I hate to pimp another company's game on these boards, but I have to say that I'm so hopelessly addicted to HOMMV that it leaves little time for other games. It's definitely the A+ title in our favorite genre for the moment.

Having said that, it is so totally amazing that 1C has burst onto the scene with their own excellent TBS games and promise even more! It used to be that I scoured the net for good TBS games and wound up playing the old ones and suffering through the ancient graphics, but now there are so many choices that I'm actually struggling to find time to get to them all.

I would say that important fact is that KB (original) had square (or rectangle-like) battle ground, but it was heroes that started with hexagonal battleground.

but on the other hand, even when M&M had very rich monster list, the monster (unit type/level) was very strongly sourced from Kings Bounty (like peasants, archers, pikemen, swordsman... or sprites, ogres... )

Very interesting combination and very succesfull, not a lot of games can say that their names and titles are still known (after nearly 20 years)

My point of view is that Katauri had shown typical Blizzard-like approach to creating games. They are not inventing some new amazing features, not exploring new horizonts, but taking the best of all games, adding something new and releasing a great game:) i think everyone can see that they make their games with love, ot only just for the purpose of getting more money

I wouldn't say that Kings bounty equals HoMM. Sure they share the same heritage, but i believe that kings bounty has struck out quite well on it's own with plenty of good ideas.. some which i wouldn't mind seeing in HoMM VI ;)

I think this is a very good comparison. King's Bounty is not 100% innovative (though it does some interesting things), but it's got the extremely high level of polish one expects from a developer like Blizzard.

HOMM is my favourite series of all time. King's Bounty is also a very good game and will certainly appeal to most HOMM fans but the games are quite different. I would like to see some respawning and restocking, random quests, maps etc to give it more replayability.

There is one more element to that history.

Heroes of Might and Magic is the offspring of King's Bounty and Might & Magic, also created by New World Computing. the idea was to take the whole RPG thing of M&M and merge it with the strategic element of KB into a new gaming experience. The fact that HOMM still has so many adherents indicates that it worked. I played both on a Sega Genesis a LOOOONG time ago.

Played and loved HOMM 1 thru 4,, 5 was a big disappointment to me.., the Castle setup is now boring, slow and confusing, and the game plays out very sluggish compared to the first four games, HOMM was always a quick,fun time for strategy gamers and that is gone to me...
King's Bounty plays out like a RPG , no campaigns or scenarios, and done in real time (except for combat) . It strength is in the RPG elements but also adds great visuals and options in it's turn-based combat as compared to HOMM..
It's differences are that you can't accomplish a full game in one sitting and only have 3 characters to choose from and that I think that hurts it's target audience ( HOMM fans ) and replayability. Maybe a good Expansion pack will help..
I enjoy playing it but will hold my final judgment till I totally play out a character.. :)

I absolutely love Heroes, I have all of the Heroes games, and I even like HOMMV. HOMMIV is the disappointment for me, but I still bought the expansions and played it for the better part of a year. It's not a bad game, it just doesn't fit with the series in my opinion. I did like the way the Heroes themselves were individual units and could be built to fight on their own or even band together in the same party. Really if the creature spawning in castles was fixed to once a week like in the other HOMM games, and some other smaller things were fixed such as the castle battle arena setup, it would live up to the rest of the series. I do have to say that while HOMM3 is great, HOMM2 is and will always be my favorite. I'd like to challenge anyone to an online game of HOMM2 anytime!

Anyway enough about HOMM, this is the King's Bounty forum! I started off the HOMM series with the original that came out in 1995, and since then had heard of King's Bounty, but by that time, the original HOMM had lost its playability due to age in the way some games do. (I used to play Dune II a lot on the Genesis as well, but after C&C it was just too hard to play anymore!) I kind of felt that I'd missed out on KB, but my friend gave this game to me as a gift last week, and told me that "They remade King's Bounty with the Heroes 5 engine." That description wasn't really accurate, but I installed the game immediately and started playing as soon as the company went home. I have barely stopped playing it since! I really love adventure games, and games of all genres have just been getting easier and easier as time has gone by, so I've had a really hard time finding games that I like. I've pretty much resigned to playing ATLUS's JRPGs and HOMM. One of my other favorite series, King's Field, probably is never going to continue, but after all this time I've already logged on KB:L, it doesn't look like I'm anywhere near even the midway point in it. I will gladly go back and replay this as the other characters and try to do some of the quests I messed up right this time!

OK sorry for the first post Wall of Text, if you don't want to read all of that, I'd just like to say that I love King's Bounty because it is old-school style and difficulty, but with nice visuals and extras. I haven't found an adventure game that was done well in a LONG time, most Zeldas excluded. :D

HOMM V is a good game, but it really begins to shine with the Tribes of the East standalone expansion. It really is worth buying.

So far, I have only played the demo of King's Bounty: The Legend and it seems really fun. I would like to buy the full version, but am waiting for somebody to clarify the DRM-scheme used, notably whether the disk-based version of the game requires online activation or not (I don't buy games that require online activation out of principle no matter how good they are). I hope it doesn't need online activation, because it seems like a really great game.