King's Bounty: Crossworlds - New Expansion Announced

Today we received word from 1C that a new expansion to King's Bounty: Armored princess is in development named Crossworlds. The biggest news in this epansion is probably that a game editor will be available allowing new content to be added.
Here is the press release:

King's Bounty: Crossworlds in Development
Expansion Pack Announced for the Multi-Award Winning Title

MOSCOW, Russia-May 24, 2010 -Leading Eastern and Central European publisher 1C Company and Katauri Interactive today announced the development of King's Bounty: Crossworlds, a stand-alone expansion to the award-winning King's Bounty: Armored Princess.
The expansion features two new campaigns and a massive expansion to King's Bounty: Armored Princess, dozens of new quests, new items, spells and creatures. Fans of the King's Bounty series will be thrilled to see their requests were answered as King's Bounty: Crossworlds will also include a full-scale game editor. As in the multi-award winning 1st game, the player has many options to battle both new and old enemies. Various new skills and abilities, as well as a flying steed, will help to overcome the hordes attacking the kingdom. The Princess is also accompanied by her tamed dragon, at the very beginning it is small, but its abilities develop steadily until it becomes an incredible ally. The dragon will do its best to protect the Princess during the battles, starting with simple attacks and finishing with fire breathing and volcano summoning.
King's Bounty: Crossworlds features:

• 2 brand new campaigns (Champion of the Arena with boss battles in a gladiatorial tournament and Defender of the Crown with battles in unique tactical arenas with a random selection of enemies and allies).
• Massive expansion of the original King's Bounty: Armored Princess - Orcs on the March, featuring new units, spells and quests.
• New creatures to slay or use in combat.
• 70 new items, 8 new item sets, including one for the pet dragon and 3 component artifacts.
• 7 new quests allow players to continue their journey.
• 50 new abilities and skills.
• 13 new spells.
• Game Editor for King's Bounty: Armored Princess.

The King's Bounty series are adventure games with tactical turn-based battles and RPG elements unfolding in a rich fantasy world. The character and their army of companions travel across a huge continent, visiting dozens of different locations all connected to each other. Communicating with NPCs, collecting resources and recruiting an army the player will control their character in real-time mode, while all battles take place in classic turn-based mode with a strong emphasis on tactical elements. King's Bounty: Crossworlds release is scheduled for Q3 2010. More information about the game can be found at www.kings-bounty.com

More information.

BAH, really annoying, I dislike "expand the game I already played" kind of expansions…. next time I might wait to see whatever the game will be expanded until I play through it.

Just like the others, it is destined for a Gamersgate sale for me. Really need to get around to them one of these days…

Initially I felt - "woo!", then read further and felt - "sigh…"

I enjoyed both the original and the expansion so I will be picking this up whenever it is released. I hope that the two new campaigns are of the same quality and length of the other two games, and an expansion to KB:AP is welcome to me too. With any luck there will be some good user created campaigns with the editor.

It's the rare game that leaves me wanting more when I am finished. Many of the ones I have played become a grind to the end, just wanting to complete them. Both of the KB games I thoroughly enjoyed all the way through.

If you read the descriptions of the 2 new campaigns, you will see that they are nothing like the handcrafted originals…

The descriptions of the two new campaigns sound a bit disappointing to me. I'll still be keeping an eye on this though, just because of how good the first two games were…

Definitely!

I really like Katauri's work so far, but I was hoping to see some new stuff from them, instead of another KB expansion.
Let's say like… a spiritual successor for Space Rangers 2.

I still haven't finished King's Bounty (vanilla), forget Armored Princess.

I just got bored of cliched crap storyline and characters and the elves area was so boring that I actually dozed of a few times running around doing same thing over and over again.

Some games should NOT be over 30-40 hrs max (I have at the moment 69 hrs playtime in KB and nowhere near completion), mostly cause they offer nothing more than combat combat and more combat (it isn't like they are winning award for ground breaking storyline) as a solution to every possible quest, except for few odd moments where you can talk out of battle or something.

Anyways, what was surprising for me was that the game came with no in-game tutorial (which meant I learned it by trial and error, not that hard but cmon, not even basic combat hint in-game?), and yes, I was pretty much new to these games (hexagonal turn based stuff).

It did introduce me to games like Elven Legacy though..

Originally Posted by ortucis
Anyways, what was surprising for me was that the game came with no in-game tutorial (which meant I learned it by trial and error, not that hard but cmon, not even basic combat hint in-game?), and yes, I was pretty much new to these games (hexagonal turn based stuff)..

Huh? KB did have a short tutorial at the beginning. Maybe it's possible that you skipped it without realizing.

When are they going to start on Heroes 6 and Might and Magic 10?

Originally Posted by JDR13
Huh? KB did have a short tutorial at the beginning. Maybe it's possible that you skipped it without realizing.

Err, it did?

Oh well, like I said, I figured it out while playing anyways. Hopefully one day I will continue the game and later get the expansions.

The game is certainly almost only about combat and some exploration, even if I love the games I cannot deny you are right.