King's Bounty - My Zombie Wife & The Belt O'Doom

Not a review but Rock, Paper, Shotgun's Alec Meer is having so much fun with King's Bounty, he wanted to tell a couple of stories:

First, the belt story. I found a belt! This was excellent news, as armour for my main character is rare and expensive. Better yet, the belt, apparently, could be upgraded. Right-click to upgrade, it said. So I did. I expected the game to tell me I was lacking Rare Crystal X or something, but I was surprised. “Are you sure you want to fight the keepers?”, it asked. “Er,” I said. “Yes? But I thought I was upgrading my be…”
I’m fighting inside my belt, at war with mystic guardians for the right to build a better belt. Unfortunately, it turned out said mystic guardians outnumbered my own meagre, low-level army by 10 to 1, so I was roundly thrashed within seconds. Now, in any other fight in the game, if all your troops get knobbled, you continue - respawning at the main town and receiving some sympathy cash to go hire some new guys with. This time, I got a game over screen. I was perma-killed by my own belt. Man! That’s never happened to me before. The lesson here: never upgrade your belt.
(Inevitably, I tried again later, when I was several levels higher. And I won! Hundreds of my troops were killed, but my belt is now 1 better at defence. And really, that’s all that matters.)

More information.

Wow. Reading that little article makes me want to play the game, which is rare these days. All the more so because I have been burned so many times by the Russians. But if this one becomes available for $30 or less, I'm in.

is this the same game?
http://www.webhallen.com/prod.php?id=86265

Originally Posted by Lemonhead
is this the same game?
http://www.webhallen.com/prod.php?id=86265

Yes…….

Yep, this game is FANTASTIC.

Firstly, its not a storyline game… Its just a "game". It works on loads of original innovation and content. Its made by developers who are have clearly undertaken the task as a labor of love and actually played the thing themselves.

If you've ever enjoyed a game of HOMAM then this game will appeal to you. One of the better releases this decade and has even inspired new gameplay ideas for my own computer games.

Brilliant stuff.

PS. those upgrade battles are tough, huh

***HELPFUL SPOILER***

so how much is it worth losing to get the upgrade? well, heres the final stage of a couple of items ive upgraded. im a level 15 mage atm who casts an ice snake for about 2500.

archmage staff: +5int, 20% lightning damage
archdruid staff +4 int, 50% beast damage

Those were the hard battles, anyway. That archmage staff battle you'll want at least level 15 for. i did it at 13 losing my whole army, just winning with Necro Call and summon phoenix.

***unrelated and offtopic extra info!***

i hate racing games, but Dysneys "Pure" is just REALLY good, wholesome fun. Fantastic game, even to me, and i dont do sports/racing games.

I guess it has RPG qualities when you build your ATV with 30 differnt stat altering parts then play the role of a kid with a deathwish hehe.

I think Alec Meer understandably got a little bit carried away with KB:TL - so much so that in his eagerness to disclose his finding of a zombie wife he may not have realised the error of his ways.

"Chastity" bore it's origins from when the knights spent many nights away from home on crusades and realising that in their absence "lovers" were emerging from the woodwork - hence the chastity belt with lock and key was invented.

I firmly believe that in KB:TL the hero must not go chasing unchaste ladies but must somehow not succumb but suppress the temptation, an extremely hard to resist situation knowing that the extra boost a wife can give to hero's stat's isn't something to be rejected too easilly.

I would guess to choose a wife or wives must be done with care so that any children will be in allegience to the kings domain. This along with morale boost artifacts will keep troop morale in the plusses (+) a decisive edge in battle. Choosing a non-alligned wife and the morale boost drops from neutral to negative (-) as depicted by a or an stat' icon.

I can't wait to get my hands on this game and search for the elusive and alligned child bearing wife.

This belt story sounds like an April's Fool joke to me - only with the difference that it isn't April - yet.

This sounds extremely good … I haven't seen this kind of weird concepts in ages !

And, just like in real life, be sure you're marrying the right girl, getting a divorce is COSTLY.
Wait until you get your kids though I just wish their mother would let me trade their spots for artifacts

After HOMM V, i was pretty sure id never buy another TB game again (i just got bored!), but after playing the cool demo then reading this article - I'm so there.

Between the idea of a zombie wife and a little sub-battle inside a belt Im sold, Ive gotta get this game!

Yep, I got her too. I couldn't stop laughing

This game has far more RPG elements than HoMM, Disciples or even the original King's Bounty. This game really is a tactical strategy(combat)/rpg hybrid (with real time elements), it has so many quests.

What makes this even better than say, HoMMV for example, is there seems to be an effort made to keep it simple and therefore a lot less buggy.

I've heard the new demo has alternate races you can play but I don't see that in the game yet.

For those looking to pick this up and having a hard time finding it I found it at Best Buy for $39.

How does this compare to the AOW games?
Damn they were good. They were so good. Pretty much best tb strategy games I've played.

This game is on play.com available for pre-order (?) also with a collector's edition option.

I don't know how it might compare to the AOW games, since i didn't play the demo yet.

And perhaps I won't do because of the copy protection of the demo.

I once thought that demos were free.

Now, they're protected, too.

Like commercial software, no more Freeware.

The collectors edition contents:
* King's Bounty The Legend -game
* Black King's Bounty -t-shirt
* King's Bounty -posters
* The Art of King's Bounty -book
* King's Bounty -Bonus-DVD

*drools*

Sounds costly, too.

Not sure if its true or not, I havent read "official" confirmations but some say on the forums that the new updated Demo does not have any SecuRom protection.. It is currently avaible from.. http://www.gamershell.com/download_32652.shtml
and http://www.worthdownloading.com/down…=1963&id=16403

Possibly other places but most of the others and the ones directly linked from the main site often lead to the old demo…

Oh and the post about updated demo on their forum in case you want to read it.

http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showthread.php?t=4201

Just got the game last night and played a few hours this evening. This is basically what I wanted Heroes of Might and Magic 4 to be. There are differences but there are some very good similarities with HOMM 3. I'm loving it so far.

It's nice to find a game that I don't have buyer's remorse with after an hour of playing it. (Most recently, why didn't I listen to my gut instincts and stay away from Spore? Why?? Whyyaaagghh <sobs>)

Originally Posted by Zakhary
How does this compare to the AOW games?
Damn they were good. They were so good. Pretty much best tb strategy games I've played.
.

Did you play Master of Magic? If you enjoyed AOW I think you'd enjoy that.

I jsut got two more options for wives. If I wnated to abandon my four children I could try them out.

One of them is just as crazy as the Zombie wife so I won't give a spoiler. I will say its the uniquely Russian twist on an old story.

Anyone playing the US release? It's on sale this week at Circuit City for $29.99, I was thinking of grabbing a copy.

I was curious if the game is really as good as it looks in some of the videos I've seen. I played the original demo for about an hour but I wasn't exactly blown away by it. Does the game get better once you're deeper into it?

Originally Posted by JDR13
Anyone playing the US release? It's on sale this week at Circuit City for $29.99, I was thinking of grabbing a copy.

I was curious if the game is really as good as it looks in some of the videos I've seen. I played the original demo for about an hour but I wasn't exactly blown away by it. Does the game get better once you're deeper into it?

Aren't we all playing the US release? Well, I am. The game is good. It's great. It's awesome. It's beautiful. It's fun. It's funny. It's cool. It's excellent. It's sweet. It's the Obama of games.
But in all seriousness, it is good.
Now, if you like turn-based strategy (or more like tactical), you'll like it. If you don't, then maybe you won't. If you didn't like the 1st hour from the demo, maybe you won't like the game. What didn't you like? I loved the game from the first minute I played it.