Interested in King's Bounty!

[shepcroft]

Hiya,

I recently stumbled on this game by accident.
I honestly never heard of it before.

It looks realy interesting and I'm considering buying King's Bounty: Crossworlds GOTY, but I do have some questions about it...

1: Do you need to have played the previous game (the legend) to understand the story that evolves in Armored Princess?

2: Any levels of difficulty?

3: Lot's of character customization? (spells, armies, etc)

4: Average playtime?

5: Does it have a decent tutorial?

Thanks to anyone who takes the time helping me out. =]

[Sir Whiskers]

TL = King's Bounty the Legend
AP = King's Bounty Armored Princess
CW = King's Bounty Crossworlds

Note: CW includes a revised AP campaign, plus some other mini-"campaigns" that are unrelated. All my comments below refer to the AP/CW campaign.

1. No, KBTL is not required. The story in AP/CW does build on the earlier game's story, and there are some interesting elements that they carried over (like the huge fish from the underground sea), but you can enjoy AP/CW just fine without playing TL first.

Also, just IMO, but I feel that AP/CW is better balanced, with better pacing, than TL. TL sometimes was a real grind, with too many battles that seemed to have no real purpose.

2. Yes, Easy, Normal, Hard, Impossible. I recommend starting a game on Normal, but save the game as soon as it lets you. Run around for a while, get comfortable with how the game plays, then if you want, reload from the beginning. With some effort, you should be able to win your first game on Normal. After completing a game or two, you'll be able to handle the higher difficulty levels, if you want.

Easy is much easier than Normal, Hard is a bit more difficult, Impossible is a LOT more difficult.

3. You choose your class when you start the game, which places some limits on how your character will develop, especially stats and skills, but you still have a number of important choices and development strategies. Your choice of units will be limited in the beginning, but expands significantly by the mid-game. Ditto on spells, though sometimes you get very lucky with a critical spell early. The game has a great deal of randomness to it. Be prepared to adapt your strategies to the specific units, items, and spells that are available in any particular game.

4. Never measured it, but minimum 50+ hours to finish, at a guess? Of course, I tend to take my time, so others may be able to complete a game more quickly.

And with three classes, plus the different difficulty levels, plus the randomness, plus various mods...you'll get a lot of gameplay out this game.

5. Yes. There is a training area that you can choose to enter soon after the game starts. You'll get some minor items, a few scrolls, and some guidance on using units and your pet dragon in fights. There's a lot to learn in addition to what you get in the training area, especially concerning effectively using different units, spells, and skills. But the training area will show you all the basics just fine.

I'm a huge fan of games like Heroes of Might and Magic, and this game is a worthy competitor for my time. Highly, highly recommended.

[shepcroft]

Ahhh awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time answering my questions.

I'm going to buy the GOTY edition. =]
Looking forward to it.

[Renevent]

In my humble opinion the new King's Bounty is one of the best PC games released in the past few years. It's got tons of customization (rpg systems, army composition, items, ect), beautiful graphics and music, fantastic tactical battles, huge world to explore, tons of quests to complete, great sense of humor, and it's just a joy to play. I've probably played between all the different version 150 hours of the game.

I know you already said you were getting it, I'd figure I would post anyways :P