King's Bounty

King's Bounty is a strategy game written by Jon van Canegh, the later creator of the famous Heroes of Might & Magic series. As you can easily guess, the described product is their protoplastic. The player starts the adventure by choosing one of the four heroes (Paladin, Knight, Barbarian or Sorceress) and determining the level of difficulty, which translates into the amount of time we have to recover the scepter (from 200 to 900 days). The game has a completely non-linear character. Although the main goal is clearly defined and only by gaining an artifact you can finish the game, it depends only on us what way we will go.

Before our hero stands an opening of a huge land, inhabited by both friendly and hostile beings (the latter is definitely more). Fortunately, we are not completely defenceless. In the castles scattered here and there you can rent an army that will be used to exterminate your opponents. Every battle in King's Bounty is divided into rounds, in which we move our units alternately with the opponent. The player has at his disposal conventional warriors, close combat units, distance shooting units and flying units. The military is determined by a number of factors that determine its combat value and speed. How good tactics turn out to be on the battlefield determines our success in the game to a large extent. If we win spectacular victories, we will gain gold, which in turn will be used to buy another batch of the army. You have to remember that although the skirmishes are not very complicated at first, later the level of difficulty increases exponentially and you have to sweat to defeat the biggest opponents.

King's Bounty as for the protoplastic Heroes of Might & Magic makes an extremely decent impression. Nice, colourful graphics are almost the hallmark of Van Caneghem's production and the described product is not inferior to the younger brothers (provided of course we take into account the correction for the year of production). The only drawback is the lack of possibility to operate the game with the mouse. Given the large number of commands and options, this omission is very glaring.

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Last updated on August 14, 2015