izigame.me

I used to play Knights of Honor 1 back in the day and it was one of my favorite games. Bought this sequel because I liked the first game. I got tricked! This sequel is not an improvement over KoH1! This game tries to be Crusader Kings 3 lite, and in the attempt ends up being a pale imitation which lost its own unique character.
Lets start-
1] This game was balanced around players choosing large kingdoms like France. Please!! Whatever you do, dont play a small kingdom! You either play as a large kingdom or dont play at all. I started as Leinster in Southern Ireland and had a rough time. Large kingdoms have lots of cities so you have resources to do things and don't have to wait as much. In KoH1 I always played small kingdoms like Leinster and had fun, but in this game everything costs so much gold, that you will just sit there waiting for your treasury to fill up so you can play the game. A tedious slog, not because it's difficult, but due to artificially difficulty. You will bore yourself to death. Wait to have more gold, more books, more manpower. You will stare at the treasury icon, and you will like it, or maybe you will uninstall the game.
2] Everything is expensive. Buildings are expensive compared to the first game, unlocking building slots themselves for the buildings to go in are expensive. Hiring knights is expensive, knight operations and upkeep operations are expensive, often 100 upkeep. This is alot when you are a small kingdom.
3] City building slot costs are insane. For the first 6 or 7 buildings slots that are locked, you can pay to have them unlocked, the prices are, 2,000, 4k, 6k, 8k, 10k, 12k. Again, if you are a small kingdom, prepare to play the game called waiting and staring lmao. You are going to sit there and stare at the treasury icon and look at the numbers go up little by little to you have enough gold to unlock maybe 1 or 2 extra slots in your capital. Don't try to upgrade any other cities, you will die of boredom. These costs have been HYPER inflated compared to KoH1. Another attempt to make the game hard through artificial difficulty.
4] Marshall skills can no longer be selected from a long list like in KoH1. Wtf is this BULL? This is evil design. If you want to specialize a marshal in siege, you must pray and hope it gets offered to you when he levels up. In KoH1 I could pick which skills I want a general to have from A BIG LIST when he levels. I used to like picking the Iron fist for fighting rebels and the fortify skill to build forts in the field. Aren't sequels supposed to improve on the first game? Take the best features and quality of life mechanics and port them over to the newest game?
5] Absolutely, ridiculously, perplexing, gargantuan, leviathan, infathomably long siege times. My GGOOOD!!11!!! It takes forever to siege a city! Another attempt to make the game harder through artificial difficulty. It definitely didn't take this long to siege in KoH1, and it is much simpler in CK3 as well, which is a superior game. They did this to stop players from blobbing the map, meaning they do not want people to have fun, in a SINGLE PLAYER game. Ok, I will go play something else that will allow me to blob.
7] Province disorder system has been ramped up 100000000x in the sequel. I was playing as Ireland and finishing mopping up England with France as my ally. I don't like to be at war for a long time, so I was conscious of how much time I spend on wars. The number of rebels that kept spawning in the provinces I conquered was absolutely game breaking. Even after my kingdom and France finished England, there were still an insane amount of rebels spawning! You defeat one rebel, 1 mintue later, there is another. And another, another, another, another, and another. FFS. How many times do I have to teach you this lesson, peasant man. Shouldn't the province be depopulated of fighting age males from that rebel spam? Where is the realism here? They turned the rebel spawns ALL THE WAY up to make the game seem harder. I was running back and forth defeating them and trying to finish England, that was not fun. After I united all of Britannia, I quit the game. I realized this is not fun. It took me 17 hours and the refund option is gone. Dang, I hate this obsession with finishing things I start.
8] AI army spam. Enemy kingdoms will throw what seems like unlimited amount of armies at you with max level 15 generals. How many people can they levy? And why is it when I kill or capture an enemy general another spawns with max level? Why aren't they facing rebel spam for continuously losing armies in battle? How is it that rebel spam happens when I take the province where manpower is completely depleted? Where's the realism?
9] You can only have 2 generals fighting in a battle like the first game. This is supposed to be the sequel, try something new. Mount and Blade Warband lets near infinite number of generals and their warbands fight in a single war party, but the leader who called the war party must have influence to keep them together. I prefer that system. Also, Crusader Kings 3 allows unlimited number of generals to join battles.
10] To recruit peasants, the absolute worst unit, takes 3 population away form your village. In KoH1, recruiting peasants takes 1 population away form your city.
12] Spy operations are much harder than the first game, even with max spies and appropriate perks. This is very boring and limits playstyles, I want to cause chaos.
13] Prisoners never die in your jail, in KoH1 there is a chance they will die. In the sequel they just stay there forever. I usually just make them become rebels in whichever country I go to war with.
16] Papal idiocy and cheating. As soon as you hit ~1k, 1.2k gold, here comes the papacy like clockwork demanding you send gold. Of all the catholic kingdoms, they target little ol me. Leinster, with 3 provinces, trying to unite all of Ireland. It cheats because it knows exactly when I have that much gold stored. It takes me forever to generate that much gold as a small kingdom. I have been angrily staring at the treasury icon watching it fill up to 2k I can unlock a building slot in my capital finally, then wait on some more gold to actually build a building in the slot. GO ask the large kingdoms For Christ sake!
18] Princess marriage system need rework. Every time I marry a princess off and when I die, the other country demands half my kingdom, and wages war if I say no. They don't want just a single province, or two, but half of the kingdom! It is better to not marry your daughters off at all. Just ignore them. By contrast, In Crusader Kings 3, if I marry my daughters off and die, the other nation doesn't get to claim half my country. It is actually useful to marry daughters off in that game to form alliances.
19] Marriage system needs rework. You can only marry from the main royal households from another kingdom. You can't marry your son to the daughter of the Baron, Duke, Count of random province in Spain or France. You can't marry nobles from your own kingdom or other kingdoms either like in Ck3. You can't marry commoners or lowborn like in Ck3. The system should have been upgraded for the sequel.
21] Still 9 special characters for your royal court. It was fine in KoH1, this is your sequel, improve upon the old system. There are crippling income and manpower penalties for provinces without a governor, may as well not even waste gold on buildings in that province. That penalty system wasn't in the first game, it just gave bonuses to provinces that had a governor. This is an attempt to make the game harder, just makes it less appealing.
22] AI request spam in general is too much. It's about random crap too. Leave me alone! You just asked that request 20 times in the last 2 minutes. STOP cluttering my screen! Have a cooldown timer set for the AI so they know when they are allowed to ask again.