One problem (or benefit) of this industry is that there are a lot of great titles that are released , unfortunately chances are your going to miss a few great niche titles. I know its happened to me several times in my life, I missed out on X-Com when it was first released, Thief, Ultima, and the list goes on. This week I was hit by one of the best rpg titles I’ve played in some time, and the sad fact is that I missed out on the original some time ago.
Thanks to a Circuit City sale (and the praise about it from QT3) I picked up Kings Bounty: The Legend (or KB for this entry). This game is a modern day remake of the original KB title. While the story of the game isn’t going to win any awards, the game play however is fantastic. Starting out you pick one of three classes, warrior who focuses on huge armies (more on that soon), paladin who is the middle of the road, and mage who focuses on spell casting. There are three skill trees one for each class, and you may put points into any of them, but you will get more points for your respective class tree at each level up. Exploring the world is done in real time as you ride across the land looking for people to help and monsters to fight. Once you run into an enemy the real fun begins.
Your hero does not fight but leaves that to your army. Your army is made up of different classes of units, each class represents one character on the board. Combat is turn based with characters taking action by whomever is fastest first. The army dynamic is the best and most interesting part of combat in my opinion. As I just mentioned each class represents one character on the board, but you may have dozens or hundreds of those troops in your army. Meaning a character of an archer with 30 troops is stronger then one who only has 12 and so on. The amount of troops you can have of each class is determined by the “leadership” stat, which the warrior has the highest of. Now the reason why this is so important is that there are 3 things that determine how strong your units are.
First is a straight up “attack” value, if this is higher then the enemies defense value then the attack will do more damage. Second is a hit value such as 2-5 damage or a flat 50 points of damage. Last and most important is the number of troops that make up that unit, which multiples the hit value. This creates an interesting dynamic as you try to create an army of units. Do you take a class that has a very high hit value, but you can’t field a huge number of them? Or do you take a weaker class that you can command over a hundred of? Throw in considerations of health and defense, resistances, attack type, and racial issues between the various sides and there are a lot of factors to consider. The best part of this system to me is that it creates numerous interesting choices and potential army combinations.
One problem of most strategy titles is giving a reason to use weaker units once the big boys are available, KB doesn’t have that problem thanks to the leadership stat. A unit that only does 2-3 doesn’t sound great next to someone who does 12-15, but take 2-3 times 300 and that’s a different story. As a mage, my hero backs up my army with powerful spells cutting down the opponents before they can reach melee range.
Not everything is perfect in KB, there is a moderate difficulty curve starting out as if you lose too many of your troops, you can run out of money or reserves leaving you SOL. The game doesn’t open up until you get the “chest of rage” which allows you to summon powerful demons using “rage” built up through attacking. I’m past 15 hours playing it and I’ve only gotten off the first continent, as there are numerous side quests and areas to explore. No doubt as this comes from the alumni of the Space Rangers series.
Still I’m loving KB, it’s been awhile since I’ve been generally surprised in a good way with a game purchase, and between this and Hinterland I’m set for PC games for now. Kings Bounty : The Legend gets one undead wife (seriously how cool/disturbing is that?)
Josh
