With outstanding creative titles like this coming from the most unexpected sources, I wouldn’t trade my PC for anything. Kings Bounty: The Legend is an adventure game with tactical turn-based battles and role-playing elements. Complain all you want about Rage or Call of Duty relegating their PC versions to second-class status. This is the latest example of the European development community stepping up its game as American PC studios flock to consoles on a seemingly daily basis. Still, in the grand scheme of strategy gaming, the tedium King’s Bounty subjects its players to is well within acceptable limits. I appreciate the encouragement to fight efficiently and minimize attrition, but no matter how strong your strategy is, you’ll regularly have to run back to town and replenish your depleted army. Some battles feel similar to one another, leading to unpleasant déjà vu as you crush one encounter after another using the exact same tactics. A few gems of clever writing peek through in the story, but the plot is often conveyed in dry text boxes and hackneyed prose. This surprising title does so many things right that it’s easy to forgive its minor flaws. Using your army’s special abilities, spellcasting, and rage effectively in concert is necessary to overcome King’s Bounty’s significant challenges. Depending on how you’ve customized its abilities, the dragon can build walls, drop eggs that hatch into huge troops of disposable allies, or even raise volcanoes to burninate your enemies. Your pet dragon (who has been leveling alongside you the whole time) can consume that rage to unleash awesome powers. From that standpoint, what I love the most about the game is that they gave it enough of a modern face lift to make it a contender with todays technology, while keeping the original flare and charm of the original title. As blows are exchanged, the rage meter fills. I am probably part of the minority in that I never played much HoMM, but was a HUGE fan of the Sega Genesis port of Kings Bounty. The princess (and her enemy, if she’s facing an army led by an opposing hero) can cast a single spell per round, ranging from simple protective wards to army-incinerating fireballs. Its a feature common to games with strategic maps, and I admire developer 1C Entertainment for using it in a more grounded setting, even at the risk of undermining the sacred immersion. ![]() Troops take actions according to their initiative, moving along a small hex grid as they bite, shoot, immolate, and otherwise assault the enemy. Magic-focused characters can make exceptional use of troops with unusual powers or disabling attacks, whereas emphasizing martial prowess allows you to dominate battlefields with beefy melee troops.Ĭombat is a carbon copy of HOMM, with a few additions. Every choice you make impacts your battle strategies, as well as how you build your army. You can customize your progression along the Might, Magic, and Mind paths to become a mighty warrior, wise leader, skilled mage, or some combination thereof. Each level also grants a certain number of runes, which can be spent to advance along three parallel skill trees. As your princess grows in experience, she gains the ability to lead more powerful troops and grant better bonuses to them in combat. Adventuring through the game’s many unique continents reveals enough quests, monsters, treasures, and secrets to make a Baggins blush. The turn-based tactical combat is as entertaining as anything HOMM ever did, and exchanging that series’ empire building for a single-hero RPG-like approach works better than expected.įrom your humble beginnings as the god-sent princess of a fantastic kingdom, you’ll slowly become the kind of world-dominating conqueress that sends brutal usurpers running in fear. This title is a solid followup to last year’s under-the-radar King’s Bounty: The Legend, tweaking many things for the better and providing a fabulous setting in which to adventure. OK maybe not WoW-omg-my-gf-left-me-and-I-have-no-job-and-think-something-dead-is-rotting-under-my-desk-level addiction, but I do recall thinking, gee whiz, this sure is almost as addictive as World of Warcraft.Ģ.Before playing King’s Bounty: Armored Princess, I’d have called you a dirty liar if you told me a second-tier Russian company buying the rights to the classic title would result in a great game for Heroes of Might & Magic fans. ![]() It isn’t really fair that I am writing this review, because I am already a huge fan of the franchise, and have experienced WoW-level addiction to earlier installments in the series. Before I get into my review of 1C’s latest expansion to the venerable and much beloved King’s Bounty series, I must make two disclaimers:ġ.
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