Warlock 2 - The Exile

Teaser/announce trailer:

Looks pretty good - I enjoyed the last game quite a lot, though the timing is a little awkward, with Age of Wonders 3 also coming out early 2014.

Oops - “The Exiled” - my bad.

SQUEEEEE!

Ahem.

I’m sorry, allow me a moment to compose myself.

I adored the first Warlock and the expansions, and I really love that tongue in cheek skewering they do of fantasy tropes and fantasy that takes itself far too seriously. That video lit up my whole morning.

Two things:

One- I laughed out loud at this trailer, something I never do.

Two- Hey Paradox, guess who’s getting my money?

Wolves the size of cities! I loved that bit.

I have to confess, I chuckled at the wolves and turtles bits.

I really liked the first game, despite some flaws. If they can fix a few mechanics and polish it up the sequel could be amazing.

Looks like they took a page out of Eador with the shards to conquer.

Yeah. I was wondering that. I couldn’t remember (its been a while) if they had shards in the first one or not.

Either way, looking forward to it. I Had a lot of fun with the first one. And I love Paradox trailer videos. I hope they release some more.

The trailer is great, but I think I’ll wait on this one. I enjoyed the first up to a point, but it quickly got boring for me.

Really enjoyed the first one despite a few flaws. Can’t wait for more.

Same here. I hope the sequel has a little more meat to it.

I don’t think the original was flawed so much as it was more simplistic and combat-focused than people expected. At first glance with all those hexes and cities it looks like it ought to be a civ game with rich and complex city management. I was initially disappointed at how simplistic that aspect of the game was, but as I played it more I came to understand that it’s not really a problem for the style of game that Warlock is. It streamlines all the economic and management bits so that the focus stays on what the game is really about, the battles. Warlock works for a lot of the reasons that the original Master of Orion works. A simple economy, a big map to explore and conquer, and lots of focus on customizing up military units and sending them into battle.

That trailer is very silly, in a good way.

I thought the original did a great job of making a lean, stripped-down version of the fantasy 4x experience–the only problem is that the lean mechanics exposed the (typical for 4xs) dumb-as-a-rock AI, so the game became boring quickly. I hope they make the AI smarter; failing that I hope they add enough bells and whistles and fiddly bits to distract us from the hopeless AI (which is the more normal 4x approach.)

One thing I hope they don’t change is the “deck of spells” that randomizes the order in which you get spells with each game. I thought I would hate it at first, but after a while I came to appreciate its virtues - namely the fact that it was a simple way to make me play slightly differently each time. (Normally in a 4x you just rush to research the equivalent of Gunpowder on an ordinary tech tree.) Made a nice change from the normal 4X.

This is truly a new golden age of fantasy 4xs!

I shouldn’t have read the comments above about the trailer before I watched it. I was expecting something hilarious and instead it just sorta felt dumb. Lower expectations might have helped.

As for the game itself…I’ll definitely wait. The first one was fun in small doses, I even still break it out once in a while. But I’m glad I didn’t pay full price for it.

For me it felt like it would be a great game on my tablet. For a PC game it was just too “lite” for my tastes. It was fun enough, I just tend to like a little more from my 4X games.

I am pretty much the OG Warlock hater, but that trailer was great.

I’m hopeful that they can add a little meat to the dry, boring skeleton of Warlock for the sequel. I want to like it so badly, but if you’re going to do Empire with fantasy it has to be executed better than, oh, the original Age of Wonders to count for much with me.

I found the trailer only mildly amusing, and not very informative about the game. None the less, day 1 for me. I loved the original game, though I did have the benefit of getting it with all the DLC, so lots of little things like artifact creation were there at the start for me.

Come on, people. “Turtle War.” Golden.

I’m one of those folks who really enjoys the simpler mechanics of Warlock, so I’ll be excited to see how they can add some more oomph without losing the accessibility. Though with Age of Wonders III on the horizon, the sequel may be relegated to a Steam sale purchase.

I’m kinda hoping for the same simple mechanics of Warlock, only with more stuff. More factions, spells, monsters, events, heroes, items, etc etc etc. I don’t really want it to try being fantasy civ. The simple city management that promoted focusing each city toward a certain goal was great.