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King's Bounty: The Legend

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9.5 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 25 critic reviews
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Based on 48 votes
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Game Info

Publisher: Atari

Developer: Katauri Interactive

Genre(s): Adventure, Turn-Based Strategy, Role-Playing Game

Players: 1

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Release Date: September 23, 2008

Summary

King’s Bounty: The Legend is an adventure RPG with tactical turn-based battles unfolding in a fairytale fantasy world of fearless knights, evil mages, wise kings and beautiful princesses. The player leads their character through the game world; exploring it; commanding armies in battle; and completing required and bonus quests. The game falls into two separate modes: Adventure Mode and Combat Mode. In adventure mode, the player controls the character in real-time, taking him through the adventure map seeking treasure, and completing quests. In combat mode, the player takes on the role of war chief, leading their troops through battle in a chess-like format. [Atari]

Cheat Codes & Hints: Cheat Code Central

Also On The Web: Official Website

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Worth Playing

Superb. The AI is decent enough, the combat is great fun, and it's imaginative, varied, and hilarious.

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GameSpy

The game's RPG trappings are just the sugarcoating for an incredibly deep and enjoyable strategic experience.

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Eurogamer

Rare are the games that have you muttering "Well, I didn't know that could happen!" after more than 30 hours, and the fact I could have written another 2000 words describing weird and wonderful moments you're best discovering for yourself is all the recommendation you should need.

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PC Gamer UK

Singlehandedly saves fantasy 4X. [Christmas 2008, p.68]

GamingTrend

If you're at all a fan of fantasy turn based strategy games such as HOMM or Disciples, King's Bounty should be a required purchase.

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Gamers.at

What at first glance seems like a cheap clone of the genre-predecessors turns out to be truly better than the original! The battles are of the highest standard and the well-implented roleplay-system leaves a lot of freedom for character-evolution. King’s Bounty: The Legend – the sweetest seduction since round-based strategy has first seen the light of day! [Issue # 16]

Computer Games Online RO

In many ways, King’s Bounty is a step forward regarding the combat aspect for turn-based games of the HoMM variety. But barring this, Katauri Interactive’s latest creation is nothing more than an RPG in which the only hero evolves in terms of basic genre principles that are already set in stone.

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ActionTrip

Weak writing, the retro look and other flaws of King's Bounty shouldn't stop you from trying the game out. There's a beautifully presented fantasy world just waiting to be discovered, along with a long single-player game crammed with enough content to guarantee a lot of hours of good clean fun.

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GameZone

Even with the lower standard of graphics and sound, the game is still above board in the fun department. I really like this title and thank it deserves some big time praise for bringing back the cool in single-player RPGs.

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GameStar

King's Bounty: The Legend is a mixture between RPG and strategy game. Battles are fought turn-based, but travelling takes place in real time, which enables some interesting tactical moves. The Quest are diverse and well done. The first fantasy-strategy game from Russian developer Katauri is already very close to Heroes of Might & Magic.

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IGN

Yes, the difficulty can be very unbalanced at times, and sure the tutorial needs work, but as it stands, King's Bounty is a great game for all types of RPG fans.

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Games Master UK

A massive roster of characters. [Mar 2009, p.82]

Gamer.nl

Every gamer that's looking for a strategic RPG with decent gameplay mechanics, a well designed environment and with enough items to fill an entire dungeon, will have a blast with King's Bounty: The Legend. The game never stops surprising you with new gameplay elements and gives you total freedom. In production terms King's Bounty doesn't offer the same as triple A titles do, but don't let this stop you from buying this 'undercover classic'.

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PC PowerPlay

For the serious gamer, expect lighthearted fun and you won't be disappointed. For the casual or younger gamer, expect to be painlessly initiated into the exciting world of strategic deck-based combat. [Christmas 2008, p.77]

LEVEL (Czech Republic)

Maybe it's full of clichés, it lacks of any originality, but the splendid game mechanics makes it very addictive and long-term entertaining. A proud successor of the "Heroes of Might and Magic" series. [Nov 2008]

GameSpot

King's Bounty is a great modern rendition of an old-fashioned formula.

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PC Format

Luckily, get into the actual game to practice your skills and failure is quite painless. [Jan 2009, p.101]

PC Zone UK

Worth buying if you like the "Heroes of Might and Magic" series. [Aug 2009, p.74]

GamingXP

Everybody who liked Heroes will love King’s Bounty. Professionals will not feel challenged enough, although they will claim heavy loses in the course of some battles. Small mistakes in the menu and scrambling of battles should be fixed next time. A sequel must come, because King’s Bounty represents a ray of hope in the almost dead genre.

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Meristation

Very dynamic and with lots of content. King's Bounty: The Legends doesn't add anything new to the strategy genre but it´s a worthy reinvention of a classic game which rediscovers some of it original offerings. Presentation and production values are top notch, but it's unnecessarily hard and some enemies are not correctly balanced, being too easy or too hard without offering a predictable difficulty curve.

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Play (Poland)

The Heroes of Might and Magic series has traveled far away since its famed third installment and not always in the right direction. This return to the roots of the genre might help it get back in shape. There's a lot of heroics to be done fighting monsters, questing and gathering treasure, albeit the adventures are stretched too thin at places. While King's Bounty does bring back memories, at times it's about as exciting as napping by the fireplace. [Oct 2008]

Total PC Gaming

Tighter translation and a map editor is needed, but it's still a great TBS. [Issue#15, p.64]

AceGamez

Genre fans will enjoy King's Bounty, which will win them over with some brilliant ideas, but newcomers are unlikely to find much joy in this adventure.

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Teletext GameCentral

A Western style Final Fantasy Tactics with tons of content but lacking in polish and accessibility.

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Edge Magazine

Katauri's strategy RPG is a compulsive thing. (…) The game hooks the player to a drip-feed of demands that proves difficult to unplug. [Feb 2009, p.94]

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this game is 9.5 (out of 10) based on 48 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Andrew gave it a10:
Why all keep talking that Kb the Legend is like HOMM? Actually there was the original KB which gave birth to the Heroes and some other titles. It was by the far the best game runnung on IBM PC XT with 1MHz and 64Kb of memory :) I'm playing it sometimes even now. So it is HOMM like KB and The Legend is it's brilliant development. The realm is bright and beautiful, unlike a darkish Diablo sort. The world is made with care and love. Some things like buterflies or squirrels on trees wich some developers pehaps would think unnesessary make the scene nice and charming. A real fantasy world. The music is also nice, I really like some themes. It's fun to explorer the wolnd full of amusing things, doing quests, collecting stuff and deciding to whom help and to whom not. But the essense of the game is battles. There will be lots of them. The units and monsters besides basic charecteristics has special abilities (up to 7) which can change all the strategy. As enemy armies tend to become larger and larger, even a mage cannot kill all the monsters with attaking spells. But an ingenious use of troops special abilities, traps, all kinds of obstacles on the battlefield (natural and created like walls and ice), hindering enemy units spells etc. can bring down armies much larger than yours. For veterans of HOMM such tactical subtleties are well known of course and this game presents a great variety of circumstences for its application. For the novices in turn based games it can be a bit tough. So if you want just to explore the world, to learn its history chatting with NPCs, take the Easy difficulty option. You wil have a great number of battles aniway though :) But be sure that it is possible to deal with all whose monsters at the Difficult or even Impossible levels. With due troop and money management, lots of tactical considerations, spell choices and so on of course. I could say a lot more about this admirable game but well... find out for yourself. Imho a must have for RPG and turn-based battles fans.

Warchief gave it an8:
It's a great game, indeed like HOMM saga, but really different gameplay. The battles (turn based) remind me of HOMM1 due to small number of units and small size terrain. It has some gameplay failures, like having to face a lot of weaker units constantly, having to wait for ultrastrong creeps to move from your path, and a total mess with the quests (you can totally get lost and with lack of info for some you had pending), and really bad player control (both with mouse and keyboard). Better graphics than HOMMV? I don´t think so, they are both pretty good, and they have totally different styles with different cameras. Thus said I give 8 points because the game is actually pretty good, and I am enjoying it. It's worth the money, so buy it. In my opinion, I enjoyed HOMMV more than I am with King's Bounty, but don't want to say which one is better; it's just they are really different.

Poisoned Blade gave it a10:
This game is incredibly fun and addicting! You play as the commander of an army of troops. As the commander, your stats affect the offense, defense, and size of your army. When you encounter an enemy, you fight them in a turn based battle. You also have the ability to learn spells and cast them during the battle. Send your dwarves into a berserker rage, heal your giants, hasten your wolves, give your enemies the plague... You're constantly being rewarded as you play with gold (to buy troops), leadership banners (to increase the size of your army), and runes to learn skills and spells. King's Bounty never gets old. In other strategy games the good guys and bad guys level up evenly and every battle tends to feel the same. The special abilities of the troops in King's Bounty actually change the strategies of the battles. The pacing is perfect. At no point do you feel overwhelmed or bored. It's RPG Strategy Greatness and fun for all ages! If you're waiting for a turn based PC RPG, a great strategy game, or want to pass the time before Diablo 3 comes out, this is a Must Buy!

Wolf Man gave it a10:
Agreeing with a lot of the other reviews, this is reminiscent of HOM&M but much, much better. At level 6 and thoroughly enjoying it. Only a few down points: Map could be reworked a bit, its easy to get a bit disoriented, would like a quest point marker on map, minor spelling/grammatical errors. Other than that I fully recommend it, worth the money.

Marc gave it a10:
This is the best strategy game I've played in years. In my opinion, this is better than Heroes of Might & Magic IV and V, and every bit as fun as 3. The pace is perfect, the fighting doesn't get old and the units are truly unique. If you are a fan of strategy games, you must own this title.

Justin T. gave it a10:
Great strategy game, weak to moderate RPG elements - but the RPG elements really accentuate the strategy. Wide range of units, abilities, items and spells, allowing for a huge diversity in tactics. Pros: Diversity, unit "balance", randomization, depth and scope Cons: randomization, occasional lack of direction, could really use either more context help or a glossary/helpfile in game for quick lookups. Game economy seems a bit off, at least on Normal diff. Currently playing as a mage class, about halfway through the game (lvl 15ish), normal difficulty. Mage abilities, spells and related items all seem to work together very well. Very fun trying out new combos, new units and spells and very interesting with the static unit population.

Miko S. gave it a10:
I've been waiting for a good tactical pseudo-RPG for a long, long time, then out of nowhere suddenly this. Like Heroes of Might & Magic if HoM&M was much, much better. A true gem in a year of disappointing games. Unmissable.

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King's Bounty: The Legend

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What The Critics Said

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