King's Bounty: The Legend

King's Bounty - The Legends is not a great AAA title by any means, it was made by a rather small team mainly consisting of fans of the original King's Bounty and its more successful offspring, Heroes of Might and Magic. Because of this, there are no fancy animations or voice acting, but you shouldn't let that deter you from giving this great game a try! The developer team's love and dedication for the aforementioned older games clearly shows in the final product as well. Monsters, spells, items will all be familiar from those titles, as well as the gameplay. Hence, the game will be most enjoyable in my opinion for players who also played and loved KB and HoMM, but newcomers are welcome too! I should mention though, that by no means is this game simply a copy or a clone. They have changed a lot of things from the predecessors and I personally really loved what they did! The fact that you can dodge monsters (and you have to!), that Armageddon now damages Black Dragons as well. They have also managed to make Vampires balanced, which is something even the fabled HotA fan expansion of HoMM3 does not manage. The gameplay is easy to learn, hard to master. You raise armies according to your Leadership level, learn spells and beat other armies in tactical, hex-based combat. All while running around on a beautiful, detail-rich real time map. I also quite fancied the music. There are many different areas to conquer, all with their own army types, which means you will have to adapt your own composition as well. This adds another strategic layer to the already pretty demanding mix. Thinking up different creature combinations with different artifacts and spells is easily one of the most fun aspects of the game. If you have played a Trading Card Game before, you know what I am thinking about. Beating much-much stronger armies and heroes simply because you have managed to come up with the perfect counter is insanely fun! All in all, I definitely recommend this hidden gem!

I was absolutely astonished when the first time I played King's Bounty - The Legend of the Knight. First of all I want to talk about the most charming part of this game: its atmosphere of a beautiful and good fable. Almost all TBS put a story at the end of the list. King's Bounty on the other hand (though being a standard fantasy) put such a great effort in story, dialogues, tonnes of quests and the little pieces of lore to make you fall in love with the world of Endoria. Colorful design and and some powerful fantasy music themes complete the image. The music is so good and original that I'm sure recognize it even after a decade. The gameplay is different from other TBS you used to play. The game is mostly linear. You have only one hero, which is getting stronger through your journey. Your army is sctrictly limited by your hero characteristics and it can be a huge downside if you are looking a standard homm3 like game where you can sit in a town and amass a huge armies. The battles in King's Bounty keep staying difficult and you must carefully manage every battle. This game won't fit if you tend to autoresolve battles, because you will take losses even on the easy difficulty. And moving to the new island is always harcore as the neutral armies grow considerably and you don't yet have enough army limit. The game is working absolutely fine on Win 10. I had no freezes, drops and only two small bugs (both of which apperantly were already fixed by GoG). A bigger problem is a low resolution and screen fixed aspect ratio, which leaves black bars on the sides of the screen. Probably it is possible to fix it, but I didn't search. Summary: This game is unjustfully got missed by a wide audience of players. If you rate a single player experience is strictly better better than HOMM V launched a year before. And times better than those abominations Ubisoft made after. And it is still worth trying. See you in Endoria, knight!

NOTE: you need to replace kb.exe with a NO-DVD 1.7 version from GamesBurnWorld (1.7.35,234) to get past Upper Hadar. The default 1.7.34,387 is faulty. Copy & replace the file and you are set. This and the battle repetitiveness are the rare flaws in the game. Summary: STRONGLY RECOMMENDED. Gameplay: the real-time parts are particularly fun and the plot and the storytelling are competent. Graphics: superb animation and crisp art. Sound: a phenomenal soundtrack. One of the best I have heard. "Under the Shadow of the Oak" is a community favorite. Time to 100% it: 90 h Not gonna like this if: You fail to replace the faulty KB.EXE file OR you try to play it like HoMM AKA the creature meat-grinder. The creature reserves are mostly limited here (unless you use garbage hordes). Special mechanic: Spirits of Rage i.e. earned damage spells earned from withstanding and damaging enemy units. Pretty much like the Super moves in Street Fighter games. The "Time Back" reset move after a Sacrifice spell is crucial in replenishing the non-resurrectable, rare LVL 5 units. Quests: About 100 (a lot of them give you choices that affect the outcomes, generic kill quests are rare, most of them involve visiting places and sometimes fetching or picking up stuff, not repetitive and the rewards are decent) Overall, you can tell from the end result that the game got a lot of care and polish. Someone clearly cared about the product. The battle sections have some of the tabletop-RPG repetitiveness, though the map sections are pretty solid. Especially Demonis.

1990 King's Bounty was released the first time (Mega drive, Amiga etc) and made New World Computing a bigger game studio. It also cleared the way for the Heroes of Might and Magic series. This remake from 2008 ist a fine work in keeping the pure essence of round based strategy, hilarious humor and nice graphics. It is on one level with HoMM5 but you will smile far more often - every second quest or so the story takes you through plots you never heard before... or did you know that miller who stole things from the cemetery nearby to get along. But unfortunately he took that one ring that turns him slowly into a zombie and so he barricaded himself in order to keep it a secret. Will you kill him, or help? Or what about the girl that was in love with that dragon a long time ago - will you help HIM to get her back back or slay the beast? You can also marry some girls you meet (like the Queen of frogs, you turned into a human by kissing her) and get some children, extras ... and extra duties ;) Curious? Go and serve your king - by using the 4 spirits that keep whispering to you from that artefact you retrieved, with your army and (most important) your cleverness!

Almost perfect game for those who like turn based games.This game has its charms, it gives excitement from the very beggining.I had to lol when i was fighting a dragon in the very first mission.The dragon made a move similar to scorpion's "come over here". Dragons are ass-kicking units in this game.They look good, they are tough. Graphics are eye-candy, music and sound effects doesnt disturb you, but this game gives more than that. The best way is to notice those things by yourself, so im not going to spoil them. The only small thing i didnt like is that almost all battles gives you gold and experience,but you dont need gold at all... You would like to see battles more rewarding. Anyway, check this game, its really great.Just use that small but rewarding "freedom" and use map notes. :)