Before I say anything, let me preface this by saying that I have purchased and love Democracy 2, Kudos, and Rock Legend
I’m really disappointed in Kudos 2. I just purchased it last night. It’s buggy as all hell. The game has crashed every single time I’ve tried to play it (I’ve spent about four or five hours playing it). I tried to download and install the patch and the patch wouldn’t work.
Not to mention the fact that this is essentially the EXACT same game as the original Kudos. Sure there are new activities and the interactions with friends is slightly more realistic, but essentially this is the same game. The careers are similar, the classes are EXACTLY the same… even the same days/costs, etc. When you go shopping there are more items, but that’s about it. This is the way the original Kudos should have been done (but with keeping the old interface)… but to release this and call it a different game? I feel like Kudos was just re-done with a few more features and options and crappier graphics and re-marketed and sold. Don’t get me wrong… this is a good game. It’s just that I already own this game. And it’s called Kudos.
The few extra features aren’t worth the upgrade. And I feel like after I waited months for this to be released, I’ve just wasted $20.
This game took longer to develop than the original. Yes the costs of activities are the same, because they are the costs that make for a balanced game. The basic design of the game is the same, just as the basic design of Medieval : Total War is the same as Shogun: Total War.
You don’t change things for the sake of it, but to improve upon it. Here are some of the changes in Kudos 2:
Different events at work -> Each career has it’s own work events that are specific to your career
Performance affects work days now, so being good at the job actually directly affects how your day goes.
Customizable avatars -> The player can choose their own avatar from tons of different combinations
Work clothes -> People with office jobs change into a suit for work, and everyone wears sunglasses if they buy them
New UI -> The entire user interface is reprogrammed and designed from scratch
Restaurants -> The player now chooses individual menu items, all of which affect the character in different ways
Birthday Parties -> Each year culminates in a birthday party which raises or lowers your spirits based on your popularity
Better NPC AI -> The friends have far more sophisticated AI than before, making more intelligent decisions regarding socializing
Gossip -> Friends will now gossip about events such as bands and plays and museum exhibits, tipping off the player as to when to socialize where
Personalities -> There are more personality types for friends in this game, such as extrovert, honest, optimistic, persuasive
More Character AI -> Extra characteristics have been added to the players character such as optimism and extrovert
New MiniGame -> The minigame for playing video games is entirely new, and the gambling game is entirely new.
Dynamic Background -> As time passes the background dynamically changes to show sunsets and stars at night.
Alcohol effect -> The background goes wobbly as you get drunk
Dynamic UI -> When it’s winter the UI changes to blues and whites rather than summers warm oranges.
Widescreen support -> Final build adjusts dynamically to 1280x768 for widescreen PC’s, especially laptops.
Faster game -> The game moves quicker now, with less days in a month to make the full 10 year game quicker and more activity-packed.
Positive attitude -> A lot of the games variables and content has been reworded an designed to be more upbeat and positive.
There are also some new social activities, solo activities, books and things to buy, plus more text variety and probably more I can’t remember.
I appreciate that you might have wanted the game to be radically different, but I’ve concentrated on improving on what people enjoyed, rather than radically re-inventing the game.
The patch should definitely work, nobody else has experienced any issues like this. I recommend re-downloading and reinstalling the game using the original link (which is now pre-patched). It sounds like your copy of the game may be corrupted somehow.
I don’t think that all of those things are necessarily an improvement, especially not the game speed. I thought it must have been sped up since I got through quite a bit of time (7 years or so, I think) before the game crashed this last time I played it. And it took longer to get through classes.
Obviously you can’t please everybody but I really don’t think these changes are major enough to call for a whole new game. Maybe if you had added on an additional storyline or some sort of extension of the game (allowing options for character to get married or buy a house, for instance) it would be worth the re-purchase. I just don’t see how this is really a separate game from Kudos. Maybe you could call it Kudos v2.0? Haha.
In any case, I know opinions are like @**holes. I just wanted to share mine. I’ve given up on it for today. Maybe the game won’t crash the next time I play it. I’ll figure it out eventually.
While I agree it was much better than Kudos 1 (In Kudos one, your character was always pissed and depressed no matter what, and now you can actually be happy), there should have been more time spent on this game. Such as Quality testing and adding a couple of newer features. Kudos 2 right now is filled with a bit of bugs, such as city names switching in game to default ones (How did Alabaster magically change into Lightwater?), crashes, typos (which are not too big of a deal, those will get fixed), and a couple of funny stat changes that need tweaking.
In my opinion so far though, this game was worth the 19.95, but wouldn’t of reached the 29.95. I think Cliff should have kept the Middle of October release date to iron some things out, but everything will work out.
Senator Brendon- Democracy 2 Addict, Hoping for a 3rd!
Hi, under what circumstances do you get a town name change? I’d like to get everything like that fixed, but can’t replicate most issues people mention. There is so much in the game it’s tricky to go through every permutation.
Cheers
In relation to what you were saying about lack of features, sarcophagusheels, cliffski has pointed out before that many of the things in the game are governed by ‘scripts’. Now, I’m no scripter but I’m pretty sure that a good modder who knows what they are doing could add new features, such as marriage, etc. with scripts.
Just look at HalfLife 2! That was designed as a FPS game and yet people have made mods turning it into an RPG, RTS and Racing game! I think that may be one of the things that will prove to be really good about K2, the fact that you can mod and change many more things. I think it may be worth the price just for that.
Don’t get me wrong, I understand what you’re saying, and I might have liked a few more features as well, but I feel it’s good from the point of view that the game can be modded to include these features later instead of it being a game where you would have to hardwire the features into the program. I think that’s a great achievement on the part of cliffski because I’m sure it can’t be easy to do.
I have to disagree. I think there are many changes that made this worth the 20 bucks and I’ve refrained from even peeking into the files because I want to have the element of surprise. Already I’ve noticed the much updated graphics, especially the custom avatars and the change from day to evening. The balance seems better with my character actually being happy instead of miserable all the time and work has an effect of them now.
I’ve always admired Positech because you can actually ask a question and get an answer. Try doing that with Electronic Arts.
when dealing with EA, Reclaim Your Game found itself helping gamers remove Securom off their system after it started mis-identifying normal copy protection software as “emulation software”… Meanwhile EA was posting about all sorts of nonsense, and never posted so much of an apology… Cliff is MUCH easier to deal with.
Not to put too much emphasis on this, but Communist era Albania was probably easier to deal with than EA. The latter has a pretty horrific reputation for poor relations, both with customers and its own employees.
Looks good, Cliff, though I could have wished for more substantive additions, rather than so many visual ones. I’ll probably hold off buying until you tweak and prod it into final form, though. I ended up uninstalling more than a dozen Democracy 2 patches when you hit your final, installable version, and it was a bit of a nuisance.
