RPGWatch Feature - King's Bounty Review

While we get our RPG of the Year awards together, Magerette brings us a review of Katauri's delightful King's Bounty: The Legend. Here's an excerpt:

The core role-playing elements that stand out in Kings Bounty are threefold; skills, items and quests. Many games including most arpgs have the first two down, but flunk on the third. Not here, where the quest system is alive and well and quirky, with both a perfect willingness to replay the golden Fedex oldies like clearing the cellar of rats (or in this case, a garden of overly-aggressive plant material) or to work in some of it's own twists on the usual, like helping the dwarves improve the quality of their wartime brew, coercing the portrait of the griffin king out of an extortionate artist, bribing your way into prison, or swindling a scamming pirate. NPCs abound, and conversations range from the sublimely nonsensical to the ridiculous, but seldom are they without the opportunity to pursue an avenue to wealth and/or experience and thus feed your need for checking off each NPC’s box in a satisfying and occasionally mind-boggling way.

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Nice job, Magerette! I haven't gone far with KB but I look forward to spending more time with it soon.

Great review. Exactly my thoughts on the game too. Though I didn't even notice the translation problems too often, it was definatly a lot better than the usual. I might be a little more forgiving because I just recently replayed a little of Prince of Qin.

I loved the humor in the game and how magic items sometimes came with a moral. I really didn't understand that I had to battle my shoes to increase its moral until later in the game. I thought it was just for upgrading them.

The babies were a nice touch too, though all they really are are magic items. I'm not sure real babies give you a +2 spell holding ability But it was a nice touch and something I hadn't seen before.

King's Bounty was easily the biggest (positive)surprise of 2008. I eagerly await the sequel\exspansion.

What is up with the format of the review? I got a bunch of if's and strange formatting problems which prevented me to read it.

It looks fine in Firefox and Chrome to me.

Edit. Ah, IE shows some stuff the others ignore. It will take me a few minutes to clean it up.

Edit 2: Better?

Good job, madame!

yep, looks good now! and a good review too! Good job.

Well written! Bit long for my taste, but eh.. it's a complex game.

A well explained review in compact detail from a gamer perspective and with no fluff, couldn't be better.

I award Magerette that rare and much coveted standard of merit,

the "Gamer-Reviewer Gold Star" -

Since I never played any HOM&M this game was like a breath of fresh air,in an average year for RPGs apart from Witcher EE and the first hours of F3 this game was the best game I played.I'm definitely gonna try HOM&M after Kings Bounty.

Great Review Magerette.

So you've been secretly lusty pirate wenching eh?

great review indeed. In some place there is a mention of 4 wives… I think you can also marry the daughter of the dwarf king and the pirate chick

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
The babies were a nice touch too, though all they really are are magic items. I'm not sure real babies give you a +2 spell holding ability But it was a nice touch and something I hadn't seen before.

No, it's true. My first baby gave me a bonus to night time operations, and the second +6 inventory slots in my car. Unfortunately, they also include a major income penalty.

You are lucky to have received a well-done, pre-patched version. I got this one when it just came out in Russia half a year before the worldwide release and it was spoiled by show-stopper bugs and weekly patches that forced me to restart the game. I really enjoyed it, but got ultimately tired and never completed the game to the end.

Thanks so much, everyone, for all the kind words. Your opinion as readers is very important to me. But it wasn't hard to say positive things about this game—the hard part was reining in my fanboism.

@ drum—that's a shame. The version I played was absolutely not buggy. Sorry you had to beta test it, but maybe someday you might reconsider the fully patched up game.

@wolfing , you're correct, there are more than four choices for wife—I forgot completely about the really….plain…dwarf princess. And after the boss battle and a further trip to slay her current fiance, you can carry off Miss Mirabella , of course. I was being true to my Frog wife at the time with her +100% attack for snakes and spiders. What a woman.

@woges: Arrrrgh!

Very nice review, though I think it deserved another 1/2 star. I'll just chalk it up to RPGWatch's astronomically high critical standards.

I have to disagree with your assessment of "lengthy turn-based battles" though. King's Bounty has the fastest turn-based combat I have ever played.

best game in years indeed

Great game and very nice review

Originally Posted by pnutz
Very nice review, though I think it deserved another 1/2 star. I'll just chalk it up to RPGWatch's astronomically high critical standards.

I have to disagree with your assessment of "lengthy turn-based battles" though. King's Bounty has the fastest turn-based combat I have ever played.

I agree, my definition of a lengthy TB battle was born at the time of the original King's Bounty when I was stuck at the end of a battle with a single ogre vs. a single enemy ogre .