King's Bounty: The Legend (2008)

King’s Bounty: The Legend is an incredibly good game and a real classic. It takes a turn from Heroes of Might and Magic and continues its roots in its own franchise.

The game is a classic fairy tale, serve the king, rescue the princes, defeat the dragon. Just how I like it. It is a turn-based strategy and role-playing game in almost the same style as Heroes of Might and Magic.

The game looks good and is very colorful and beautifully decorated with all sorts of farms, caves, items and more. The music is amazing, it has a lot of variety and adapts on the location you currently are. It is one of the best collections of soundtracks I have heard in a long time.

The lore found in the game is fun to read and has many jokes and references to other games and stereotypes about certain races and creatures in the game. The creatures themselves are well balanced, each with their unique skills and strengths (except the black dragons, they are horrible). The variety in this units is massive, and each type requires a certain strategy to defeat when encountered.

King’s Bounty: The Legend is a very, extremely hard game. The difficulty is legendary. On one side, I like this because it gives me a challenge to defeat it, but on the other hand, it is sometimes ridiculous.

Normally, the main story line is easier to complete then side quests, but here, there is no difference. Also, I do not get the difficulty spikes. One moment, you fight a weak bunch of lake dragon flies, the other moment you get your butt handed to you by giants, arch mages, ghosts and vampires. In the beginning, you can avoid hard battles and come back to them when you have sufficient leadership and troops, but later on, every single encounter drains almost all of your troops and you can go back to town to buy more (because you know the next encounter will be end of the line). It also does not help that unit stacks have limited quantities and when a strong or your favorite unit is depleted, you have a problem. The gold on the maps is also fixated. If you screw up by buying the wrong units or useless items and you do not have an earlier save, then you can start over.

Like I said, this game has no mercy. I found out that the only way to beat it, is by (sooner or later) completing all the quests, every single last one of them, collect all the leadership banners, do every errand possible and leave no stone unturned. Only then will you acquire enough attack, defense, leadership, and resources to have a chance of defeating the last two boss battles. I only beaten the game by running one more errand which granted me some money because I simply did not have enough to buy troops for the last battle before that. I literally collected every single gold coin on the map and lost (like usual) 3/4th of my army with the orc giant. In the end, the developers throw everything they got at you and with luck you survive. Thank God for the Chest of Rage and a horde of Sprites.

So overall, King's Bounty: The Legend is a great game with lot of different encounters, quests, and bosses. My experience was intense, and every won battle felt as a total victory. It was hard as the seven layers of hell and many times I asked myself: “But how?”. Nevertheless, I had fun with the game, and it will always be a classic in my library.

Recommendation!