King’s Bounty: The Legend sends you on an adventure that featured tactical turn based combat and all the role playing elements you need to make the story your own. It’s a potent mix of real-time adventure and strategic turn based battles in this 2008 released video game title that draws inspiration from a franchise dating back to the 1990s of gaming. Ultimately your role in this fantasy themed world is one of a treasure seeker on behalf of the king that pulls players into a deeper plot to save the king daughter and in time prevent the destruction of the entire world.
The fantasy world of King’s Bounty: The Legend is filled with knights, mages and powerful kings where you’ll play as the hero through exploration, combat and quests with familiar and fresh (at the time) RPG mechanics. Sworn to the king in the world of Endoria you find yourself just finishing your final exam before being sent to do the kings bidding across the land with the main quest line before your greater trial begins. Playing as Bill Gilbert who has a name that hardly bestows a hero your adventure begins following your application to work for the royal palace and passing some initial trial tests which leads you into the world of the Royal Treasure Searcher role as you chase bandits, collect taxes and complete other basic delivery tasks before tripping into something more sinister.
King’s Bounty: The Legend gameplay is split in the middle between adventure mode and battle mode that each have their own mechanics to master. While in adventure mode players will be able to freely roam the game overworld where players can explore, collect treasures around the map and engage in combat much like most role playing adventures with a mixture of main story and side quests. Meanwhile the battle mode activates when players make contact with an enemy on the overworld map and changes the game from real time to turn based tactical combat similar to that seen in the likes of Heroes of Might and Magic and provides ample opportunity to apply strategy with your selection of hero class (Mage, Warrior or Paladin).
While heroes bring their own spells that impact gameplay they are also notable for impacting how you will approach victory. Warrior’s for example are highly flexible with a range of army types and generally capable of keeping casualties to a minimum which has some similarities to the Paladin although they are better at acquiring resources from fights and even call on the enemy ranks through conversion style abilities. Lastly the Mage has the most direct attacks of any class and empowers units to make them effective regardless of their individual unit strength.
Your hero won’t generally directly fight in these turn based battles though but can influence the result. Instead you will mostly need to rely on their squads of other heroes or creatures which are recruited during your journey alongside an initial starting set of basic troops. While there are plenty of basic units like the peasant and archer that serve basic roles in your army players can eventually build up to the most powerful magical creatures King’s Bounty: The Legend has to offer with ents or griffins.
To help manage this progression pathway King’s Bounty: The Legend has an underlying resource management system where you need to manage your troops, gold and magical crystals with the latter two spent in various ways to purchase or upgrade troops to be able to face an increasingly powerful roster of enemies. Players can also use several equipment pieces on their character that are tied in closely with the game marriage system.
Summary:
- Combines real time exploration with turn based combat in a traditional RPG format.
- Select from 3 hero classes that have their own strengths and playstyles which allows you to replay the adventure several times.
- Recruit an army to fight for you and upgrade them to create your ideal strategy.
- A fantasy world of secrets, treasures, marriage and quests awaits you in the fantasy world of magic.
- An unforgiving difficulty encourages you to plan carefully before you act.
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Review Platform: PC