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[gimli]

It's out. http://www.warlock2.com

If anyone bought & tried it, please post a mini review.

Also here is the the new mod tool trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=508pWunC_Mc

[Ozyton]

I only watched TB's "WTF is..." and have not played the first game. He said it was -very- iterative and pooosssiiibbblly not worth full price for what is essentially 'DLC' which is likely to be laden with more DLC. He didn't say anything about whether it was worth it if you haven't bought/played the first one though.

I'm curious to see if people prefer this or Age of Wonders 3. What I've heard about AoW is that you get troop tiers and as you get higher tiers the other tiers become irrelevant, while it seems that units in Warlock remain relevant throughout the game... or so I've heard.

[Biowraith]

I've played through a few games of this before AoW3 came out, and it's basically Warlock 1 with a few extra races and a bit more structured in certain areas. 

The races that carried over from the first game are basically the same units etc, if there's any differences they're minor stat adjustments that I didn't notice.

Combat's the same, except certain units provide 'support' if the unit next to them is attacked (I don't think that was in the first game?).

As far as I can see, the spells are all the same - but this time there's three tiered research paths (as in 3 paths, not 3 tiers) to work through instead of stuff just showing up randomly.

There's some story-related events in there, but not really telling a story that I saw (beyond, go kill the big bad and get your world back).

There's now a soft cap on how many cities you can have, sort of.  If you go over the cap you start to generate unrest, which is bad.  However you can convert cities to 'special' cities that either produce gold, religious favour & mana, or act as a fortress - those cities can't build anything.  Special cities don't count towards the unrest cap (hence the 'sort of').  The gist of it is that 1) you're probably not going to be able to grab *every* special resource without dealing with unrest so you have to pick and choose, and 2) city spam is still very much a part of the game but you don't have/get to micromanage each city.

And at least one game mode has the world split into small shards, with portals between them.  You can typically fit 3-5 full cities (i.e. giving them all room for max radius/domain/influence) or more if they're 'special' cities (which only have 1 radius) on each shard.  Generally the shards become tougher (in terms of indie monsters) as you go on.  It gives a bit more structure and progression to your expansion.

And the AI seems to be as terribad as it was in the first one - the indie critters on the tougher shards are the main threat, not the AI who just spams hordes of low tier units at you.  It's less random in diplomacy which is both good and bad - good cos the random diplomacy was silly, bad cos it's too easy to just end up at peace with the AIs removing even the minor threat they pose.

(this was all pre-release, so I'm not sure if they've added or changed anything drastically in that time, but it seems unlikely in only a few weeks)

If you own the first one, I'd say wait for a sale as it's more like Warlock 1.5 than a full sequel to my mind.

And personally I much prefer AoW3, but I appear to like that one more than most on this forum.

[gimli]

Hm...this sounds bad so far...

[Bremen]

It's not bad at all. Of course, this is coming from someone who really liked Warlock 1.

First off, I will agree that it's more of a stand alone expansion than a new game (though to be fair, it's priced like an expansion, $30 brand new, and is stand alone if you don't own the first game.) If you played Warlock 1 and didn't like it, you can be fairly assured you probably wont like The Exiled. But similarly if you liked the first game, it does make some nice improvements. Two new races, a bunch of new resources, new research system, specialized cities, and the quest based Exiled game mode. The harder question is should you get it if you never played the first game, in which case most of what applied to that game applies to this.

The best part of Warlock 1 was always the "civilizing the wilderness" aspect of it, moving into the fog of war and then dealing with the ettins, elementals and dragons and their lairs you found waiting for you, then plopping down cities and building roads. So that's basically what the new campaign mode is, with you spreading out into a web of shard worlds that you can clear and then lay down cities. Some have their own great mages, others are just full of monsters and sometimes a miniboss. And it's worth noting that you can still play normal games instead of the exiled campaign.

Personally it felt like the AI was improved, several times I got locally overwhelmed and lost cities. Though to be fair I'm not sure how much of that was me being unused to the new stuff and distracted with my main forces elsewhere; in my most successful game I was eventually able to contain an AI on a single shard and every 10 turns or so he'd declare war on me and feed units through the gate into my xp grinder, so it's certainly still not great. On the other hand, the AI in diplomacy is no longer just "demand resources repeatedly then declare war"; I had several offer me alliances. And be warned, if they're unfriendly they do seem to wait until your military isn't near their borders to declare war on you (this can be seen in TB's WTF is video).

Another improvement that should be mentioned is that, unlike Warlock 1, this game has built in modding tools. That could mean a lot of nice improvements down the line.

[Criptfeind]

I didn't realllllllly like the first warlock. It felt very blahish to me and I only ended up playing like a third of a game. And since everything I've heard is that this one is more the same I think I might not buy it.

On the other hand I really really like the idea of the shard worlds, which seems pretty cool to me. And the soft cap on cities seems like it could be a great idea and it's something I probably need play with at least once. In general though people seem much less impressed with these two things then I am. So maybe that's just me looking for a reason to buy this game.

Edit: Also the stupid way they handled research in the first one was a huge turn off to me. So...

[Bremen]

I didn't realllllllly like the first warlock. It felt very blahish to me and I only ended up playing like a third of a game. And since everything I've heard is that this one is more the same I think I might not buy it.

On the other hand I really really like the idea of the shard worlds, which seems pretty cool to me. And the soft cap on cities seems like it could be a great idea and it's something I probably need play with at least once. In general though people seem much less impressed with these two things then I am. So maybe that's just me looking for a reason to buy this game.

Edit: Also the stupid way they handled research in the first one was a huge turn off to me. So...

I love the new research system. The shard worlds campaign and soft cap/specialized cities are also nice changes. That said, without knowing what turned you off the first game it's hard to recommend it; the general style of gameplay is almost unchanged.

[nyulzsiraf]

i liked the first one, now i am waiting for good reviews about the second 

[tompliss]

Played this game a bit, and really appreciated it.

for the AoW vs warlock2, it's pretty much a HoMM vs Civ. They're turn-based strategic games, but their way of dealing with combat really isn't the same.

I like the reasearch system because it lets you get some late-game spells from a branch without minding the others, but the combat system (with resistances to certain spell types) and utility spells being in all the branches force you to get at least a little bit of each. In this, I also realyl like the god system, with their spells being less expensive (in research and maan) than classic spells but requiring other things and being rivals.

The resources and special buildings are "classic" but they work (even if the UI to check what they can do is horrible), and the differences between the races bring different gameplay with different games.

It feels very combat-centered (no cultural development, no real diplomacy to win the campaign,...), but stays fun even avec hours in the same game.

[Neonivek]

Here is how I view Warlock 2

If you were iffy about the first... don't get it... If you liked the first but find the price of the second iffy... don't get it.

The only people I feel should be getting Warlock 2 are fans of the original who don't mind buying it at full price right now.

I find myself to be both satisfied and disappointed with this game... at the same time.

It is CLEARLY based off of the first game, that is obvious because some of the "Upgrades and spells" are still in the game and are even more useless now.. while others are REALLY useful.

Also why they split earth elemental and fire elemental is beyond me (by the by... Earth Elemental will always be better)

So what this boils down to... is that the game is in many ways a vast improvement, but those improvements are bogged down with what was in the first game. New worlds to discover? Yay! They are the same death filled deathtraps that will massacre your troops? Boo! Extra boo they rarely have unique resources.

[Wiles]

I have major buyer's remorse from purchasing Warlock 2. The AI incredibly bad. 

The AI seems to be completely unable to defend against a human opponent. All you have to do is send a few of your good units and heroes to attack their undefended capital city. The AI seems to view diplomacy with a certain amount of whimsy, a lot of the time they'll declare war just to sue for peace a few turns later. The AI is also very bad at exploring. If you use the continents set up the AI on the other continent will never bother to come find you.

It's a shame really, it would have been a pretty interesting game otherwise.
   

[thegoatgod_pan]

I got Warlock and Age of Wonders and like Warlock better. Age of Wonders disappointed me. If there are real improvements from Shadow magic, they seem superficial: the campaign is slow and boring and pointless (oh noes my brother is dead, better clear these random bandits out of an unrelated ruin!) At the same time Warlock makes me nostalgic for Fall from Heaven 2.

Warlock feels a lot like Civ 5 and a lot like the effort to remake Fall from Heaven 2 for the Civ 5 engine (those of you who don't know Fall from Heaven, the critically acclaimed Beyond the Sword mod: get it now: get Civ IV and Beyond the Sword (can't be more than 20$ now) and download Kael's free mod from the civfantatics forums (and when you are done playing it for eight months get the mod mod Masters of Mana and play for eight more) and enjoy the best fantasy 4x on the market

Warlock has some nice fantasy elements, heroes treasure and world moulding spells (volcano!!!). I like the slight modifications to civ mechanics (units and buildings are separate queues, buildings actually correspond to a spot on the map and demand a population point etc) I really like the world hopping: simple mechanic but so engaging.

The bad:  Poor Ai means that war is just camping a gate to their homeworld and slaughtering anything that comes through.

The races are not super distinct (again no FFH2 insanity of warring evil clown folk, dead god of winter worshippers, pirates, vampires, and angelic/demonic civilizations you have to summon and switch to mid-game), and sometimes nonsensical:e.g. I capture a city on a dangerous mana world and after some buildings invest in a super expensive local wizard troop, when I get the local races super expensive wizard on the field of battle I learn that damn near everything on the plane is completely immune to their damage type. Question: how the fuck did this civilization survive before I conquered it?

The religions are impossible to tell apart (apparently I am supposed to remember the full pantheon of 10 or so gods without a wiki or in game explanations of how the faiths interact) and any wizard can pretty much do what every other wizard can do (thus eliminating the FFhesque situations of running one hilariously broken exploit into another hilariously broken exploit and seeing fun emerge!)

The magic/research tree makes zero sense. You can't seem to get divine favor unless you dedicate whole cities to it, so I only get into divine spells end game. Most spells seem functionally useless:why would you slightly debuff an enemy unit instead of just killing it? Why would you research a way to dispel a debuff on your own units instead of reaching the means of summoning a volcano by their capital city? Why why why?  Furtheremore, after a certain amount of research you are arbitrarily locked out of a tree with no warning. By end game you will literally be stuck pouring research into nothing.  Basically the magic in the game comes down to macro landscape manipulation, summoning shit and occasionally casting a shadowbolt at a tough roaming monster.  No fun magic exploits like FFH2 Balseraph puppet-mind-control spam or whatever, pretty straightforward.

Basically, yeah good, but I hope expansions and fixes are forthcoming.  Also terrible optimization: my computer is a monster and it goes into full fan mode as soon as I load Warlock up: alt tabbing to use the internet is almost impossible.

[tompliss]

You can't seem to get divine favor unless you dedicate whole cities to it, so I only get into divine spells end game. [...] Furtheremore, after a certain amount of research you are arbitrarily locked out of a tree with no warning.

Aren't temples enough to get the spells online ? I only made one temple (because buildings without real sinergies with one another feel less optimized with the whole population = buildings system), but getting temples in a few cities should be enough, right ?
And are you sure you get locked out of the research branches ? I mean, you can still research spells from previous steps of a branch, so what are you talking about ?

[Neonivek]

why would you slightly debuff an enemy unit instead of just killing it? Why would you research a way to dispel a debuff on your own units instead of reaching the means of summoning a volcano by their capital city? Why why why?  Furtheremore, after a certain amount of research you are arbitrarily locked out of a tree with no warning. By end game you will literally be stuck pouring research into nothing

Because the debuffs are percent and so are the buffs.

Against really powerful enemies might as well be immune to offensive spells because you are going to do squat damage.

While weak enemies, yeah don't bother debuffing them.

The major weakness to the game is that single powerful units are many times better then even legions of weak enemies. It is why the Elves will always dominate the Goblins.

------------

OF FREEKEN COURSE Warlock still crashes!

------------

My concensus of the game


DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!

I already wish I could return it.

[thegoatgod_pan]

why would you slightly debuff an enemy unit instead of just killing it? Why would you research a way to dispel a debuff on your own units instead of reaching the means of summoning a volcano by their capital city? Why why why?  Furtheremore, after a certain amount of research you are arbitrarily locked out of a tree with no warning. By end game you will literally be stuck pouring research into nothing

Because the debuffs are percent and so are the buffs.

Against really powerful enemies might as well be immune to offensive spells because you are going to do squat damage.

While weak enemies, yeah don't bother debuffing them.

The major weakness to the game is that single powerful units are many times better then even legions of weak enemies. It is why the Elves will always dominate the Goblins.

That would be true, but the buffs and debuffs are so minor: a few extra damage here and there: I didn't see any +100% vulnerability debuffs, most of the time it was "spend a turn casting a minor debuff on a dragon that just flew in, or spend the same turn nuking the dragon with shadowbolt, or summoning a unit?"  Somehow the debuff never won. Perhaps if you could cast multiple spells per turn from the start, the debuffs and buffs would make sense. In a one spell per round situation, there are always better things to cast.

You can't seem to get divine favor unless you dedicate whole cities to it, so I only get into divine spells end game. [...] Furtheremore, after a certain amount of research you are arbitrarily locked out of a tree with no warning.

Aren't temples enough to get the spells online ? I only made one temple (because buildings without real sinergies with one another feel less optimized with the whole population = buildings system), but getting temples in a few cities should be enough, right ?
And are you sure you get locked out of the research branches ? I mean, you can still research spells from previous steps of a branch, so what are you talking about ?

I only got holy ground in late game and that opened up a proper temple, shrines were doing nothing as far as I could tell and I am definitely locked out from all of sorcery without having researched it all. As of last night I am locked out of  Wizardry too: I think there is just a hard limit to the number of spells you can research in an area, so when you are done with all 4 tiers and going back and forth to pick up spell you missed before in your rush to the top, the game randomly stops you and says: "nope, you've had enough"

I kinda still like it, playing with my roommate against/with each other has been pretty fun.