Four and a half years since she left and things are only getting worse. But the amount of time is just an excuse, both to write this now and not to write it earlier… I’ll have to keep this pretty short because I have certain rules about how a post should look on this blog and I’m really not up to writing things properly or even making much sense in any way.
Been too close to too big of a breakdown to be able to do much of anything for the past several days. I’m just sitting here and trying to keep my mind on something all day long, because I can’t have that breakdown. I couldn’t even tell about some of the causes to anyone I know. I don’t feel nearly close enough to anyone for that; haven’t since she left. And nobody’d understand most things anyway. All right, likely she didn’t understand either and perhaps I wasn’t close enough even to her, not for this, but of course things couldn’t possibly get anywhere near as bad with her around, so this wouldn’t exactly be an issue…
On top of the main problem and the fact that nobody understands me and I can’t get close to anyone, I find myself needing to replace some things that she bought back then because they can no longer be held together and this just tears me apart… And there are some other things, but I just can’t talk about those even here. It’d take someone who’d know what I’m talking about, who’d wish for what I wish for, whose eyes would get moist at the same time mine do… But it’s just impossible to find anyone like that. Even the very few who ever seemed to care, at least somewhat, admit that they don’t understand or are convinced that things that are very obviously completely wrong would be right for me or just feed me platitudes that do more harm than good because they just prove how alone I am once more…
Look, there’s no point in writing this. I can’t say what’s on my mind anyway. Though it may appear that I said enough already, I didn’t. I’m sitting here, arguing with myself and getting nowhere. The most I could achieve would just be a scream in space… At least if it’d be in water there’d be bubbles… So I’ll keep sitting here and basically not doing anything, not even really worrying about the issues I care about anymore, because I just can’t do anything anymore. So I’ll just see for how long I’ll be able to keep my mind stuck on meaningless things…
I need her, all right? There is no right person for anyone, or at least not for me, but there is the person you love, as wrong as they may be for you… And I found two of those, but the first one never even considered giving me a chance and the second decided that I’m not good enough after a while. And if the fact that we never were together allowed me to bury what I felt for Rose, the fact that I was with Andra means that’s it. There’s nothing higher or more powerful than being in a relationship with the one you love, and my promises are forever.
I just need to hold her again, all right? And look into her eyes while talking to her, even if sometimes she wouldn’t understand any more than anyone else. And to hold hands with her again while going out instead of just forcing myself to walk out there alone once per week because I got this idea that I have to. (By the way, this week I just went out of the building, unshaven and wearing the clothes I wear around the house, and then turned around and came right back in. Couldn’t do more.) And kiss and caress and cuddle and put up with her occasionally annoying demands. And give her orgasms, have sex and make love. (Yes, those two are different things.) And be there, useless as I am, when she’s sad or happy or scared or excited or thoughtful or angry. And go to bed and wake up knowing that she’s next to me, or at least that she will be. And caress her hair and whisper that I love her every night after she falls asleep. And be unhappy with her instead of depressed without her if those are the only two options.
But right now… Right now I need someone who’d understand. Someone I wouldn’t need to tell anything to, but who wouldn’t mind the fact that I’ll say the same thing a thousand times over. Someone I could understand just as well as she’d understand me. Someone I could be there for just as much as she’d be there for me. Someone who could come over, or someone I could go to, and talk and cuddle and at least be alone together with. I need… I need someone I could cry with, all right? I almost cried a few days ago, alone, fully under the blanket and holding the teddy bear she gave me. Had all of two tears run out of the corner of each eye… Which is quite an achievement without anyone being next to me, but doesn’t exactly count for anything…
But none of that is ever going to happen, is it? There is nobody out there who’d be right for me, nobody out there who’d at least understand me, nobody out there who I could at least really put up with… And the one I love, the one with whom none of these would matter anymore, doesn’t even want to know that I exist… So here I am, undead for no reason. Alive only because I was too much of a coward to take care of that problem when death still had a purpose…
I saw a quote recently: “When I’m lying in my bed I think about life and I think about death and neither one particularly appeals to me.” That’s how it’s been for most of my life… I can’t remember thinking much of anything until I was four, so I won’t count those years. Then there were the two years of living with Andra, when life was certainly desirable. There was also the one year we were together before moving in with her, when life was mostly desirable, with certain notable exceptions. Then there was about one year after she left when death was certainly desirable. And about another year at an earlier point, after I truly realized that I wasn’t going to have any chance with Rose, when death was generally quite desirable. That leaves about 16 years of being undead and not finding much of anything that’d give any noticeable appeal to either option…
How many more years will be added to those 16?
So much for keeping it short or making sense…
Google pulled out of China because it refuses to keep censoring its search results and I think that move deserves some praise and support. Certainly not nearly as much praise and support as, say, seriously working towards improving the chances that the Chinese users would find information that their government doesn’t want them to find, such as by setting up proxy servers and creating and using other technologies that’d circumvent the censorship methods, but it’s a start. Even if the censorship still prevents people from actually accessing all those sites without using proxy servers, they could now be even more aware of what exactly is being censored, because they will see the results showing up but notice that they can’t access the sites in question. And this improved awareness could help to a certain extent.
Sure, it’s just a drop in the bucket compared to what needs to be done, but I think it’s still a bold move and it deserves some recognition. And this recognition could also serve as a rally call, encouraging more people to speak up and act, strengthening the message that censorship must vanish, that it will no longer be tolerated. Or, at the very least, sending such a strong message would simply put pressure on Google to stick to this decision and not run back in there with their tail between their legs, accepting all the Chinese government’s conditions once again.
I’m really in no condition to write any more about it right now, but if there is something that an armchair activist can do for this, do let me know. A petition to sign, an e-mail address to write to, even some sort of official poll to vote in… I think it’s a message worth sending in an organized manner, letting them know that we’re here and we’re watching.
Wrote two game reviews in less than a week. And that’s because I actually finished the second game in about a week. I think I may have finished Splinter Cell faster, in four or five days, because I remember wondering about how short it was back then, but that’s about it. On top of that, Kohan II somehow managed to get me back to what was my regular gaming “schedule” before meeting Andra, which involved playing for four to six hours on an average day, and that hasn’t happened in a long time. For some reason, not even King’s Bounty: The Legend managed that, though I did play it more than I have been playing anything else lately. Perhaps it helped me get back to that rhythm and then Kohan II took advantage of that “training”…
Then again, I guess the main reason is that the way I play RPGs tends to require a lot of care and planning, and I’ve been feeling worn down by it for quite some time now. But it’s very hard for me to like a game that’s not an RPG, so stumbing upon two good games in a row that were not RPGs (though King’s Bounty: The Legend has significant RPG elements, which likely helped a lot) was likely just what I needed. I’m actually not fully over that phase of perhaps seeing RPGs more like a chore than entertainment, but it’s much better now. So it was probably just what I needed, especially considering the mood I’m in pretty much all the time when my mind’s not kept fully busy by a game.
As for the deleted screenshots… I took a few that I thought were really good while playing Kohan II, but I didn’t really check its MobyGames page until after I uninstalled it and deleted the screenshots as well. I only glanced at that page to see that it only has a single review, which made me decide to write my own, but I didn’t look at anything else and therefore didn’t notice how few screenshots had been submitted for it and what small armies were featured in them, if any armies were shown at all. So, by the time I looked again and realized that my screenshots could have been really useful, I was too late…
Of course, I didn’t just keep those screenshots for myself, sending some of them to others as well. Actually, each of the ones I was thinking of submitting was sent to at least two people, one of them being sent to three. So I asked them to send back anything they might still have, but only one of them sent anything. That meant I could only submit two screenshots and it’s possible that only one of them will be approved, since the other is from the end of the game. What frustrates me the most is that the best combat screenshot I took while playing this game was among the two that I sent to others and didn’t get back.
Maybe I’ll also manage to write a review for The Bard’s Tale from what I remember of it, since there are only two listed on that page. I meant to do that ever since I played it, but could find no motivation to write anything more than a short comment about it since I didn’t exactly feel like submitting any potential review anywhere. But now that I seem to get a little involved with MobyGames, I may actually write it one of these days, assuming I still remember enough of it…
Otherwise, I seem to have found another way to avoid writing just those serious non-personal posts that I started this blog for, haven’t I? Posts about the gaming industry or games in general do fit that description, but I’m not sure if writing reviews for the games I’m playing counts… But I can’t get myself to think about anything else for long enough to write about it. I see that finding and playing games that I actually enjoy keeps me somewhat functional and try to do it as much as I can, but that means those games are also what I usually think about lately, whenever my mind can be persuaded to focus on anything other than what whoever knows me is all too aware of…
Kohan II: Kings of War wasn’t just a good game back in 2004 when it was released, but has also aged very well and can stand up to scrutiny even now, at least in my opinion. It even works without any problems on the latest versions of Windows and with the latest video drivers, which is something that many newer games fail to do.
What makes the Kohan series stand out among the other RTS games is the lack of micromanagement. Normally I greatly enjoy micromanagement, but that applies to RPGs, where I usually only have to manage one character or at most a small party, and TBS games, which give me the time to consider all options and make proper decisions. RTS games, on the other hand, usually overwhelm me with too many things happening too fast in too many different places. In this game, however, that’s not the case, and I found even the insane pace that it’s capable of in certain moments to be at least somewhat manageable.
When it comes to the economy, things are simplified in a good way. Your mines and buildings automatically supply you with a certain amount of resources without needing to make use of workers to carry those resources to the nearest settlement and you try to maintain an adequate constant supply for your troops and buildings instead of worrying about how much you have stockpiled (the only exception being gold). In addition, settlements tend to take care of themselves to some extent, workers automatically building and upgrading walls after finishing the other tasks you set for them and also rushing out to fix the damage as soon as the attackers are defeated, while militia units, different from the workers, come out at appropriate times to repel the enemy, defeating weak attackers and at least giving you some time to mount a relief effort when a significant enemy force moves in. This allows you to focus on development, expansion and offense.
Removing micromanagement also means that your companies have a certain degree of independence, guarding their area but not chasing a fleeing enemy too far unless told to do so, attempting to run away when the situation looks dire, but especially automatically using their skills to the best of their abilities to aid each other during combat. And that’s a very good thing, seeing as it’d be quite impossible to manage your troops if you had to tell your heroes and support units which abilities to use every time, as it is in other RTS games.
Another good thing is the significantly improved survivability of your troops, compared to what you see in typical RTS games. No matter how much I tell myself that they’re just a bunch of pixels on a screen, I always feel very bad when sending troops to their death, which makes me always try to be very careful and defensive, which is unlikely to work in games of this genre, seeing as they usually favor rapid expansion and an offensive approach. So I feel much more at ease when, instead of individual units, I can recruit entire companies, each having up to nine units and possibly including up to two healers, or perhaps even three if the leader is a hero with such powers, and know that, as long as at least one unit from a company is left alive, all the ones lost in combat will be revived after spending a short amount of time in the supply range of one of my settlements or outposts. This makes knowing when it’s appropriate to retreat just as useful as knowing when to press the attack, and perhaps even more so, seeing as your companies and heroes gain experience during combat and become stronger if they survive more battles.
But just this experience system is one of the things I didn’t quite like. There is no choice in the development, not even for your heroes, not to mention that your companies can have all of four levels (recruit, regular, veteran and elite) and your heroes only five (awakened, enlightened, restored, ascended and Kohan Lord). Gaining a level will always give the same bonuses to all of your companies. Heroes do gain different bonuses when they level up, improving their specific abilities, but those bonuses are also predetermined, not allowing you to choose to improve one ability more at the expense of another. This may be a good thing for fans of the RTS genre who are otherwise quite bothered by the addition of RPG elements in these games over the past several years, but I’m a fan of RPGs and feel that I’m missing out whenever RPG elements could have been included and weren’t.
The major problem, however, is the fact that they went too far in their attempt to get rid of micromanagement and they removed nearly all troop management. You’re not able to choose actual combat formations, having all of three options for combat behavior, each having clearly stated effects instead of offering you tactical options. What’s more, the independent behavior of your units can hurt you at times, when they become determined to attack and perhaps even chase an enemy company despite your attempts to tell them to do something else, or they try to destroy another section of an enemy settlement’s wall instead of rushing in and attacking the settlement itself despite the fact that a breach already exists in that wall. And retreating can also be a problem, since you can’t quite retreat in an orderly manner without having your troops stop to engage any and all enemies who happen to get near. Plus that some companies will tend to lose morale too fast and run away, completely out of control, either in the wrong direction or even when the battle was quite obviously almost won.
Something else I don’t quite like is the feeling that all races are the same, only having a different name and look for their units and buildings. Haroun cities work a little differently, while the “evil” races can have a couple of additional buildings and bonuses, but that’s about it. Seeing as you will have to switch back and forth between nearly all of them during the regular campaign, even working with more of them during the course of one mission, this can serve to prevent confusion, plus that this approach tends to be the rule in most RTS games, but it still enhances the impression that this game was perhaps simplified a bit too much.
On a personal level, this is one of the extremely few RTS games that I actually enjoyed playing, and in fact one of the extremely few that I bothered playing, not to mention finishing, over the past several years. The RTS genre itself still doesn’t sit well with my playing style, but Kohan II: Kings of War did manage to eliminate a lot of the major grievances I had with such games in the past. Though it still required me to employ strategies I’d rather not resort to and it certainly has problems of its own, the biggest one probably being that it was simplified too much in areas where it shouldn’t have been, I’ll still say it certainly was, and likely still is, one of the better games of this genre.
It would be very easy to say that King’s Bounty: The Legend is just a Heroes of Might and Magic clone, only it’s not. And that’s not just because the first Heroes of Might and Magic was inspired by the original King’s Bounty, but mainly because, while being far from original in any way, it really is a different game that stands on its own. And because, at least in my opinion, it’s much better than Heroes of Might and Magic V.
I’ll do something I usually don’t and start writing about the many good parts of this game by mentioning graphics. What the graphics of King’s Bounty: The Legend aren’t is this mix of insane polygon counts, texture details and particle effects that can make you check whether you didn’t accidentally start some video card performance testing software instead when you load one of the major titles of the recent years. What this game’s graphics are, however, is absolutely gorgeous, despite the obvious loss of texture detail when you zoom in. The art style and the colors used make the game world a pleasure to look at, while all these little details that you are even likely to miss if you’re not paying attention bring it to life on your computer screen. Squirrels darting from tree to tree and poking their heads out curiously, hummingbirds flitting from flower to flower both on the adventure map and around the battlefield, crypt walls coming alive when you get close, chests opening, bones rattling or eggs moving in nests when you pass your mouse over them, the scenery details that are normally obscured during combat but become briefly visible when the camera zooms in for a few seconds for a critical hit, kill or summon, all the very brief but extremely appropriate combat animations, including the pretty hard to notice way in which each unit type celebrates victory… But I’d better stop now and simply say that this is not a demonstration of technology, but one of art…
Something else that works really well in this game is the combat. And that’s a very good thing, considering how much time you’ll spend fighting. It could easily become tedious or frustrating, especially considering the size of some of the armies you’ll be facing, but it never does. There are relatively few units, but each of them is different, most having talents and abilities that you’ll need to learn to use properly in order to make the most of them. The fact that you can only have five unit types on your side when you enter combat may seem too limiting, but it only serves to make you pick your army carefully, according to which units best fit your playing style, how well they complement each other and how effective they will be against the enemies you expect to face. The spells are also very effective if used properly, a good and patient mage being able to fully compensate for the small armies he can lead into battle and end most fights without any losses. And the Spirits of Rage only add yet another layer to the tactics once you’ll be able to command them, which will happen relatively soon after the start of the game.
And another good thing is the fact that King’s Bounty: The Legend is a long and quite addictive game. Now that may not sound like a good thing if you don’t have a lot of time to spare, but if you’re looking for a game to keep you busy for a while or at least to make you feel that you got your money’s worth if you purchased it, this is for you. You’ll always find yourself wishing to explore just a little more, to fight just one more battle or to complete just one more quest, especially since, unlike in other similar games, your movement on the adventure map is not turn-based and the duty of managing the kingdom’s economy does not fall on your shoulders. The only resource you’ll really be managing is represented by the units you can recruit, which are usually not replenished, so if you take all the units of one type available in one location you’ll need to either find another location that sells the same type of units or decide on another type to replace them with from then on.
But not everything is good, of course. One thing that bothered me was the way wives are treated in this game. The only thing you can really do with them is have babies, since the only things you can say to your wife are that you want to have a baby or that you want to divorce her. And, especially since I’m too against having children to even have them in a game, I felt quite bad to just keep a wife sort of as an item with item slots of its own, just for the bonuses she can offer, unable to have any interaction with her. Adding a way to build a real relationship with your wife, perhaps obtaining some quests from her after marriage, and getting perhaps higher bonuses if you get along better would probably have made this aspect of the game much more interesting.
Another problem are the quests. They’re just there to keep you going, very rarely being interesting in themselves. Considering the atmosphere the game can otherwise generate, that’s a pity. Still, it doesn’t bother me as much as it normally would because the game is designed so well that it really only requires an excuse to keep playing, not a real reason. And the quests provide just that excuse and little else.
And then there’s the lack of an editor. I think a lot of interesting campaigns could have been created by the players, some of them featuring much better quests than the game itself, but this opportunity is not provided. The game has a good replay value for those who are interested, since most things are randomized and your strategy will need to be changed significantly not only according to your class but also according to the unit types and spells you’ll happen to find along your way, so the lack of an editor is more of a missed opportunity than a significant problem in itself, but it’s worth mentioning nevertheless.
I could also mention that the game’s AI isn’t going to win any prizes, but I’m not so sure that’s such a bad thing, considering the size of the opposing armies. If such powerful enemies would also use very intelligent tactics, the game would easily become frustrating or perhaps even impossible to complete for most. Still, I can’t help but be bothered when the computer makes stupid mistakes such as slowing a unit that already has the minimum possible speed or applying the same spell effect on a unit twice in the same turn.
In conclusion, King’s Bounty: The Legend isn’t an original game, but it’s a very good game. It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s a good argument in support of the idea that standing out doesn’t necessarily require doing things differently, but it does require doing them well.
