King's Bounty PC Review

Long ago, in the year 1990, King’s Bounty was created by New World Computing (also the company that created Heroes of Might & Magic). King’s Bounty was meant to be a strategy RPG in its purest form. However, from what I was told by the developers from Atari at E3 2008, the key developer of the game, Jon Van Canegham, felt that he could also create an interesting turn based series using similar game mechanics to King’s Bounty, thus leading to a very successful Heroes of Might & Magic series (which I am very thankful for).

Now, this doesn’t mean that King’s Bounty ended its existence from that point up until today, though it may seem like the case with its lack of titles. In 2001, a remake of the original was released on the PS2 but was titled: Heroes of Might & Magic: Quest for the DragonBone Staff. It received little popularity to say the least (as it was marketed as a Heroes game but was strictly like the mechanics from King’s Bounty).






The basic premise of King's Bounty: The Legend is standard-issue fantasy. There's a magical kingdom run by a noble king named Mark who has a beautiful daughter who apparently fell from the stars. Despite Mark being all good and nice and stuff, the kingdom has fallen on some difficult times as the number of bandit attacks and monster sightings has gone up in recent months. It's up to the player, a new hero and recent graduate of the Darion Temple, to head out into the world, fight a gazillion assorted monsters, loot everything that's not nailed down, track down the source of this new evil and blast it to smithereens in the name of truth, justice and all that stuff.

After installing and playing the game, the first thing I noticed was the beautifully hand drawn title screen that appears. Highly colorful and reminiscent of some of the older Heroes titles, I was impressed with the level of dedication to the art style and presentation. Also, the beginning music was very epic and enthralling. The opening sequence was a little less promising with just a few pictures of concept art and other hand drawn pictures to portray the narrated stories by a voice that sounded more out of a documentary than a storyteller from a knight’s kingdom. So, unfortunately there was no beginning animation sequence to kick off the story.



You begin the game by choosing from one of three classes: Warrior, Paladin, Mage. Each class has a brief description of the effects on gameplay (and you can make your own assumptions just by your gaming intuition). The Warrior excels in combat but lacks in magic. This gives him more inherent abilities for bolstering the abilities of his units that he commands. Mages are on the opposite end of the spectrum where their armies that they command are not as much of a factor as their spell casting abilities. The Paladin is a good median between the two, having strong leadership abilities but also a moderate amount of spell knowledge. (I will further elaborate on the specifics of each class later). I chose a Paladin because I found it important to use both skills, and the hand drawn caricature for the Warrior scared me away as it looked strikingly similar to that of Patrick Dempsey :-/

Players travel through the world on horseback via an isometric overhead perspective. The world itself is lovely if a bit cartoonish, filled with all sorts of eye-pleasing animations, with well-designed (if a bit generic) fantasy creatures wandering about the landscape and all-sorts of little ambient details that make the world an enticing place to explore. As players travel around, they'll run into various wandering monster armies as well as hero-led troops that can be fought for gold and experience points. There are also a number of castles, towns, building and ruins filled with all sorts of baddies to kill. Many of these must be cleared as parts of long quest chains, while many others offer long-term benefits or serve as a source of troops when their guardians are cleared out.

It's when the player goes into combat that the real attraction of King's Bounty: The Legend becomes clear. The conceit of the battle system is that the player's hero doesn't personally fight in battle. Instead he acts as commander and chief spell-caster for armies of men and monsters that struggle with each other across a hex-grid battlefield in the manner of classic turn-based strategy games. Katauri Interactive's recreation and update of this system does their team and the legacy of New World Computing proud. King's Bounty's battle system is incredibly deep and enjoyable, more than a match for the original game or any of the classic Heroes of Might and Magic games they inspired.



One noticeable issue with the format of the game is that easy battles can become mundane, as there are numerous battles that will take place in the game with no gaps for quests (such as the case for Heroes). This is one situation where Heroes does a better job of dealing with the problem of hackneying a routine into the ground as in Heroes, significantly weaker enemies may want to flee and you are given the option to fight or allow them to run away.

There is an auto combat feature in King’s Bounty that allows the computer to fight for you but you still are forced to watch the battle. The option of skipping weaker battles would be greatly appreciated in King’s Bounty or if they could find some way to auto simulate the battle without forcing you to watch so that players can still earn the experience, the game would flow much more fluently (they did it successfully in Earthbound so I don’t want to hear that it can’t be done).

One final addition that is only possible because of the expansive RPG nature of the game is the addition of bosses. As you play, you may run into enemies that are huge in stature and even huger in difficulty. This is a great feature that helps to distinguish this game as an RPG.

While there's a lot to the system that makes it work, two elements in particular stand out. The first are the game's beautifully drawn interactive battlefields. What battlefield the player fights on is dictated by where on the overhead map the hero encounters the opposition. While each battlefield is somewhat randomized, they'll usually have a chest the player can open (in later stages of the game, these chests become a significant source of income and magical items) as well as environmental hazards such as a bee's nest that attacks both sides or a cursed cross that slows down any army near it. That makes every battle tactically unique and really helps to stave off the "same old, same old" feeling that can come from a 60-70 hour game like this. It also makes the player's choice of where to fight often as significant as what to fight with.





The second is the sheer variety of armies the player can command. The world of Endoria is filled with a ton of controllable creatures ranging from poison-spitting mobile plants to vampires and dragons. Each comes with their own set of basic abilities as well as special powers (basic archers, for example, can be upgraded with fire arrows that do damage-over-time or ice arrows that paralyze enemy units). As the player rises in power and clears out more of the world they'll be faced with more and more powerful army mixes that will require a strategist's eye in putting together a coalition of unlikely army units to stop. Players will also acquire the ability to command "Spirits of Rage," four super-powerful units with different powers that can be leveled up separately and then employed at strategically critical moments.

I was very impressed with the amount of visual beauty that could be created without using too much graphical power. The game is fully 3-dimensional with tons of vibrant colors and flashy animations and could run on the highest settings on my cheap, mid-range 9600 GT 512 MB video card (one that can be found as cheap around $60 right now after mail in rebate). Thus, the environments were beautiful and much more varied than in the Heroes series (another benefit of making an expansive interconnected world). Battles also look sharp with detailed backgrounds and smooth combat animations that can be changed from high to low speed (you’ll most definitely want to play on high because of the aforementioned problem with battle repetition).

The sound quality is top notch for the game, providing gamers with lengthy, enthralling songs throughout their adventure. Different areas trigger different songs and though most battles have the same song, some trigger different ones as well. However, I have a problem with the amount of text in the game and wish that they would have addressed it by putting voice acting into the game for some of it. I tire of reading countless amounts of text and am tempted to skip over it sometimes just to move the game along. Sure the voice acting at the beginning is a little cheesy, but I would rather it read the text to me in the game than not have it at all.



The game does have a few other minor negatives. The very randomness that ensures replayability also contributes to distinctly weird creature distribution. It's not unusual for players to see massive armies they have no hope of defeating in the game's introductory zones while end-game regions will sometimes be loaded with creampuff battles that do nothing but slow the game down. There is an automatic pilot for combat but the game desperately needs some sort of autoresolve function to avoid players sitting through five minutes of boringly unlosable combat. The crowded overland map also makes it difficult to pick up what features are interactive, what's just scenery, what's a road and what's not (this has an unfortunate consequences if the game's pathing runs the player into a battle he or she's not prepared for). The game could also use more fast-travel options and some sort of a central "bank" for purchased creatures. As it stands now, the player often has to backtrack over huge swaths of landscape to find the troops they need for a particular combat.

In general, King's Bounty is a fully fledged RPG experience with highly executed strategy elements to boot. It is very similar to the Heroes of Might & Magic series (because both series were created by the same developer and mastermind) but it separates itself by providing real time movement and deeper character building. Visuals and Sound are top notch and well surpass the problems with story development and translation issues. Overall, the game is a great addition to the world of PC strategy gaming and succeeds in being a great remake of an 18 year old game.


GEEK SCORE: 8.5/10