I was a big fan of King Cashing 1, the idea of random (and randomness-based) battles combined with some customisation and a little bit of grind here and there appealed to me, so when I heard that they were releasing a new one, I downloaded it and dove in. Three days later, I think I have a good idea of what I like, what I dislike and ultimately what design ideas make KC2 a game that I enjoyed very much.
All of the ideas from KC1 are back with a vengeance
Basically, you equip different units and weapons and bonuses then play a slot machine game until you defeat your opponent or run out of cherries (each spin costs 3 cherries), you need to match either a unit or a weapon with an enemy on a single line to deal damage, and each unit/weapon has some special attributes that helps you defeat your enemies. You then get gold, experience and random loot to progress, you use the experience to level and unlock new passive abilities and the gold is used to buy things and to fight (you need to pay a fee before you can fight an enemy, so sometimes you might need to grind lesser enemies to fight a big one)
Of course, enemies have also weaknesses and resistances and sometimes very annoying special abilities such as destroying your units/items when they hit or blocking damage. Some special enemies yield special rewards if you defeat them with items they're strong against, and some are special challenges.
I really liked how different units did different things, the gunner deals extra splash damage with guns, the potions deal various effects such as damage over time and adding more enemies to the reel, but my favorite class this time around is the necromancer with the ability to create more units whenever he hits, creating two more powerful ones when he critical hits enemies. Better than that, some of his units create copies of themselves whenever they hit! A great way to turn the odds in your favor. My strategy evolved as I progressed into the game.
I don't care much about the art style
The comic book style of this game is pretty neat but there's something that rubs me the wrong way about the design of certain characters, I'm not going to knock the game much for it because it doesn't affect great gameplay but there's just something that bothers me..
A great game that I wish I could play more
Sadly, the game ends after three chapters right now, I wish there was more! I grinded a bit after I've defeated the last boss, but the 'coming soon' on chapter four is making me wish in a way that they would've waited to release the game so I would've continued playing it. What if I miss the next update? King Cashing 1 felt longer, even if I'm not sure it actually was. Maybe it was because of the way the game was presented, a long list of enemies to fight instead of a comic with story elements.
About the medals...
By winning fights, you get graded on how fast you killed the enemy and if you get silver medals in some pages of the comic book, you can fight a special enemy. You also get reduced costs to fight the same enemy if you get a better medal, making it free completely for gold ones. There is otherwise no incentive to get gold medals - besides bragging rights - and anything would have been a nice touch, maybe a special store where you spend gold medals to get special items? I'm not too sure.
Additionally, a small number to tell you how many turns you have left before you get graded a lower medal would've been neat, at the end of the game I could more or less guess it - usually when I'm down to 6 cherries it's going to switch to silver - but at the beginning when I was trying hard to get the gold medals, I would've appreciated it.
And finally, about the random luck that binds everything
I'm not sure if it's a 'right' way to play King Cashing 2, but I usually start the reels and then either close my eyes and press randomly or just mash the stop button to make it stop as soon as possible. Maybe there's a way to carefully stop each reel to perfectly do what you want with the game but for the number of times I spun that slot machine, it would have been madness to do it every time.
Some way to just randomly stop the reels after they've started would've been nice, maybe a toggle that you can set to 2-4 seconds or something, it wouldn't hinder the randomness of the game but make it go a bit faster.