King's Bounty: Crossworlds GOTY

Yes dinky, childish and cartoony (I love my Stalker, Witcher, Fallouts, Wartales, DD, Civs) but this little jewel is FUN.

Ance you start to play, you can't stop

The game world is divided in several islands, each with stonger enemies. After a well paced first island that acts as tutorial and a decently paced half of the 2nd island you run into a stone wall of attrition where enemy armies are impossible to defeat unless you fight, sacrifice your entire army, go build a new army and fight the now reduced numbers of the enemy in a second or even third battle. There is option to retreat but if you do without losing the fight, you lose your army without inflicting enough damage for the 2nd round to be easier, so you need to relly on RNG that you will fight to the last man and survive to come back. And that gets worse as the enemies get stronger.

Outside of a bit of lack of documentation this game is a gem indeed for turn based strategy fans. If you don't mind wading into the forums to get some information and grab a few mods to enhance things I can't imagine a better strategy experience. I pretty much learned how to mod by fiddling around on this game. Anyway, as I mentioned if you like turned based games this one is a winner. Price? Well I think we are getting a bit spoiled by the fabulous Christmas sales here and there - $15 (about the price of a movie) is a great value and well worth it.

I think video games are dirt cheap entertainment; divide cost by typical hours played, and compare to other entertainment. GOG titles are cheap, very fairly priced. They take old games and make 'em run flawlessly on new operating systems.....