Heroes of Might & Magic 3 has to be the crowning moments of the series as Restoration of Erathia as well as its two add-ons, Armageddon’s Blade and Shadow of Death were all phenomenal installments to the series, bringing a seemingly unlimited amount of options and features to the table. The release of Heroes IVand its two add-ons brought about a lot of complaint by fans of the series but with the release of Heroes V, many of the factors that made Heroes 3 great were brought back to the series.
So what does all of this have anything to do about King’s Bounty: The Legend? Well, if you know nothing of the series at this point, you can at least see that it looks almost identical to the Heroes series in many ways. Battles are almost identical, movement around the map is very similar, and everything from spells to creatures have unique parallels. So how can a game be created by a different company that has so many parallels but only lacks in the overall principal of the game? The answer is that King’s Bounty was actually the predecessor to the Heroes series.
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).
So, good remakes are difficult to come by and nowadays, it takes a lot of time and effort to successfully create one (See Square Enix’s recent Final Fantasy & Dragon Quest titles on the DS for examples of successes). So, 18 years after its original release on the PC, King’s Bounty is finally receiving a true remake in King’s Bounty: The Legend. Do its mechanics hold up over 18 years and can they add enough to revive the series but not completely rewrite it? These questions will be answered in our review ofKing’s Bounty: The Legend.
First Impressions
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 :-/
Gameplay begins in a training center where you complete three different missions to show you the ropes of how to play the game. It is by no means a tutorial session but it does give you some ideas of the basic movement, skills, and battle sequences that you’ll be encountering. Finally, after completing the 3 quests, you are given your role in the kingdom based upon how well you succeed each task and the real game finally begins.
Outside the training center, you are given free mobility around the kingdom assuming you can make it past the enemies guarding certain areas. At the local castle or training grounds, you can buy items or talk to inhabitants including the King and Princess. To sum up gameplay in a sentence, you command your units around the kingdom, finding treasures, defeating enemies, and reaching new areas but the driving force of the story are the quests given by the people you meet on your journey. These quests will send you to areas to find other people, defeat certain enemies, collect items, etc.
Basic Gameplay Mechanics
Players move their hero about the map through a point and click fashion. One of the main divergences from King’s Bounty toHeroes is the change from real time to turn based. In Heroes, players’ turns are dictated by days and each hero is only allowed to move a certain amount of spaces each day. In King’s Bounty, there are no turns and thus movement is unlimited throughout your adventure.
Also, these key differences change the layout of the two games: Heroes consists of different maps that constitute as specific levels with different objectives and gameplay for each while the unlimited movement in King’s Bounty allows for an expansive world for players to explore with different interconnected areas. Essentially, both games succeed in their expansiveness but in different ways.
Simple skills such as digging or riding boats are also in both games but there are key differences between the skills between games. In Heroes, because you are bound by turns, digging constitutes an all day action that can only be done once a day and uses up all of your movement points for the day. Setting sail and landing your boat also takes a full day to carry out. However, in King’s Bounty, you can press the hot key D to dig at any time (you can even tap it as many times as you want through your adventure to find treasure). When you dig, it just makes a flashy animation but the actual ground is not affected. Embarking to and from a boat is seamless on King’s Bounty though you will be forced to buy one before you can sail.
As you move around, you’ll encounter everything from NPCs and treasures to boats, buildings, and battles. You can talk with NPCs to get countless amounts of dialogue and choose from a number of responses to dictate which quests you receive and how you carry out those quests. For instance, at one time, the mill keeper hasn’t been seen for weeks. You investigate by going to his house only to find that he has been turned into a zombie. According to your own preferences, you can choose to buy his story that he actually is a zombie and help him out, or you can choose to kill him through disbelief. It is these choices that make for true variance from game to game (and the fact that the location and strength of enemies is randomized each time you play through the game).
You will also be forced to fight a good many battles on your quest, which are triggered whenever you run into an enemy on the map. Battles start each set of troops on opposite ends of a hexagonal grid (similar to chess but with hexagons). Players command their troops to move, attack, and defend as they strategically try to defeat their enemy. These battles are almost entirely like the ones from the Heroes series where players can use a spell every turn and each of their troops can move only once per turn but there are a few subtle differences as well.
For one, action is based upon action points: a unit has only so many action points so if he has 3, he can only move 2 spaces and then attack, rather than move 3 and attack at the end. This is a detriment to hand to hand combating creatures from the Heroes game but gives a nice advantage to shooters (who can now move a few spaces and shoot in the same turn).
Another subtle difference is that items and obstacles appear on the battlefield that can actually act towards swaying a battle. Items such as chests can be attained for the gold or artifact held within while explosive barrels can be targeted to injure troops in surrounding areas. There are even objects that act on their own such as statues that curse nearby enemies and hives that send swarms of wasps at a random enemy (from either side of the battlefield).
Battles are won by defeating all of the enemy troops. There are no options of surrendering or retreating in King’s Bounty as you are only controlling one main character. This makes saving and the auto save feature very important as a 50+ hour adventure could bring some dangerous obstacles your way.
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.
Creatures
As with the Heroes series, there is a whole slew of creatures in the game (81 to be exact if I counted correctly) that can be fought and even recruited to join your army. You begin the game with a simple set of creatures featuring a few class specific ones (paladin starts with mainly human troops such as swordsmen, bowmen, priests and peasants while the warrior starts with a few human troops as well as bears, and wolves). Acquiring different troops can be done in many different ways, including buying them at different creature dwellings and markets, as well as finding hostile creatures that are willing to join your party in lieu of the impending doom you are about to inflict upon them.
Creatures can do anything from hand to hand combat, firing spells and arrows at their enemies, and casting helpful spells of their own. Each creature has its own set of stats including attack, defense, initiative, speed, health, and damage as well as its own set of unique skills such as no enemy retaliation or high resistance to physical damage (again paralleling Heroes). One change to note between this game and Heroes is that morale affects the overall attack, defense, and probability of getting a critical attack rather than giving the unit an extra turn. It is subtle changes like these that make the two games separate enough to be their own.
One major improvement in this game is that each creature has more special talents that they can do in battle. For instance, bears have a skill called running that allows them to receive +2 to movement for one turn. Another skill of the bear is Hibernation, the ability to fall asleep to recover its health. The amount of secondary skills for troops makes choosing an army for each different battle a much more strategic process, as you are only allotted 5 types of troops in combat at any time.
Character Development
You only command one hero through the entirety of your experience so you’d better plan out your character building if you don’t want to be disappointed on high levels (similar situation with MMORPGS). This has its disadvantages as having only one character takes away from the strategy elements of choosing the right team and it also presents problems if you wish to develop your character differently from the moves you’ve already allotted. However, the advantages are that you get a better sense of story and connection with the main character and the amount of customization is more focused and thus more expansive.
As there are many similarities between the two games, characters have many of the same stats in King’s Bounty as in the Heroes series. On the character status screen, you’ll notice the same primary skills such as Attack (increases overall attack power of troops), Defense (Increases troops’ ability to resist attacks), and Intellect (Increases power and duration of spells). You can also equip artifacts to increase the skills of your troops as well as these primary skills (like in Heroes).
However, there are new skills of leadership (sets a cap on the amount of troops you can recruit from each creature type) and Spirits of Rage (Used for summoning creatures in battle and increases chance of critical attacks by your units). Differences in each class affect these stats accordingly: Warriors have high attack and spirits of rage points but low defense, intellect, and mana; Paladins have the highest leadership with an average amount of the rest of the primary skills; Magi have high intellect and mana but low stats in the other categories.
Skills are the most notable change to the series from the original and from other Heroes games. The skill tree looks identical to the one from the online RPG Diablo II (aside from different skills) and gaining skills intuitively resembles the way you would do so in an MMORPG. You gain different runes (Might, Mind, and Magic) by gaining levels or by finding them around the map or from quests. It is these runes that are expended to learn new skills for your hero.
Skills are separated into three different types as well: Might, Mind, and Magic. Might skills are most prominent in the skill tree of a warrior while the other two are lacking for him. Mages are on the opposite end of the spectrum while Paladins receive more might and mind skills than magic. It is these distinct differences along with the randomization of enemies that give the players the option of replaying this lengthy game a second time.
Presentation
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.
I have mixed emotions about the game’s story. I like the fact that so much emphasis is put upon the overall gameplay but I sometimes can’t get past the fact that I don’t feel like I’m accomplishing much on my quest. Sure, there are key points in the game that make you feel like you’re making progress in your career as a knight but overall I feel like the story is so secondhand that it doesn’t even play a factor.
In Heroes, New World Computing succeeded through their use of quests to separate gameplay with small segments of video to drive the story along. Each quest had a different motive and players got the feeling that they were making progress through the game while their actions affected the events of the story. However, in King’s Bounty, the lack of videos, voice acting, and the emphasis of story within countless amounts of text certainly takes away from the experience. Plus, the 50+ hours of gameplay with little breaks only cultivates this problem. And, to top things off, the translation is a little off here or there, featuring incomprehensible bouts of grammar and some noticeable typos as well.
Fun Factor & Value
So the best question one might have is whether this game is worth their time. If you’re into strategy games, King’s Bounty is right up your alley. It does lose points in its inability to provide a multiplayer experience (though there really is no possible way to pull it off with this style of game) as most strategy games contain this experience but still, the game has an expansive amount of gameplay to behold, nonetheless. If you’re into lengthy games that provide tons of customization and character building, and you enjoy repeating your experience to test new skills, heroes, and strategies, this game has all of the above options.
With an MSRP of $39.99 this is very fairly priced for a PC game. I would say that because of the game’s expansiveness and replayability, it is most certainly a game worth your time (though Heroes still gets a few extra points for its top notch multiplayer experience). Also, I enjoyed the game thoroughly because of its strong execution of the strategy and RPG elements necessary to hook a gamer to its format. The lack of story did keep me from playing for extended periods at a time but its varied environments and quests are what kept me playing through the game.
Summary
After seeing King’s Bounty at both E3 2007 and 2008, I immediately made my own personal impressions, wondering if Atari and 1C could pull off a Heroes like strategy game that was played in real time without multiplayer. I was intrigued and excited to play a game similar to the sister series but was also reserved due to my suspicions that those key elements would hurt the overall experience of the game. After playing King’s Bounty for myself and experiencing the similar overall experience, I can say that 1C has succeeded in making a great remake to the original game and making a title that both separates itself from and contains enough parallels with the Heroes series to provide an enthralling adventure.
