Nexo Knights 2016

[TheOrcKing]

 

[TheOrcKing]

[justapilgrim]

Does it have a section yet?

initial thoughts were that I hated it, but it's growing on me. Kids downloaded the app and it's pretty fun. Each set does come with some powers that can be scanned into the game. Saw some of the single

character packs at Bn and thought that $9.99 pretty steep for one character considering that mixels and MF are less than half that. Will see if people will actually pay that much just to get the one decked out MF with in game power ups

[Quacs]

On December 28, 2015 at 11:57 PM, justapilgrim said:

initial thoughts were that I hated it, but it's growing on me.

Couldn't agree more.  When I first saw the Fortress set, I thought this theme was destined for a short life, but after watching some of the You Tube reviews, there are some nice builds and sets here.  The troll cart (or whatever it is) looks great and will be on my buy list for the personal collection.  Great minifigures in this theme too.

[gregpj]

52 minutes ago, Quacs said:

Couldn't agree more.  When I first saw the Fortress set, I thought this theme was destined for a short life, but after watching some of the You Tube reviews, there are some nice builds and sets here.  The troll cart (or whatever it is) looks great and will be on my buy list for the personal collection.  Great minifigures in this theme too.

My kids think they're neat of course... but I think we'll skip out on this theme if we can. Minifigures seem to be something LEGO knows will set some sets as they seem to put a lot of effort into them.

[TheOrcKing]

I watched the two episode premier and easily enjoyed what will be a series almost on the same level as Ninjago compared to Legends Of Chima. There were a couple of awkward TV tropes such as the King's overprotectiveness with daughter Macy (He-Man's Man-At-Arms while sometimes worried was proud of Teela more than anything) and the setup for Jestro going bad was a little flimsy of a reason. Still the banter between him & the Book of Monsters was amusing and gotta love how every page turn led to the same two. Haha. Well I must say with all the lava monsters bounding about, this series has balls.

Anywho I look forward to when the series finally airs and so far my favorite characters would be Axl & Macy.
 

On ‎12‎/‎28‎/‎2015 at 0:57 AM, justapilgrim said:

Does it have a section yet?

Not a specific section aside from this topic under Castle for primarily being a medieval setting only mixed with advanced features of science fiction.

[HappyHawkeye]

Saw these sets at a few stores tonight & got a good up close look at them. Conclusion: aggressively ugly.

[Kenxxx]

Just bought 70315 Clay's Rumble Blade, and my son couldn't wait to get it home and build it. I am very impressed. It is probably the coolest, funnest $40 Lego I have ever bought. Great minifigs, LOTS of play-ability, colors are a little shocking on the box, but in person, it looks "just right". A set that combines the main hero, robots, fire demons, swords, "power-up" shields, motorcycles, a flying ship, and a missle-firing ATV... that just has to be a winner. Of course, I think the key will be if the TV show can get a serious fan base like Ninjago, but so far, I really like this theme. I'm already looking at how to get a complete set of the minifigs... looks like Lego has split them up well so that you have to buy 4* sets or more to get the five main heroes and villain. And if I'm not mistaken, I think Axl - one of my favorites - is exclusive to the $100 Fortrex.

*My mistake... I think you can get them all by buying Fortrex, Jestros Evil Mobile, and the Beast Master's Chaos Chariot ($100+$60+$30).

Edited December 30, 2015 by Kenxxx

[meganr]

I bought the Ultimate Aaron set yesterday for my husband (whose name is Aaron and his favorite color is green) and daughter. The character's full name is Aaron Fox and it just so happens my daughter is absolutely obsessed with foxes. It is actually a cool little figure with lots of extra pieces (weapons, shields, etc) and some unique pieces too.

I really like all the new interesting pieces I see in these sets. I'm not super into the theme itself though. We'll watch the show and maybe my mind will change.

[waydog]

12 hours ago, Kenxxx said:

Just bought 70315 Clay's Rumble Blade, and my son couldn't wait to get it home and build it. I am very impressed. It is probably the coolest, funnest $40 Lego I have ever bought. Great minifigs, LOTS of play-ability, colors are a little shocking on the box, but in person, it looks "just right". A set that combines the main hero, robots, fire demons, swords, "power-up" shields, motorcycles, a flying ship, and a missle-firing ATV... that just has to be a winner. Of course, I think the key will be if the TV show can get a serious fan base like Ninjago, but so far, I really like this theme. I'm already looking at how to get a complete set of the minifigs... looks like Lego has split them up well so that you have to buy 4* sets or more to get the five main heroes and villain. And if I'm not mistaken, I think Axl - one of my favorites - is exclusive to the $100 Fortrex.

*My mistake... I think you can get them all by buying Fortrex, Jestros Evil Mobile, and the Beast Master's Chaos Chariot ($100+$60+$30).

Totally agree on clays rumble blade.  Super fun set.  Fortrex is next on the hitlist.  I am very curious as to how fortrex rolls when built.  

[TheOrcKing]

 

[tytanium]

Got The Fortrex for Christmas and I gotta say, it's as cool as I thought it would be. Looks great in my display case.

On 12/30/2015 at 4:59 PM, waydog said:

Totally agree on clays rumble blade.  Super fun set.  Fortrex is next on the hitlist.  I am very curious as to how fortrex rolls when built.  

It rolls pretty well. Just have to make sure the gears for the wheels aren't to tight.

[Salimr]

Has anyone tried the app that goes with the ultimate figures? Is it any good? What are the best packs to buy for the app? My son wanted to get the app and figures but we know nothing about the nexo Knights.

[waydog]

So far, the design and builds, the colors, the figures, and the playability of these sets are excellent.  Jestro will be next.

[justapilgrim]

Has anyone tried the app that goes with the ultimate figures? Is it any good? What are the best packs to buy for the app? My son wanted to get the app and figures but we know nothing about the nexo Knights.

I wrote a review of ultimate Robin, look at blog section. App is fun for kids.but don't really need upgrades

[chipbee]

21 hours ago, waydog said:

So far, the design and builds, the colors, the figures, and the playability of these sets are excellent.  Jestro will be next.

Looks cool. Sometimes we need a kid's frame of mind to appreciate the fun. A mobile castle, stuff that only kids can think of.

[TheOrcKing]

On ‎1‎/‎2‎/‎2016 at 10:00 PM, waydog said:

So far, the design and builds, the colors, the figures, and the playability of these sets are excellent.  Jestro will be next.

Wheeled Warriors explode into battle, lightning strikes!

[TheOrcKing]

[staggs9696]

For all of you who are wondering whether the app or the show are good, I finished the current available content of the app in a day of intense farming just to see the potential of it, and I watched the 2 currently available episodes of the show. Here are my thoughts, may they help you assess the value of these sets if you think they have any influence on it.

The app:
The game itself is okay. It's not great, it's okay. Playing it on a smartphone can prove to be quite tricky because in order to attack a mob, you have to touch it. However, your thumbs are bigger than what you're hitting so you can't see it, and some enemies have very little hit-boxes which can result in many movements instead of attacks. Other than that, the gameplay is standard beat them all where wave after wave you kill enemies with little travel phases in between. You can have 2 heroes active on a mission, I barely used my second one, you can swap between the 2 in between fighting phases, and if your character dies, the other one comes in to replace it. Basically you alternate between hitting trash mobs by tapping the screen, while avoiding some ground targeted attacks by moving away by tapping the screen, and doing the same thing but more intensely on bosses.
I'm not going to go too deep in explaining how the game works, but here's how I think it will be received by kids and adults (I'm excluding teens on purpose, because they will farm the crap out of lower levels in order to upgrade their hero and out-gear the content making it non-challenging):
—The fightings decent
—The upgrade system is pretty good
—The only ranged character is pointless because he doesn't hit hard enough to justify the need to move around before attacking. If we calculate his damage per second and compare it to that of a melee character of same gear level, he will be way behind. This is due to the fact that you spend at least as much time moving with him as you do attacking, because you are squishier and most mobs come to melee range. There are a few exceptions to this of course, but they are irrelevant overall. 
—The bosses are interesting, and if done without farming the previous levels, will require great focus in order to avoid all the high damage attacks they can throw at you. I remember the first boss being a real pain (Beastmaster on his 70314 vehicle), I had to farm the previous levels quite a few times to better gear my main hero (Clay) and even get some cheap upgrades on my second character (Macy) so I could finish him off once Clay had died. The other bosses were also quite difficult even though I had taken the time to do many levels several times before them to be sure to beat them in a reasonable amount of time.
—The graphics aren't that good. I don't know if the resolution at least gets improved on tablet, but on phone, my first reaction was "damn this is ugly!" It's not even DS ugly.
—The story is okay, but not being able to hump the cinematics nor the dialogue is a real bummer. This means that when you are farming a boss (I farmed the last boss available for a few hours to get all my heroes to a high level of equipment to see whether they were all equally good because that boss is the level that provides the most resource and xp at this time, and so 80% of that time was spent tapping on the screen to confirm that I'd red the dialogue, and then going through loading screens.
—The xp is currently pointless. It is there only as a content barrier in the sense that after every other boss, there is a gate which can only be unlocked if you are of a certain level. That is the only purpose of xp as far as I can tell.
—The vehicle unlocked levels are pointless if they aren't meant for your main character. (there are some levels that can only be accessed if you have unlocked a certain vehicle which you unlock by gathering parts which are randomly aquired at the end of missions, same way you get gear cap upgrades, once again, I'm not going to go too much into detail about this, it is irrelevant for this).
—The powers gathered by scanning the sets are not game changers, in the sense that you can easily go through the currently available content with the 2 ones you get for free at the beginning of the game. Would have I liked to have more? Sure, but I would have quickly decided which ones I liked, which ones I didn't. One that sure will be very useful is the chicken one which you get in Robin's ultimate box (70333) because it is a heal. That alone could save you on many occasions.
—The way the powers work in terms of resource mechanic is very enjoyable. You charge the resource by hitting, you spend it by using the skill. However, although it generates for your 3 active skills at the same time, using one does not spend resource from the others. These skills have different resource costs though, so some take more hits to charge than others. 
—Using these powers/skills makes the game lag if you don't have a last generation phone. It freezes for a bit on activation, then freezes a bit mid animation.
—It's currently too short. And that's actually a good think that I think so because that means I would have liked to play more!

Once again, overall it's a pretty good game.

Now the show! I'm going to have to warn you on this that I am a writer, an actor, and have done some 3D and 2D animation in the past. Therefor, my judgement on this might be a bit harsh, so I'll give you my point of view, and the way I think kids will look at this.

My point of view: It's bad. The writing is poor, my main reproach being that they seem to have designed a universe, designed some heroes, dropped them in there, and realized afterwards that there was no story to tell. From there they took a guy who originally didn't want to be a bad guy, had him be told by a book which he normally couldn't have reached because of an electric door lock which was set up to protect the book by a wizard (yes, a wizard trusted electricity over magic), and that book tells this completely normal jester: "you could be great at being bad instead of being bad at being funny" and that's pretty much it. He is supposed to be the main villain, but all he does, he does because the book tells him to. Add to that some terrible voice acting. I'm specifically targeting Macy here who was obviously miscast as she is one of the worst voice actors I have heard, and that's saying something considering how many cartoons I've watched in their entirety in my life, and how many video games I've played. Her voice is plain annoying beyond reason, and she never has the right emotion in her voice for the emotion expressed by the character. The other voices are "okay", but they aren't great either. If you're expecting something of the same quality as show such as Teen Titans (not the GO version), Young Justice, Randy Cunningham: 9th grade ninja, The Boondocks, or even Ben 10 (any version except Omniverse which I have yet to see), and of course South Park, The Simpsons, Futurama, then this is as far as you can get regarding the voice acting. Actually Teen Titans Go! has some good voice acting too. When it comes to animation... Oh boy !  These guys use many lazy animating techniques... The one that stood out the most obviously for me while I was watching was during a fighting sequence, there is one of the characters that is kicks away, and he moves on a perfect horizontal axe, without moving at all. In other words: he takes the kick and is moved like a statue being pushed instead of being a character. I will probably give it an other chance though when more episodes come out, but let's just say that it's off to a bad start. I didn't talk too much about the heroes and the sitting in this part, as I believe those things will be more important from the point of view of the targetted audience which I'm about to talk about now.

The point of view I believe kids will have: They'll love it. It has a character for everyone: the tough and rebellious girl fighter Macy, the fun an relaxed cool skater Aaron, the courageous and strong Axel who clearly is targeted towards kids into sports for some reason, the brave almost hero archetype Clay, and the super kicked back charming Lance. On the villains side they'll like the ridiculousness of Jestro who clearly has no clue what he's doing and only became a villain because he thought he was misunderstood when it's just that he wouldn't let people tell him that they understood him (Clay tries to talk to him before he goes corrupt, but he just ignores him in his self-pitty). The book itself is the true bad guy and is more of a standard "let's rule/destroy the world" type of villain. The other guys you see in the sets portrayed as villains are summoned from the book and some don't even want to help Jestro because he's mean to them and what he asks of them does not profit them in anyway. The setting of the show they should like I think. As you might have been able to tell from the sets it is a mix between, medieval, futuristic, and magic, which all adds up to a pretty immersive environment where you come to accept many things which you would condemn in a more mainstream setting. It's colorful, and full of life too, which only adds to the enjoyment they'll have. Unlike me, they probably won't pay attention to voice acting and animation, nor plot holes and bad decisions. It's a kid's show!

To be honest, I'm still slightly afraid that these will have only as much success as the Ninjago sets do, which is quite low when it comes to resell unless you're in a country which for some reason has kids who particularly enjoy the theme. Mind you, My n°1 set of last year is the ninjago temple, and I'm planning on getting 2 of the new sets from that theme in the future for my collection. I also think i'll invest in a few raid zeplins before they get discontinued because that set is the cheese. 

Hope this helped some of you who don't necessarily have the time to play through a mobile game or watch a cartoon, feel free to criticize my critic or ask questions if you have any

[TheOrcKing]

[jay4e]

Im not sure about the sets in general, but these mini figs look pretty sweet.  

http://www.thebrickfan.com/new-lego-nexo-knights-summer-2016-villains-revealed/

[staggs9696]

I like those new villain figures, but I hate the way they put Flama's head on fire (I actually feared that they'd use it irl when I saw it in the game), and I also fear that this might be their solution for Making Ghost Rider in Lego :/ In other words: this tells me that Ghost Rider is probably going to look bad...

[Kenxxx]

@staggs9696 ... thanks for the thorough reviews... great job! My only comment: you mention concern that these sets may have only "as much success as... Ninjago sets..." I think Lego could only dream that they will be this successful - running for several years, through several series on TV, and multiple launches of new sets... having a wide range of products - books, toys, clothing, school supplies, etc, etc. Of course, I'm sure you are more focused on the Lego sets themselves and their investment potential, and yes, for Ninjago it is a bit more challenging.  Ninjago has had some great investment winners, but you can't just go the traditional "buy the flagship set and hold 'til retirement" route. Picking winners in "childrens" lines like these is tricky.  At this stage - with the product just launching - all the smart investor needs to do is wait and see.  If the line is a huge hit right out of the gate, there could be short term shortages of some sets, with opportunities for quick flips. If that happened (and I don't think this is very likely), my bet would be on Clay's Rumble Blade - it's just plain the coolest, and at the right price point.  Other than that, I'll be waiting a year or two to make any investments in this line... by then we'll see just how popular it may become, and will have plenty of opportunities to pick up the right sets at 30% off or more.

[staggs9696]

9 minutes ago, Kenxxx said:

@staggs9696 ... thanks for the thorough reviews... great job! My only comment: you mention concern that these sets may have only "as much success as... Ninjago sets..." I think Lego could only dream that they will be this successful - running for several years, through several series on TV, and multiple launches of new sets... having a wide range of products - books, toys, clothing, school supplies, etc, etc. Of course, I'm sure you are more focused on the Lego sets themselves and their investment potential, and yes, for Ninjago it is a bit more challenging.  Ninjago has had some great investment winners, but you can't just go the traditional "buy the flagship set and hold 'til retirement" route. Picking winners in "childrens" lines like these is tricky.  At this stage - with the product just launching - all the smart investor needs to do is wait and see.  If the line is a huge hit right out of the gate, there could be short term shortages of some sets, with opportunities for quick flips. If that happened (and I don't think this is very likely), my bet would be on Clay's Rumble Blade - it's just plain the coolest, and at the right price point.  Other than that, I'll be waiting a year or two to make any investments in this line... by then we'll see just how popular it may become, and will have plenty of opportunities to pick up the right sets at 30% off or more.

Funniest thing happened this morning while I was patrolling the lego selling shops of the city. I went into a "La Grande Récré" (crappy name, I know, blame French :p), there as an old man with his supposedly grandson. The kid went to the Ninjago sets completely ignoring the rest. However, instead of asking for a classic set, something to build, or a big set, he asked for one of those spinning things that cost 10€! I figured it might just be him who particularly liked that. A bit later, I went to the Lego store, and there was a dad with his 2 sons and his daughter. The three completely ignored the Nexo Knights that were exposed at the entrance, went upstairs to the Ninjago sets, and didn't seem very interested by the big sets either... Now I didn't ask them because I didn't want to bother them, but I think that kids understand that their parents won't buy them expensive sets these days, unlike when I was a kid and the first thing I'd look at was the biggest, most badass and expensive set there was, but then ask for nothing because I knew whoever was there with me wouldn't buy it for me . 

2 things to keep from this: Kids might like things we overlook (or at least I overlook), and for some reason, nobody seemed to pay much attention to the Nexo Knights at this point. (I didn't mention this, but the Nexo Knights sets were right next to the Ninjago. I was looking at those, but during the 10 minutes I spent there analysing everything, only one other person stopped to look at them, and it was a guy around 30 years old). Hopefully this won't last too long, because I picked up a 70311 (chaos catapult) for 10€, and I have to admit that it is really nice. Nothing extremely fancy, it reminds me of the castle ballistas I'd bought a few of as a kid with the money I'd gotten from scraping leaves, which was also quite nice. You just stack a few side by side, add some foot men and have a nice little army to attack a building. I like themes that have these kind of sets, and I doubt that I'm the only one. Despite them not being a sure thing investment-wise, I'm sure going to buy some if I ever see them on sale, and if they never increase in value, I'll just add them to my massive lego mix and throw away the boxes. 

[staggs9696]

Just realized what Flama's head made me think of! It looks like an orange condom! Now I'm really hoping they find an other way to make ghost rider's flames...