Originally Posted by
Metal Gear Rex
To be fair, it's really hard for a game to actually be bad on its own. It's usually relatively bad, like for DK2. There's really no good reason for DK2 to be the way it is when DK1 showed how to do it better. A lot of the problems either DK1 showed could be solved, or they were poorly thought out solutions to DK1's problems, or they were outright lazily implemented ideas.
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DK1 still sees a lot of play, you still see recent posts for DK1. DK1 also has KeeperFX, while no one actually has gone nearly to the effort to do the same for DK2. There's a lot of campaigns for DK1 as well.
The forum is pretty quiet now days, but I've been around for a long time and activity has generally favored DK1 over DK2.
To say that DK1 is more diverse is to say that every unit is unique and feels unique. Bile Demons are special not because they're top tier but because they're unique. Tentacles, Hell Hounds, Demon Spawns, even the Beetle all offer different flavors that someone can become attached to. It's really hard to feel anything special from Knight #4, from seeing how your units and the Hero units are basically black and white versions of the same thing. It's creatively lazy.
Having a larger separation between creatures and heroes creates a sense of identity that evil and good are more than just opposites of each other, but they're their own thing. This is important for a lot of reasons, but one important big reason is when you fight an enemy Keeper, it feels more distinctly like you're fighting evil because evil creatures are so different from Heroes. Fighting Heroes, likewise, feels different. In DK2, a lot of that is muddied into one thing. The line becomes a lot blurrier. Not to say it doesn't exist in DK2, it's just not as strong a contrast.
Stat-wise, again, melee units are so similar in DK2 as are ranged units. I can tell you the differences because I can look at the numbers, and I still say they're not that differnet. Players don't have access to that, but they can just see the performance of every unit. When everyone just runs up to each other and whacks enemies with their weapon of choice until one falls, it gets incredibly samey after a while. Hell, movement speeds are pretty similar, so creatures running up to each other also gets to feel pretty samey. Spells are just basic projectiles most of the time, and ranged units are also a rare breed so even those don't matter so much. Spells themselves are just so rare. After a lot of DK2, everything just gets so mindnumbingly similar.
There's a lot of garbage in DK2.
Any Melee unit is outclassed by the super accessible Black Knight. The only one who potentially challenges that role is the Vampire but then we start getting into exploit territory, although Vampires are still a good bonus with Black Knights since they don't count against the creature portal limit. Dark Angels are technically stronger but their inaccessibility makes them worse practically. Black Knights also have a particular advantage in their massive threat value of 213, which is significantly higher than any non-boss unit's outside of the Dark Angel and of course, Hero Knight's. The next units in line are the Royal Guard and Giant with a Threat of 160, and the Bile Demon and Guard with 120. Mistress and Vampire have 107 to follow, and as you can imagine, threat values start dropping pretty lowly after that. A Black Knight can intimidate any non-boss enemy of equal level except for the Mistress, Bile Demon, Dark Angel, Guard, Giant, Royal Guard, and of course, (Black) Knight. Most units, especially if playing PvP, become unusable against a Black Knight.
There's two ranged units, the Warlock and the Dark Elf. Their damage is 300 every 5 seconds, that's a lot weaker than Black Knight's 400 damage every 1.5 to 2 seconds (1.5 is their recharge time, I'm making an estimate that their animation could run up to 2 seconds). The Dark Elf's upgraded spell at level 4 is 450, and by level 8 it's... back to 300 actually, I don't know why their Guided Bolt at Level 8 drops back to 300. Anyway, this is obviously garbage compared to what the Black Knight gets every level, it's +25% of base so 1000 health and 100 attack. Warlock Healing is shit, it takes literally 3 seconds to react to a dying unit, seeing as they only heal once a creature is at critical health. The Heal Spell is overpowered so that is flat out better. So Warlocks don't exactly stand out as better, they have a slower attack speed than Dark Elves.
Of these two garbage ranged units, the Warlock is necessary because it's the only unit that can research, yay DK2. Unless you get yourself some Vampires but then they're researching and not training, and Warlocks are more easily accessible without getting into exploit territory. That means you have no room for Dark Elves. Likewise, Trolls or Bile Demons only become relevant to manufacture. The Troll actually has a manufacture value of 60, while the Bile Demon a value of 50. Not much of a difference, considering the Bile Demon has 5000 more health, and the Troll has an attack of 130 every 1.3 seconds for a DPS of 100, while the Bile Demon has an attack of 525 every 3.5 seconds for a DPS of 150.
So pretty much your army consists of Black Knights, Bile Demons, and Warlocks. Warlocks can be dumped out once you finish researching or get all the research you care for to trade in for more Black Knights. Although I suppose there is *some* advantage to having projectiles as opposed to a bunch of melee fighters, but it's only 300 damage every Fireball, 600 if a Warlock gets to Level 8. A Black Knight at Level 4 gets you 7000 health and 700 damage every hit.
So no, if we're talking about playing optimally with units, looking at the numbers, you shouldn't be using anything but three units in DK2. Not exactly an improvement from DK1 in the way you're suggesting.
You're right that it is technically wrong to be comparing the Warlock and Wizard and Dark Elf and Elven Archer, however you also miss the point completely as to why they're compared. They're aesthetically similar, being more direct counterparts of each other. DK2 introduces more of this direct counterpart setup, and then to top it off, they don't do enough to really distinguish themselves, so it feels distasteful and samey, lazy. Also as YourMaster says, leaves very little to explore. If Melee units are all so similar, then Ranged units with their spells would be the big opportunity to express distinctions, and yet, you have Warlocks and Wizards and Dark Elves all with the same level 1 spell of 300 damage every 5 seconds. Knives and Wizard Firebomb are both 450 damage every 7.5 seconds, against the Warlock's worthless Heal spell due to cast restrictions. I said above that the Guided Bolt is actually weaker, back to 300 damage, for a Level 8 spell, and Wizard gets Super Firebomb for 600 damage every 10 seconds, weaker than the Warlock's Firebomb for 600 damage every 7.5 seconds, although I'm honestly not going to try and math out which one's DPS ends up being higher at that level. So for several levels, the Warlock and Dark Elf are basically the same, until the Dark Elf can start to outclass the Warlock at level 4 in combat at least. Then the Dark Elf is similar to the Wizard outside of attack speed, for like 7 levels. Out of 10. Like, that is really not that different.
The Elven Archer is interestingly enough, more distinct than the others, but again, that's never been mentioned as to precisely how because it's so minuscule that no one really noticed it until I looked at the exact numbers. They have 225 damage every 2 seconds, which is better at lower levels since it gives them something to constantly cast. This actually makes them pretty reasonable damage dealers at level 1, at least, compared to the other non-Black Knight units. Guided Bolt is 150 damage every 3.5 seconds, so Elven Archers actually get worse, much like Salamanders. As for Grenade, their AoE, it travels 4.8 tiles away from their cast point and detonates after 4 seconds with a recharge of 7.5. It deals 480 damage over 2 seconds (60 per 1 instance), and while it does have a 2 tile range, which is good for an AoE, it deals range-from-origin damage instead of constant aoe damage. That, combined with it traveling 4.8 tiles ahead, can make it much weaker of an AoE because it's less precise. I have to emphasize from my experience of using Range-from-origin damage in custom spells that 480 is really not a lot for a high point on something as inconsistent as this. This is also level 8. This wouldn't be good if it was the Elven Archer's only spell but he has two shittier spells with similarly low cast times he's also going to waste time on.
I'm not sure how to respond to the rest though, I really am not. I'm trying to wrap my head around this. As I understand it, you're trying to say that DK1 had its share of similarities because of the Witch, Wizard, Monk, and Fairy all being spell castors, and that is just... wrong? I'm not sure exactly how to explain it because it seems so obvious to me, plain as day, to be wrong, so I can't even begin to comprehend why you'd suggest that.
The Priestess is distinct because of her Wind spell alone, but even at early levels, she fights with Poison Gas to give her an early AoE. The Fairy is high on DPS due to her Luck stat, with Drain and Lightning both being multi-hitting attacks so she'll frequently up her damage. It's comparable to the Mistress with Speed, and although the Fairy's damage isn't as high as the Mistress', she does gain other abilities like Rebound, Meteor, and Freeze to differentiate herself from the Mistress. The Wizard is really well balanced but has a distinct level of survavability, with more Health than the other Hero ranged units, as well as gaining a combination of Rebound, Heal, and Drain in addition to Freeze. The Monk is a melee fighter, and he distinguishes himself from other melee fighters by having a lot of spells that both increase his offense and defense. I might as well mention the Archer, but he is a more basic and simplified ranged unit, which does comparatively make him stand out. He has faster movement with the Speed spell combined with slow, and an early level Navigating Missile.
These DK1 Heroes are different from each other even early on, and they maintain that even at higher levels, if not further distinguishing themselves. It takes DK2 ranged units all the way up to level 8 to really distinguish themselves from one another, more than 3/4s of their leveling, and they're barely different from each other. I really do not understand how the two are even remotely comparable.
At that point, why not use lower level Knights instead of mid level Knights, or fewer than 8 Knights? Having Guards as a weaker version of the same enemy doesn't really open up level design in any way. Sure, DK1 has a bit of this too, but even in examples like comparing Dwarves, Thieves, and Barbarians, they all still have unique abilities to separate them at mid to higher levels, and the difference between the power level of a Thief and Barbarian for example is so high that it's worth making them a separate unit, with Barbarians having over 2x the health of a Thief. Guards are literally 25% less health than a Knight with the same attack power but lower attack speed by a little bit. This is really bad when DK2 is already starved for unit variety with its reskinned melee units.