Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Oct 23, 2015

  I played Knights of Pen and Paper +1. I enjoyed it, despite a feeling that it was grindy and slow toward the end. I enjoyed it enough that I bought the deluxe edition of #2 immediately when I saw it, without a second thought. The depth is improved, but I did not enjoy the game overall. Main faults: - Applying conditions is combat is not rewarding. Enemies (and your own characters, for that matter) have a high base chance to entirely negate a condition every single round. There is no way to impact that chance at all. - Compounding the above, there is a whole set of items, accessories, and skills that center around conditions that are consequently also not rewarding. - Difficulty is under-tuned. You'll outpace the level of your enemies very quickly and are unlikely to fall behind unless you eschew side quests completely. - Nothing to spend gold on - Stores only stock "common" items and enchantment scrolls, item progression caps out early-mid game. Soon you'll be drowning in gold with maxed out items, spending all your money on XP shrooms in a desperate bid to see if there's just one more tier of stuff to buy - Dungeons barely vary from regular gameplay, if you have scarab of energy + cleric you won't even notice the inability to rest, but the cheap and plentiful consumables will also see you through. - Area based "investigation" for extra items is excruciatingly boring. - Bland. KoPaP 1 had chunks in it. Hard encounters that forced you to find more effective party and item builds, in order to defeat them. Here's what's good: - The humour of the writing and sheer quantity of geek references scattered through the game EDIT: I toned down my review a little after trying +1 to remember what I liked and disliked. In many ways KoPaP 2 is an improvement, it's just let down by a lack of any interesting challenges to drive the rest of the gameplay.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 5, 2015

  This game is good... but very short. If you liked the first game, you'll probably enjoy this game for about two hours. But after a certain point if you pay any real attention to your characters, it quickly becomes a disgusting stomp-fest for the entirety of the rest of the -very short- game. I got to the final boss and just kind of stared at the screen waiting for it to tell me that it wasn't actually over, as it happened in the first one, only for the credits to roll and end the game. Ultimately this game feels way less fulfilling than the first, and I don't think it's really worth the money. I would've given this a positive recommendation if it was even close to the length of the first. This feels like less of a sequel and more of an expansion. EDIT: Decided to go a bit more indepth in my review after thinking on it a bit. Good: -Funny, just like the first. Lots of jokes, although some are very repetitive. -Good fun for about two hours, until you start reaching various caps and it quickly becomes very tedious and dull. -Yeah that's pretty much it, aside from "nostalgia" for the first game, nothing unique about this game stands out. Bad: -Crafting is almost pointless. The only large use for it is "enchanting" gear, which is very minimal and caps out at +3 total very quickly. In addition, you get very few crafting recipes, most of which are for very basic consumables. -Item purchases cap out very quickly as well. I had reached my maximm possible purchasable items well before halfway into the game, and I kept waiting for more to unlock but sadly none ever did. -Going back to crafting, it heavily favors the melee characters, since you can't really boost trinkets, and the only available +spellpower weapon was an already enchanted staff. Meanwhile you can enchant melee weapons to the nines and deal truckloads of damage. I gave my paladin some huge +3 weapons and he just started one-shotting things. -"Unique" items end up being much worse than crafted ones, therefore making it almost better to sell any interesting items. Like the three-handed sword. I enchanted a +3 waraxe and it had significantly better stats than an Item I had just gotten at the same level, and for 1 hand less requirement. I ended up selling almost every unique item I received, including most of the debuff-immunity ones due to the fact that most of the time debuffs will simply fall off your characters without accomplishing much. -Very repetitive. While the first game was bad about this as well, the "grinding" of that game had some kind of purpose. Hunting for grindstones and whatnot was necessary unless you paid $$. In this game by the end you just end up walking halfway cross the map and back repeatedly, and when you get there killing maybe 2-3 waves of monsters, repeat. -Unbelievably short game. I have about a 90% completion on this game, I went out of my way to do most of the side quests, and it only took me 6.5 hours to complete. I doubt I'd get much more than an hour more out of doing the little remaining content, maybe an additional half hour on that if I fork over the additional 4.99 in-game dlc. -No seriously, I cannot stress enough how short this game is. KoPaP 1 was fairly long for that type of game, and you went significantly higher in levels. At the beginning of the game you see a level 99 character, and I figured that would be close to what endgame looked like. Instead, you pretty much finish the game at level 20, possibly earlier if you skip side quests. This was an extreme let down. -Classes, while interesting, require very little in terms of creation. Most of the classes you can be well served simply by levelling 1 or 2 of their skills and all but ignoring the others. I never put more than 1 rank into about 75% of the skills and just capped others with impunity, especially all the "affect adjacent" ones combined with the gameroom item to make them effect all. -In addition, I never could find a retraining system to try and re-work my characters if I wanted to test out diferent builds, so short of starting up a new game I just had to stick with my decisions. -Severe lack of gameroom items. In the first one you almost had too many options, this time when you open up to buy gameroom items and you see only 2 or 3 in each section (with 5 slots "open") it's an immediate let-down. All in all, this feels like a game only half-finished and just tossed out for some quick fan-cash. They had enough name-recognition to get people to buy it, and decided to use that to just coast on a barely completed product. I didn't personally encounter any bugs, but I heard there were a great deal when the game first released, and that only makes me more sure that this product is yet another in the current trend of "finish half the game, and then sell the rest of it as DLC." I would not recommend this to anyone, not even fans of the original.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 17, 2015

  So, let me preface this with the fact that this is a very short game. It took me about 10 hours to complete, and that is with creating 2 parties first before settling on my 3rd and favorite party (so far) which I completed the main storyline and DLC content with. Now that I have that out of the way, let's discuss the game itself. KoPP2 is the successor to the original game (if that somehow wasn't obvious.) It borrows the base mechanics from its predecessor, but expands quite a bit. Each character now has 3 primary governing stats, Mind, Body, and Senses. You often make party based stat rolls (d20 based, of course) out of combat. As part of this system, each player, class, and race (there are races now, cool, right???) contributes towards the stat scores. The gear system is a significant upgrade from the original, allowing actual crafting rather than buying unending grindstones and improving existing gear. There is also a much broader variety of gear, allowing you to outfit each character to your liking. Now, for the only "negative" I have for this game. This game will never be hugely popular, unfortunately, and that is due to the simple fact that the target audience is pretty small compared to that of other video games. It is marketed at tabletop gamers who are ALSO fans of lighthearted comedic games. **If you don't play tabletop roleplaying games, you will not get many of the jokes.** Overall, dispite the disappointing length (made up for by the replayability brought by experimenting with different party make-ups) I'd highy recommend this game. 8/9 out of 10.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 2, 2017

  Very entertaining game with solid gameplay and good writing. There is a lot of combinations of characters, abilities, power ups, and crafting that allow for some replayability. The main story is short, but with the DLC you should get about 10 hours for total completion. Definitely recommend picking up the full edition with the DLCs. I did enjoy the first KoPP better, but this is a good game worth checking out.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 25, 2017

  KoPP2 is not a bad game, just very... mediocre. It feels and plays like a cool indie from Kongregate that's supposed to play for three hours—and three hours of relative fun is what I got out of it. Then it became a repetitive grindfest with enemies becoming spongier, but offering little new challenges. (Full disclosure: I only got my characters to level 18, so if anything changes later on, my review will not reflect that.) With each class only having four skills, all available from the start, there's just not much to do after you've discovered the combination that suits your playstyle best. New classes get unlocked too slowly to add variety. There are too few items and enemy types. Animations are unskippable, so one can say that Ninja's OP Smoke Bomb is balanced by you having to watch up to five separate stun animations each time you cast it. All in all, a couple of hours in, you just stop having fun with it; all that remains is going through the motions. There's also something wrong with the balance; it's very tough to lose even a "hard" battle, and the only situation where you need to heal with items is in a dungeon that throws ~10 fights at you while not allowing to rest... which in all other cases you can do for free and seemingly indefinitely, bacisally allowing you to face each new challenge with a fresh party. The presentation is up to your personal taste—it definitely achieves what it was aiming for. Personally, I mostly find the overly referential humor cringy and unpleasant (and while there's nothing wrong with using real-life stereotypes, choosing between a "jock" and a "cheerleader" is not my cup of tea). But tastes differ. However, whether you like the humor or not, the writing is definitely nowhere near so good that it should take up such a big part of the game. Oddly enough, KoPP2 has way too much dialogue. Once again, there's nothing wrong with a witty one-liner or a small subplot, but long-winded 15-speech-bubbles-long scenes are hardly the reason why people picked the game up—so why add them? Despite all that I said, KoPP2 is still not a bad game. It would suit the mobile market well, offering some sweet mindless clicking to a commuter. But for PC, it would have been much better if it was much shorter but denser, even for the same price tag. I mourn the fact that in the current market many developers are scared of making shorter games—even when they only have enough content for such.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 18, 2017

  If you are an olde timer gamer, like me = age 49, then you remember playing D&D w ur nerd buds in 7th-9th grade. This game is pretty awesome if you enjoyed those days. The DM has crazy wit n jokes for days. The team you assemble all have unique personalities. Combat plays out turn based w initiative, as well as several dmg effects. After 14 hrs I have taken my main party to lvl 28s. The amount of humour and pop culture jokes is very cool. Kinda like watchin a George Carlin concert. Random funniness done well! For $8 = a great deal, but catch it on sale for a real steal. CONS - if you are under the age of 20-25, this game may seem slow, stupid, and unexciting. If you like to read, and you have a good imagination, then this game soars. Probably limited replay value. SCORE I have recently unlocked several new character classes, and have some low level quests still available. Pretty cool bonus. I will be buying the $5 dragons dlc once i finish milking the base game. Definitely worth the money for an engaging, fun time. Well done, Kyy Games, a great product. 10/10
• gamedeal user

  Oct 7, 2017

  Short answer: It's about the grinding, and not meant to be binged. Great for short play sessions and it's not all that punishing. Long answer: This is completely about grinding in slow turn-based format, if you don't enjoy that-- you will not enjoy this game. That being said, It's great to play for an hour or two at a time, because you're taking part in an activity that's meant to be consumed that way. It never takes itself seriously, you can respec your entire party at the cost of a fair amount of gold, and it's got a surprising amount of content-- granted that the content is behind grinding walls. It's well worth $8, and on sale it's an even better deal. So if you like the days of yore, and bite-sized grinding activity, I wholeheartedly suggest this.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 31, 2017

  The game balance seems decent overall, though there's a point near the end where I'm a bit stuck and need to grind to continue. The magazine interface for unlockable items is creative and I like that, and it's okay for paid DLC to show up there, but I don't like that there are quest strings that dead-end in a "Buy the DLC to continue" manner. I also don't like that there's an in-game quest that I need to create a login on an external website in order to complete. I think this game misunderstood exactly what people dislike about microtransactions -- sure, there's only three places where it breaks your immersion by pawing at your wallet or your personal information, but it still does so without warning in the middle of gameplay. Not good. There are things in this game that I wish they had changed since the last game. It would be very nice to have the ability to be on more than one quest at a time, so you could be efficient about your pathing. Instead, it's a constant back and forth that artificially pads out game length. The changes they made to combat make sure that I have to make hard choices when statting out my characters -- there aren't any 'right' answers, so I do end up thinking about how I'm doing it a lot. It's never a slog. It never really feels like I'm doing well, though. It would have been nice if there were maybe twice as many quests available in the non-DLC areas, or a few repeatable ones. If I hadn't left it open overnight once or twice I'd probably have around 4-8 hours worth of playtime. It would have been nice if there were 3-4 times as many craftable recipes -- as it is, each ingredient is used maybe once, at most twice, and there's around as many ingredients as there are recipes. It feels bare-bones. The game in general doesn't feel very complete. I'm glad I got it on sale. It feels like around $2 worth of game, and the combined DLC might bring it up to $5-10 worth of game, depending on how much they actually have in each one. Might not buy things from this developer again.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 3, 2018

  ===[ Audience: ]=== ☐ Kids ☑ Everyone ☐ Casual players ☐ Pro players ===[ Graphics: ]=== ☐ Potato ☐ Really bad ☐ Bad ☑ OK ☐ Good ☐ Beautiful ☐ Masterpiece ===[ Price/quality: ]=== ☑ Full price ☐ Wait for sale ☐ Average ☐ Refund it if you can ☐ Don't do it ===[ Requirments: ]=== ☑ 90' PC ☐ Minimum ☐ Medium ☐ Fast ☐ High end ☐ NASA computer ===[ Difficulty: ]=== ☐ Depends on your skill ☐ You just need 2 arms ☑ Ez ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Hard (first few hours) ☐ Dark Souls ===[ Game time/length ]=== ☐ Really short ( 0 - 2 hours) ☐ Short ( 2 - 8 hours) ☐ Few hours ( 8 - 12 hours) ☐ Long ( 12+ hours) ☑ Endless ===[ Story ] === ☐ It doesn't have ☐ There is a story but gameplay isn't focused on it ☐ Still better than Twilight ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Fantastic ===[ Bugs ]=== ☐ Game itself is one big BUG ☐ Bugs destroying the game ☐ Lot of bugs ☐ Few Bugs ☐ You can use them for speedrun ☑ Nothing Overall good game!
• gamedeal user

  Aug 29, 2018

  I leaned towards recommend because I did enjoy playing through it. I'm just gonna list some pros and cons here, you make up your own mind. Pros + Decent (not great) writing. It's at least compelling enough to keep playing to see if there's a good joke around the corner. + Interesting gameplay. Managing levels and equipment isn't a chore, and experimenting with skill distribution can be rewarding. Combat is fun, but by about level 30 if you're like me you'll be wondering why you have to fight so much. + More to do than the first KoP+P. + The only paid DLC is the dragon expansion, everything else you buy with in-game gold (PC version). Cons - SO... MANY... BATTLES... for 100% completion. The bestiary endgame is really just a monstrous chore that unnecessarily adds 3 hours of combat into the game. Optional, yes. Fun, not really. - Item drops. Crafting ingredients are acquired almost solely from battles. I have 10 characters in my playthrough, everything except the virtual reality missions are completed, my highest levels are 42. Throughout my playthrough, I received 0 (ZERO) "red dye" drops. Not a necessary item by any stretch of the imagination, but it still feels off to NEVER see particular items drop in a regular playthrough, or to not find enough crafting ingredients or get enough random charm drops with the golden game room table to enchant things with charm effects throughout. - The extra classes unlock WAY later in the game. If you want to enjoy all this game has to offer, you'll likely have to play through it twice, once to unlock everything, and a second time to play with the party you want. Adding them to the party during the adventure is an option, but not one that is explained to you at all. (You have to go into the tavern, remove a party member from a chair slot, leave the tavern, then add the new character. I didn't discover this until after I had finished all of the quests aside from virtual reality.) The only reason this is a downside is because a single playthrough takes a long time and you won't experience anything really new on your second playthrough. TL:DR Version: Fun but grindy.