My two cents after watching the stream --- and this coming from someone who has owned a BK2K for 20+ years (I love the game).
I was really excited about this title, of course, and the initial pictures got me even more excited about it to the point where I was considering selling my 2000 to fund one. But as with every game when you see reality for the first time, you come into reality and think about it some more.
I'm still really excited to play it - I like the fast / difficult nature of the playfield. I love the playfield art and how they kept the BK2K feel to it. I think the animations are the best Stern has done yet. The Black Knight toy is *awesome* . Initial light shows were really cool.
A few things disappointed me; primarily how modern pinball rules seem to apply in not very unique ways to this game. Modes that seems to be just collections of lit shots, IMDN-style supers, "everything is a jackpot" multiballs. It had me longing for the era when getting a jackpot was difficult and special. Yeah, super jackpots have replaced that, but one thing I love about BK2K is the huge buildup to a multiball, where you're possibly left with nothing, and if you get that Jackpot shot your payoff is huge. We didn't see a lot about hurry ups, which is core to previous Black Knights... especially ones that build in value over repeated attempts.
I'm not a metal fan, so while I appreciate the music in the game, I preferred the mix between electronic and metal that 2000 has. This version, for me, was a little frantic. But again, hard to tell on a stream when you're not playing it how well it will fit for you.
A few small things I hope they put into the code:
* The game really needs to start with "I am THE black knight."
* A "get the ball back in the upper PF lock jackpot" (I think even Steve said 'that needs to be worth about a billion points')
* Use of the lightning wheel during random (mystery) awards
So, I think I'm just in the "this is different from what I know" phase. Really looking forward to playing it and seeing how it evolves over the next several months.
Thanks to Steve and Tim for producing this sucker, and to DeadFlip for the early view! I'm really glad Stern took a chance with this.