King's Bounty: The Legend
 

King's Bounty: The Legend is a Real-time / Turn-based Strategy with RPG elements. In a fairy tale fantasy world of fearless knights, evil mages, wise kings and beautiful princesses the player controls a hero. Leading their character through the game world, exploring it, commanding armies in battle and accomplishing various quests can mean great reward or huge defeats. Gameplay is divided into two major sections: adventure mode and battle mode. While playing in adventure mode the gamer controls their character in real-time. With several classes available at the start of a new game, the player moves through the adventure map seeking various treasures, fighting monsters and accomplishing quests tasked to him by the local stewards. Once in battle mode the gamer assumes the role of a war chief, leading his troops in tactical turn-based combat. Battles take place on land or sea, in dungeons or castles or even in some items! The hero himself doesn't participate in the combat, but can assist his troops by casting spells or summoning different creatures.
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I've been playing this gem for almost a week now. It is a really good game, totally recommended

Thoroughly enjoying it myself as well, the real time is a refreshing change from the HoMM games, and the skill & leadership systems work well for me too :)

I played it for a bit today and I'm really impressed. I could elaborate, but I'd rather go play it instead. ;)

too much like HOMM.

The HOMM series was inspired by the original King's Bounty to begin with.

Indeed. King's Bounty was first, then HoMM. I do like both series though (well I didn't like HoMM 4 but who did?)

I missed the boat with this game. When I first installed, I figured it was another HOMM clone and dismissed it. Recently I was bored with nothing to play and decided to try this one again based on all the reviews that called it a CRPG. WOW! This is a really outstanding game, and is kind of a CRPG/Adventure hybrid; it reminds me a little bit of the earlier Ultimas. It's simply excellent, but it took a while to understand the nuances and how the game works overall. I'm hoping for an expansion/sequel. The only downside is the stilted text dialogue; hopefully if there is a sequel/expansion the designers will hire somebody to do a more polished English translation.

IIRC, there's already an expansion in the works to do with a Princess…google it up! I also need to give this a shot I suppose…grab it on some digital distro then hopefully at some later point this year I'll have a capable PC to run it and others.

It's ok, I know you people living just South of me, in that city of scarlet and grey, are a little slow. ;)

Seriously though, KB might have been the best game released in 2008.

No need for google, there are already several reports on this here.

The turn-based combats of this game are just awesome!
Not only because it is generally well implemented and most of the time challenging, but also because they give nearly every possible type of unit its own tactical edge by adding well-designed special abilities which are mostly unique, not of the "inflicts blah to blah fire/ice/shadow/whatever damage" run-of-the-mill varieties.

Although I've heard (and my rather short second attempt of a playthrough as a mage supported this) that mage is less interesting, because the additional spell power (compared to warrior) often results in favoring just plain damage spells in combat.

The only people that are slow are the UM guys chasing after Ohio State players running towards the end zone.;)

Ouch. Just try to survive at least 1 round of the NCAA basketball tournament next season. :p

Alright, point taken, and in the interest of avoiding a threadjack, I call a truce.;)

This game, honestly,… is the best game I've played in the last ten years.