choices - which are indeed more dramatic - is, that they "force" decisions on you that you instinctively may reject in order to gain some tactical/resource etc advantage. By toning down the drama somewhat, we wanted to allow players to have a relatively "open" choice. We do have some of the more "contextual" ones (such as taking on Relkar as a Thane when he is Clan Misneach, ransoming or killing him.) but if for example we made Marcra your enemy by default, then force you to ally with her, that would railroad you into things.
But I think you will find the Empire Aflame story more to your taste :).
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Arent
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OBG_primetide wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 10:33 am I think the problem with the above choices - which are indeed more dramatic - is, that they "force" decisions on you that you instinctively may reject in order to gain some tactical/resource etc advantage. By toning down the drama somewhat, we wanted to allow players to have a relatively "open" choice. We do have some of the more "contextual" ones (such as taking on Relkar as a Thane when he is Clan Misneach, ransoming or killing him.) but if for example we made Marcra your enemy by default, then force you to ally with her, that would railroad you into things.
But I think you will find the Empire Aflame story more to your taste :).
The storyline is completely fine as it is. I don't want to nitpick your great game here. I'm just saying it could have been even better.

But adding more drama and more complex storylines of course could also delay production a lot. And therefore, going with a more straightforward storyline is just fine. Now that you have your basic assets you of course can delve into more complicated stories in DLCs, which is apparently exactly what you are doing.
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Arent wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 10:13 amAgain, it would have been much cooler if
I think we both agree that it was already cool enough. Because "much cooler" is something that could be said about anything in any other game or movie. For example, it would have been much cooler if trolls would fight with lightsabers. But it would have been a totally different game.
I was merely addressing the assertion that the game wasn't "asking difficult ethical questions - do I commit a warcrime to gain advantages, do I ally with people that betrayed me, do I break a formerly made promise", which is not correct because it certainly was. Many missions allow you to kill civilians or even your own people (at least twice in the game) to gain advantage, you can break your promise (again at least twice), and the main campaign tells the story about how you do ally with people that betrayed your father in the Battle of the Clans (as told in the prequel campaign). You can ally with Relkar who betrays you in the Battle of the Clanmeet (the Thing). You can antagonize Marcra in your very first encounter with her if you don't like her attitude.
I was impressed by the nonlinear storytelling in the game because there are not too many examples of strategy games that have something similar. Of course, there is always a way to make the story or choices deeper. Still, it's not an RPG, and it never was pretending to be one.
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ScarabPhoenix wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 1:11 pm
Arent wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 10:13 amAgain, it would have been much cooler if
I think we both agree that it was already cool enough.
Of course we do. The game is fine as it is. Which is why I am here and like to talk about it. Not because it is bad, but because it is interesting.
ScarabPhoenix wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 1:11 pm I was impressed by the nonlinear storytelling in the game because there are not too many examples of strategy games that have something similar. Of course, there is always a way to make the story or choices deeper. Still, it's not an RPG, and it never was pretending to be one.
Well, I'm used to tactics ogre or starcraft, but yes, there are also many more shallow games, story wise. And I think, the basic framework and game rules of fantasy general 2 would lend themselves really well for some good storytelling.
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Let's just take this as an encouragement for even more interesting stories, as it was intended. Upping the Drama now in Empire Aflame - and if people come crying, I will point them to you ;)
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OBG_primetide wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 1:59 pm Let's just take this as an encouragement for even more interesting stories, as it was intended. Upping the Drama now in Empire Aflame - and if people come crying, I will point them to you ;)
Don't listen to me. It's your game & you need to decide.

If 10+ people say the same as me you might begin to consider that there is a bit of truth in it :mrgreen:
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