King's Bounty: The Conqueror's Quest

"A Great Strategy Game"

King’s Bounty is a fun PC game that was ported over to the Genesis. I haven’t played the PC version, but the Genesis one plays fine. Unless you are a dedicated console gamer with a lot of hate for anything PC I’d highly recommend this game.

GRAPHICS
Let’s gloss over this shall we? OK, I’ll be honest, they are quite poor. The main gamescreen is a large scare of green (grass apparently) trees, deserts, mountains, castles and towns. Each of these have just one sprite to represent them so all towns and castles look the alike. There are a couple of different sprites from which to gather troops a hill, a crypt, a tree and a wagon. Then there are the enemy sprites. There are a few more of these, but the sprites themselves are quite poorly defined although they are obviously differentiated. And for a laugh nothing beats watching your horse trot east to west while traveling north to south.

STORY
More of a strategy game than a strategy/RPG King’s Bounty nevertheless manages to create a decent background story for the game and for each villain that must be captured. The point of the story (I hesitate to say game) is recovering the King’s Scepter and (shockingly!) saving the world from evil. This is done by means of collecting puzzle pieces from villains and can invariably be solved before beating the last villain

GAMEPLAY
This is a game that, contrary to what screenshots seem to show, is quite far from Shining Force and Final Fantasy Tactics. It is instead a game that forces management of troops and careful decisions on when to get into major battles. There are 25 different kinds of troops and although there are a few that are similar to each other, for the most part they are quite different. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses when fighting others. The most readily available troops are from your original castle, however though they are quite good, they are also very expensive. The other troops are limited in number and also change each game making the game different every time. The basic strength of each enemy is also the same each game, but their troops are different making the most felicitous choice of units for your army different as well. Money also plays a large part in the strategy as some units are far more expensive than others. The actual battles themselves require little strategy (protect the weak-archers, mages with the strong is about it) getting the most advantageous troops to that point requires quite a bit. Saving the game is a real difficulty requiring over 50 characters per password and still resetting things like all of the wandering monsters, where you’ve been on the maps and the creatures you can recruit.

OVERALL
A refreshing change from the cookie-cutter games of today (both RTS and Shining Force wannabes) King’s Bounty is a great game. It is not without its problems, but any game that I can have beaten and then pick up again to play for 4 or 5 hours in a row is great game. If it’s all about gameplay, this is the game to get.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/29/01, Updated 05/29/01