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Computer Times
Editors' Choice Game King's Bounty: The Legend Reviewed by Angie Kibiloski
You know a game is great when it keeps you glued to your computer for so many hours that certain parts of you become numb. Atari's new Tactical/Adventure/RPG, King's Bounty: The Legend (Retail $39.99) is just such a game. After loading it onto my PC, this is the only thing I did for about 3 days straight! Aside from the posterior numbness, I have a touch pad friction burn on my finger, and I still can't wait to get back into it and play some more. This game is addictive, engrossing, and a definite must have title from this season's gaming line up!
You play as one of 3 errant knights: the warrior, paladin, or mage. The warrior is great at battle, the mage excels at magic, and the paladin has a nice balance of both skills. After choosing your knight and giving him a name, you are ready to go questing across the land in search of gold, magic runes, and glory. You will take on quests of various kinds, given to you by the rulers of the land, the peasants, merchants, and other characters you meet while wandering around. A quest could be as simple as delivering a scroll to another character in a neighboring realm, or as perilous as rescuing some valuable item from a den full of giant poisonous snakes.
After completing each quest, you are rewarded with a variety of prizes. These could be gold, magic runes and crystals, or other useful items. You needn't take on every quest you are offered. In fact, you may choose, in some case, to forsake one quest for another conflicting quest, depending on your opinion of different characters. But, essentially, the more quests, the more rewards, and each reward is useful in its own way. So, my strategy was, be as helpful to as many people as possible, and become rich, rich, rich!
As you wander around completing quests, you will come across the other aspect of the game: combat. Don't worry though, the type of combat in King's Bounty: The Legend is relatively stress free, and doesn't require you to be a dexterous button pusher or ultra quick with the mouse like in other games. As you roam the adventure map, you will encounter enemies in the form of other knights, robbers, evil mages, and nasty creatures like spiders and man eating plants. You must battle these creatures to the death to be rid of them. You can run away temporarily, but some of them will track you down eventually. When you engage these characters, you are transported to a battlefield screen, which is set up a little like a chess board, with your forces on one side of a grid pattern and the enemy on the other. Once the battle has begun, you take turns instructing each of your fighters on what attacks to make to which of the enemy fighters, or troops as they are called. For instance, you tell your archers to shoot their flaming arrows at the enemy troop of mages. You watch as they do just that and inflict damage on the enemy. Then, it is the enemy's turn to choose a troop and attack one of yours. It goes back and forth this way until one of you has lost all of your troops. If you win, you get to live and collect a nice bit of treasure. I quite enjoyed this manner of combat, much more than I have other styles in other games. It is strategic, low stress, and you can win by thinking through your moves instead of frantically clicking buttons, praying you can hack up your opponent before he hacks up you.
You acquire your valiant fighting troops with the gold that you have collected throughout your journeys. Various places like castles and inns will have different types of troops you can buy. As they die in battle, just return to a purchase point and replenish. You can buy archers, mages, arch mages, robbers, pirates, peasants, and a whole slew of others. Each troop has different talents, health levels, initiative in battle, etc, and you can employ different amounts of each troop. For instance, you can hire hundreds of peasants with pitch forks, but only a handful of talented arch mages.
Troops are not the only things you can purchase. With the gold, you can buy scrolls with magic spells, weapons and armor, and other items to assist in battle. Also, remember the magic runes and crystals you will find along the way? These will be needed to upgrade your knight's skills. You can make him more talented at learning spells, stronger against certain opponents, lower his personal requirements to hire troops, and more. The runes required to do this are not as commonly found as gold, so you must choose wisely which skills to upgrade with them.
I have been told there are around 50 hours of game play, but I swear I have spent that many already and am not even ⅓ of the way through. The world that you will be immersed in for so long is a pleasure to be in! It is beautiful, colorful, and magical! You will find yourself scrolling around in one spot or another, just admiring the pretty scenery. The characters you meet and interact with have distinct personalities, whether for good or ill, and each will have something interesting to say. The background music is light, pleasing, and not distracting. Just be forewarned, after hours of play, it will also become the soundtrack to your dreams. :)
I cannot say nearly enough about this game, and anything I say can hardly do it justice. There are so many different aspects, so many unique details, that you really have to explore it for yourself. The concept is fairly straight forward; walk hither and yon, doing little tasks, and fighting strategic battles every couple of turns, but the execution of this concept is in-depth and sophisticated. You will quickly be drawn in, trying to satisfy all the characters, build your skills, and rid the land of all evil creatures. This title is truly one of the highlights in PC gaming this year. You MUST get King's Bounty: The Legend, for yourself or for a loved one. Either way, this game is not to be missed! If you would like to get even more information about Kings' Bounty: The Legend, please visit the official website at http://www.kings-bounty.com. Here you will find specifics about the characters, magic, game locations, and combat, as well as more screenshots, videos, other art work, and more. Features:
System Requirements:
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