|
|
|
|
Computer Times
Editors' Choice Game - Facebook King’s Bounty: Legions Review by Angie Kibiloski
King’s Bounty: Legions is the newest addition to the highly rated King’s Bounty series of strategy role-playing games. Like its predecessors, this title delivers hour upon hour of fun, strategic fantasy battles. The surprising twist to this latest installment is its moved off of your hard drive and onto Facebook, and soon, onto your iOS and Android mobile devices. Brought to you by 1C Company and Nival, King’s Bounty: Legions will please fans both old and new by bringing back many of the great aspects of the previous games while introducing cool new social networking features. One of the coolest things about this game is that, unless you choose to purchase bonus in-game items, this game is completely free to play. Like the previous King’s Bounty titles, Legions revolves around your journey through a medieval style world, filled with knights, pirates, royals, and all sorts of monsters like vampires, fire spitting spiders, and strange floating eyebeasts who shoot lasers from their dozen or so eye stalks. As you visit different towns, you’ll be given quests from the citizens who live there. You’ll then enter into battle with various enemies to satisfy these quests and collect rewards for their completion. The battles will see you taking turns with you opponent, using special attacks from each of your troops, as well as some handy spells, until one of you has killed all of the other’s troops. The battle mechanics will be very familiar to fans of the series, with the same controls and the same honeycomb grid on the battlefield. With the new social networking aspect, you can now not only battle the enemies provided in the game world, but you can also go head to head with your friends, or other random online players, with the PvP battle option. Select your troops and spells for battle like you normally would, but choose to find a real life opponent to match wits with. This can be more challenging than playing against the computer, as the computer’s moves and strategy can become predictable if you play frequently. This Player vs. Player option gives you a chance to play against a real, thinking person, whose moves will be new and unexpected.
Due to the nature of the Facebook and mobile platforms, there are some more complex aspects of the previous titles that have been limited. The world is not as free to roam, with a smaller selection of areas to explore. The plot is also not as involved, and you’ll find yourself playing the same quests over and over again, as if they were ongoing problems for the towns. For instance, each time you return to a town, you could be asked to eliminate the same threat you already took care of a few days prior. This doesn’t advance the plot, but it will still grant you experience and other rewards, so replaying quests is still beneficial. In fact, you might choose to replay quests in order to gain enough experience to level up and be able to go up against other stronger foes. The RPG elements are not as in-depth as in the previous games either. You still gain experience points, which will earn you higher ranks and larger resources, but you can’t develop your character with new skills or collect helpful armor and weapons like in the other games. You do have the ability to upgrade your troops and spells to a certain extent. Even though this version is lacking some elements from the previous titles, there are a lot of features, in addition to the PvP battles, that have been added to the Facebook game that did not exist in the others, and they more than make up for the absences.
If you are going to be away from the game for several hours, you can set your army to Patrol. This means that while you are away, your army will still be fighting battles in your name. When you come back at the end of the Patrol, you can see how many battles were won and lost, and how much gold you collected. Sometimes, your army will discover special treasures on Patrol as well, for an unexpected treat upon your return. Licenses are a nice addition too. You collect various types of licenses, like a Ranger’s License or a Commander’s License, which will grant you special rights for a set amount of time. Some of these licenses allow you to have a much longer Patrol time, increase the amount of gold you acquire after battle, boost the number of troops you can command, and let you see the composition of an enemy army before you engage them in battle. As a little incentive to come back and play everyday, you’ll be rewarded with an increasing amount of gold, and sometimes a spell scroll, for each day you log in. Reach the final day of the reward cycle and receive a set of troops to bolster your reserves. Each day you get a certain amount of stamina, based on your rank, which you will use to go into battle, move between locations on the map, or resurrect lost troops. Once you run out of stamina, you can either purchase more with Facebook credits or come back the next day when your supply has been refilled. You can post on your Wall when you reach a new rank or achieve other accomplishments, to share your successes with your friends. Send your friends who’ve joined the game free gifts each day to help them build their armies or win battles. Maybe they will return the kindness and send a gift back to you.
Following in the powerful footsteps of the King’s Bounty games which came before, King’s Bounty: Legions has arrived packed with a huge amount of fun and the potential for even more as the title continues to develop. The Facebook version is currently in the Beta stage, but is open for all to play and essentially in its finished form. Nival was unable to give me a specific date when the Beta stage will technically be over, but stated that even after Beta, they will continue to update and improve the game from here on out. Any progress you make during the Beta stage will be retained and even cross over to the mobile iOS and Android apps, which are coming soon, so get onboard now and start enjoying this exciting world of turn based battles. You can access the game on the King’s Bounty: Legions Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/KingsBountyLegions. If you’d like to read my reviews on two of the previous titles in the series, you can find them here: King’s Bounty: The Legend http://computertimes.com/KingsBounty.htm, and King’s Bounty: Armored Princess http://computertimes.com/kingsbountyarmoredprincess.htm.
|
|
Send mail to
comptimes@aol.com with
questions or comments about this web site.
|
