King's Bounty: The Legend Impressions?

persself · Post by **persself** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 5:47 pm

I really want to know how good is the manual, and does it have a tutorial.
The demo left me with a lot of questions: can you position your troops before a battle?

Peacedog · Post by **Peacedog** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 6:57 pm

persself wrote:I really want to know how good is the manual, and does it have a tutorial.
The demo left me with a lot of questions: can you position your troops before a battle?

Positioning troops before battle is doable once you invest in a skill on one of the skill trees, I can't recall which. But I remember looking over the skills and seeing something that suggested you could do it.

lch · Post by **lch** » Tue Sep 23, 2008 7:20 pm

Yes, there's a skill for it. You need to put two or three levels into somthing else first, then you can level it. Depending on how many levels you put into it, you have more options for positioning the troops. Same for finding out what's going to be in enemy stacks: there's a skill which makes you able to identify that. I think that's interesting, and I hope that each new game will either have some variation, or that there'll be additional scenarios to be downloaded later on.

The game does have a short tutorial when you begin the game, which you can opt to skip. It was enough for me. I don't know anything about the manual, but I expect it to have one.

malichai11 · Post by **malichai11** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:16 am

This game sucked me in for 6 solid hours tonight, I'm just tearing myself away so that I can go to bed. It very much has that, "just one more quest, just one more battle," goodness to it.

It's not a complicated game. Loot, level, fight, manage your armies, manage your equipment, but its fun. I played the original King's Bounty almost twenty years ago, I think, and I have only vague memories of it.

Very addictive, I recommend this to anyone who was on the fence about this sucker.

Demonix · Post by **Demonix** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 12:43 pm

Yeah, I went looking for this yesterday, but no one had it; called gamestop and found out they have it but arent putting it out until today...so I should be having lots of fun tonight!

Zork · Post by **Zork** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:09 pm

I am enjoying it also. It definitely has that "just one more quest/level/skill" pull, but there are a few things missing (when compared to HOMM) that could take this game from an 80% to 95% for me. Here's my quick list of pros/cons after 3-4 hours of playing:

PROS:

1. A new world to explore.
2. Great graphics.
3. Might/Mind/Magic skill trees give you the option to create a custom character.
4. I like the addition of the rage skills.
5. Some interesting quests (although most boil down to fedex-type quests).
6. I like the Leadership skill affecting the amount of hirelings you can control.
7. Monsters patrol a particular area/route. This makes the game feel a little more "alive" than HOMM.
8. Good "just one more quest/level/skill" pull that makes the game enjoyable.
9. Although I haven't experienced it in-game, the boss battles look very cool.

CONS:

1. No town/castle building. One of the things I enjoyed about HOMM was the strategic decisions in town building as well as laying seige to castles.
2. "Warp zones" make the world feel smaller than it really is. I'm sure it was done for technical reasons, but the continuous flow of HOMM maps made the world feel more complete.
3. As far as I know, there's only one scenario. I really enjoyed taking a character through multiple scenario stories in HOMM. Maybe I just haven't gotten there yet.
4. No random map generator (maybe in an expansion?). This has a huge impact on replayability for me.
5. Because there are no towns/catles to conquer, the game is story-driven instead of goal-driven. While not neccessarily a bad thing, it makes the game feel more linear to me.
6. As someone else stated before me: I wish the battle grids were a little larger. Having them that small takes some of the strategy out of combat.
7. I wish the AI was a little beefier. In some battles there are powder kegs in the middle of the field that act as obstacles. If you shoot them they explode and injure all troops in the vicinity. In several battles I have charged ahead with my infantry units. It would have been great to see the AI make me pay for that by shooting the powder keg and inflicting damage on my troops. It's minor, I know, but still would be cool.

I'm sure I'm missing a few pros and cons, but these are the first things that came to mind.

Happy gaming

-Zork

marcusjm · Post by **marcusjm** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:27 pm

The website mentions castle sieges though, I thought it would be like the HOMM castle battles.

You can capture hostile castes by storming them in the special castle arena. In a successful storm the ruler of the land where the castle is located may assign his deputy to the castle. Then the castle becomes a friendly one and you can buy munitions and get quests there.

Obviously it isn't as involved as AOW2/HOMM but this was never the intention of Kings of Bounty. There seems
to be multiple paths you can take later too so maybe that adds to replayability?

Zork · Post by **Zork** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 1:59 pm

marcusjm wrote:The website mentions castle sieges though, I thought it would be like the HOMM castle battles.

You can capture hostile castes by storming them in the special castle arena. In a successful storm the ruler of the land where the castle is located may assign his deputy to the castle. Then the castle becomes a friendly one and you can buy munitions and get quests there.
Obviously it isn't as involved as AOW2/HOMM but this was never the intention of Kings of Bounty. There seems
to be multiple paths you can take later too so maybe that adds to replayability?

I hope so. Again, I have only played it for 3-4 hours, so i could me missing a ton of stuff.

I guess my point is that you don't have a direct impact on how the castle is built up. It doesn't feel like it's *my* castle. It's just a store where I can buy army units, scrolls, and some magic items. That's one aspect of HOMM I really enjoyed. It felt like it was my castle and I had to defend it against intruders.

For all the cons I've listed, I'm still having a blast with the game.

-Zork

Zork · Post by **Zork** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 2:52 pm

Here's a nice thread from the official forum with some good starting tips.

-Zork

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:17 pm

Just checking...this game is infected with Starforce, right?

marcusjm · Post by **marcusjm** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 4:40 pm

It just uses the activation method. No drivers are installed.

Compared to SECURE ROM I am almost nostalgic about Starforce.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 5:29 pm

Doesn't matter. I want Starforce dead, and anyone who does business with those criminals can fail right along with them.

EddieA · Post by **EddieA** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 6:28 pm

Gamespy has posted their review. They gave it a 4.5/5, but some things they say have me worried. "a 60-70 hour game"..."The overworld's resources are not unlimited, either. As players fight and lose troops with every battle, scarcity can becomes a reality". If they mean that one playthrough takes 60 hours, it would suck to get tens of hours into the game, only to discover that it's not possible to win due to lack of resources or enemies you're capable of defeating.

marcusjm · Post by **marcusjm** » Wed Sep 24, 2008 7:44 pm

Great to see that. I hope they get resources to do Space Rangers 3 now

. These guys are great game developers.

lemonparty · Post by **lemonparty** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:22 am

Just checking...this game is infected with Starforce, right?

No. The Russian version was, but they removed it in the latest patch. English versions have SecuRom, no idea which version.

Gamespy has posted their review. They gave it a 4.5/5, but some things they say have me worried. "a 60-70 hour game"..."The overworld's resources are not unlimited, either. As players fight and lose troops with every battle, scarcity can becomes a reality". If they mean that one playthrough takes 60 hours, it would suck to get tens of hours into the game, only to discover that it's not possible to win due to lack of resources or enemies you're capable of defeating.

You can run out of your favorite unit types, but there's always other ones to fall back on. There's also the resurrect spell, and a trick to "clone" creatures using the Sacrifice spell.

By the way, items, creatures, enemy troops and treasures are partly randomized. Some inn or other may sell a sword and offer bears one playthrough, but a shield and beholders the other. So the replayability is there, but it's also a very long game as is.

lch · Post by **lch** » Thu Sep 25, 2008 11:48 am

lemonparty wrote:
Just checking...this game is infected with Starforce, right?
No. The Russian version was, but they removed it in the latest patch. English versions have SecuRom, no idea which version.

I downloaded this from Gamersgate and I think it doesn't thave either protection, it only had an online activation check during installation.

EddieA wrote: "a 60-70 hour game"..."The overworld's resources are not unlimited, either. As players fight and lose troops with every battle, scarcity can becomes a reality". If they mean that one playthrough takes 60 hours, it would suck to get tens of hours into the game, only to discover that it's not possible to win due to lack of resources or enemies you're capable of defeating.

I have played the game for some 12-15 hours now and it seems like 60-70 hours for a playthrough is not an understatement. In the demo you only play within the first province of the first continent. You can already see that there are three more provinces because of the portals, but there are even three or four more continents, too. So the game world is really massive. "Overworld resources are not unlimited" means exactly that. The stuff you can find, runes, gold, crystals, fights etc. is all set. You can not expect to have trained every skill there is to maximum level and learned every spell there is at the end of the game, unless you play through in Easy or use cheats maybe, you have to make a decision what you want to aim for. You already make the first such decision when you pick your class. I don't think that it will impossible to finish the game at some point because you played too badly, unless you maybe play at the highest difficulty, at which it is expected that you know and can use the game mechanics to your advantage. I am trying the best to make use of my resources, be it troops or Rage or Mana, and at the moment I got too much of everything except Runes for skills, perhaps. I have noticed that since I'm playing a Knight, I'm almost never using magics, only the Rage beasts, Healing is the only spell that I learned and at level 1 it's now so weak that it can't even heal my most powerful units completely anymore. I'd expect that the game would play very differently with a mage. From what I discerned from the ag.ru forums, apparently there are small differences available to you when it comes to solving quests, too. A Paladin may not lie or steal, a rogue mage might do that it he wants.

I honestly thought that it wouldn't take me that long to play through the game once on normal difficulty, but now it seems I'm going to be playing this for some weeks at least, if not months. I heard that there are mods planned, too, the game is out since half a year or so in Russia, after all. I don't get the "this doesn't have bases / doesn't play enough like a RTS game" complaint, this is a different game. You don't own those castles, you're not a king, you are merely a knight. Works for me.

persself · Post by **persself** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 4:45 pm

Appreciate the feedback, but still concerned a bit.

Namely, lack enthusiasm for this thread.

Is everyone waiting for price drop, or what?

Reemul · Post by **Reemul** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:16 pm

Game looks good, but as usual there are too many games out all of a sudden and that always impacts on other games.

Dan_Theman · Post by **Dan_Theman** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:19 pm

persself wrote:Is everyone waiting for price drop, or what?

That's what I'm doing, at least. As already noted, there are too many games coming out to purchase them all at full price.

dbemont · Post by **dbemont** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 5:23 pm

I have ordered, but Gamers Gate is excrutiatingly slow. I think I would have been better off driving to Alaska to pick it up.

But I am definitely looking forward to it.

JonathanStrange · Post by **JonathanStrange** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 6:22 pm

Saw King's Bounty at Gamestop for $40. I thought this was going to be a $30 or less game. I loved the demo and wanted more but frankly, I can wait. Inevitably the game will approach the waterhole a little too incautiously and when it does...

Lorini · Post by **Lorini** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 8:51 pm

I think it's pricey for what it appears to be from the demo. With Colonization already out and Hinterlands coming next week, I don't feel the need to spend the bucks for this right now either.

SlapBone · Post by **SlapBone** » Fri Sep 26, 2008 9:17 pm

I've had Spore, Colonization, and RTKXI in regular rotation, but this game just put the boot to all of them. It has the same kind of flare (it even has a special folder icon in Windows) and pace that Space Rangers had and it looks damn good as well. I'm having to fight my kids to play it. I know there are a lot of games out there this week with many more on the near horizon but any fan of the genre is doing themselves a disservice by not getting this game now.

Edit: They need to give these guys the Majesty license.

lch · Post by **lch** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 7:20 am

Regarding the price, I paid $30 for Armageddon Empires, and I expect this game to keep me entertained even longer, so I'd say that the price of $40 is more than justified. I don't think that waiting for a $10 price drop would have been reasonable for me. I wouldn't have paid €40 for it like GamersGate wanted me to do it without using a proxy, though, I really can't understand why GamersGate is doing this insane price conversion. To everybody from Eurozone, use a non-european proxy when you order. You can even use your real world address from Europe as customer information, it only matters where the client request comes from when you order on the site. I used a chinese proxy from http://www.xroxy.com/proxylist.htm" target="_blank

I'm almost done with the first continent now, and I beat the first endboss - without any losses, because I trained against the other enemies so much. Some tips for new players, look at every quest item that you receive if you can use it. If you can use it, then do so as it will AFAIK always give you some sort of bonus. If you want to get access to the Rage box, and I assume that you do, then you have to do the King's main quests. But it isn't enough to beat the Plugens quest like in the demo, you have to do two more. In order to keep losses to a minimum, I try to do quests first before I get into fights. More experience means higher level means better stats/skills means less losses. The experience you get from fights stays the same. You can bait away monsters on the overland map if you go near them, and if you do it right then you can circle around them and get whatever you were asked to get for a fedex quest (bring me <insert thing here>). This works amazingly well if you get a little leeway about three times your width. You might have to make an enemy follow you somewhere so you can sped around him. If I decide to finally fight a stack, then I try to do as many fights consecutively as possible, in order to make the best use of the rage that you generate (I'm a warrior, I usually have more rage than I need because with only two rage monsters, they're usually sleeping).

Oh yeah, in order to have the rage monsters activate you need to do some mini-quests for them. The two latter ones need you to visit specific locations so they're locked and only come available at later parts in the game. The first one requires you to fight against a group of mages, which shouldn't be that hard, I think I was around level 5 or so when I did it. And I already had Sleem when I fought them, which requires you to feed Sleem some poisonous creatures. Go to the menagerie and buy some venomous spiders, about 12 to 15 or so, and talk to Sleem again to feed him.

If you are doing the frog bride quest and you're looking for the witch which is living "back and down the road under a skull" or whatever he tells you, I've been searching a lot before I found out what he meant. I expected some human-sized skull among the pebbles along the road. That's not it, and it isn't that close to the main road either. Go west towards the water mill and turn right at the saw mill. If you fight your way down that way you'll find the entrance, which is in the form of a skull.

The first two brides that I found were the zombie/robber bride that you can already get in the demo, you have to unzombify her in order to have kids with her (speak with her for that, or she might start talking to you at some point, too), but you can make her a zombie again after you think you had enough kids and amazingly she does not eat them.

The second one is the frog in the marshes which you'll probably only get a little later. The first bride seems more for a warrior type because she and her kids gave combat stats and she can wear almost the same things like you do with armor, shoes and an artefact among them, the second one seems more for mages because she gives an intellect bonus and can wear a lot of regalia. The frog bride has hilarious dialog when you talk to her about kids.

malichai11 · Post by **malichai11** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 4:40 pm

SlapBone wrote:I've had Spore, Colonization, and RTKXI in regular rotation, but this game just put the boot to all of them. It has the same kind of flare (it even has a special folder icon in Windows) and pace that Space Rangers had and it looks damn good as well. I'm having to fight my kids to play it. I know there are a lot of games out there this week with many more on the near horizon but any fan of the genre is doing themselves a disservice by not getting this game now.

Edit: They need to give these guys the Majesty license.

Similar experience here. I had Colonization first, but after trying this out it just sucked me in. It's compulsively playable. I've put in at least 20 hours over the past three days. I'll come back to Col or Hinterlands when I'm done here.

malichai11 · Post by **malichai11** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 8:34 pm

It's been quite awhile since I actually finished a game, but much to my surprise, I just finished this. I was still ready for more too. I'd picked up a bunch of extra black and red dragons, sticking them in reserve, and was looking forward to not having to be quite so careful with my dragon casualties.

Fun game. I'm not sure how much time I put in total. Somewhere around 30ish hours, give or take 5. I went with a Mage, and most combats involved a lot of Fire Rain/Fire Rain, hold with everyone but archers, rinse and repeat. I found a Fire Rain scroll in a cave pretty early on in the game and that sucker is a game-changer, especially combined with a +30% fire damage artifact. I based a lot of my design decisions around that spell. Since treasures are randomly generated every game, who knows how things will play out next game.

I married the elf lady, not because she was the best choice, but because I absolutely buggered my chance at the frog wife, and by the time I figured out I'd done so, I'd already put in 15 or so hours in the game and just wasn't going to replay to a get a different wife. Just a tip, if you're a mage, and want the best wife for your class, don't just stuff that frog in the bag without listening to her.

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Sat Sep 27, 2008 11:16 pm

Ok, you guys convinced me (plus I really enjoyed the demo). Going with Gamers Gate for the first time. Really wish it was Steam or Impulse, but oh well.

Thanks for the impressions.

Edit: And that will be the last time I ever use GG. After repeated stalls in the download, I finally got it all downloaded, but now GG isn't recognizing that it has been downloaded. When I try to download it again, it just hangs.

Lorini · Post by **Lorini** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:23 am

I can't use Gamersgate either because the same thing happened to me. I used Direct2drive which has King's Bounty. The game downloaded and ran, but on both my recent D2D purchases (this and Colonization) I'm getting a C runtime error before the game starts. Doesn't seem to affect anything, but I wanted to note it.

marcusjm · Post by **marcusjm** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:44 am

For those with card problems, they do have PayPal as an option which should be enough for most.
I always get good speeds with GG and haven't got any download problems yet. I think it's recommended to have IE 7 installed though.

Frnk55 · Post by **Frnk55** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 9:45 am

Damn it. Downloading now. I should of stayed clear of this thread.
Whats with having to download with Explorer? Haven't most people moved on to Firefox

marcusjm · Post by **marcusjm** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 10:53 am

Actually no. Most (by a large margin) still use IE but that's not the main point.
Any service that uses Microsoft technologies works best with Microsofts software.

Almost all those apps with built in browsers use IE. Including the one from Steam.

Dan_Theman · Post by **Dan_Theman** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 10:57 am

I know it's passe for some, but it is also available at retail

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 11:18 am

Dan_Theman wrote:I know it's passe for some, but it is also available at retail

That's usually what I do, but the manual is so slim for this one (and after reading it, not very good), I figured why not. Got it to work last night, took me 3.5 hours, and only 2 hours of that was downloading it. I am sure I am a rare exception, but I cannot recommend GG after my experience.

Plan to spend a good portion of the day today playing.

Frnk55 · Post by **Frnk55** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:12 pm

Ok dumb question. I'm having a blast with this game but don't you go into battle with you're army? Like in the training? I don't get it

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 2:16 pm

Frnk55 wrote:Ok dumb question. I'm having a blast with this game but don't you go into battle with you're army? Like in the training? I don't get it

You don't go in with your army in the tutorial either. The knights in the tutorial is not you just a bonus unit you get for those 3 missions.

Frnk55 · Post by **Frnk55** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 3:40 pm

Cool, thanks Lee.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 6:46 pm

I've been on the fence, but liked the demo enough to give it a go. Went with Gamersgate (mainly so I could use PayPal) and the speeds are horrid. At the current rate, I probably won't be playing for over 3 hours (currently running at 150 kb/sec on my 8mb connection), so I'll let you know how the final version is sometime tomorrow. It's certainly the last time I use these guys, and I'm kicking myself for not driving over to Gamestop and picking up the boxed version..

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 6:49 pm

Double post

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 6:56 pm

Hey I warned you about GG above.

I did get better speeds than that though. It would have been far easier and quicker to go pick it up at the store.

Skinypupy · Post by **Skinypupy** » Sun Sep 28, 2008 7:06 pm

Lee wrote:Hey I warned you about GG above. I did get better speeds than that though. It would have been far easier and quicker to go pick it up at the store.

I know, I should have listened. Was hoping I'd get closer to marcus' experience rather than yours, but I guess I'm out of luck. On the plus side, it's all the way up to 230 kb/sec now!

Won't make this mistake again.

Out of curiosity, if GamersGate goes belly-up tomorrow, we're pretty much SOL on the games we purchased from them, right?