King's Bounty: The Legend is a tactical role-playing video game developed by Russian studio Katauri Interactive and published by 1C Company for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X in 2008. The game is based upon the King's Bounty property released by New World Computing in 1990, and blends elements of the original game with a modernized interface and gameplay elements. The game's story sees players taking on the role of a special treasure hunter for a king, who soon becomes embroiled on a quest to save their daughter and prevent their world from being destroyed.
Since its release, the game has received favourable reviews, and received a number of sequels using the same engine. These include King's Bounty: Armored Princess, King's Bounty: Crossworlds, King's Bounty: Warriors of the North, and King's Bounty: Dark Side. A sequel in a new engine, King's Bounty II, was released on August 24, 2021.
Gameplay
In King's Bounty: The Legend, the player plays as a hero in the world of Endoria, sworn to serve the king of Darion. After a brief "final exam" tutorial at the School of Knights, the player receives some basic troops and is then set free to pursue whatever quests are desired. The king provides the main story quests, but there are numerous side quests which can be completed as well, in virtually any order.
The player's character cannot directly fight in battles, but rather employs up to five squadrons of allies to do so. These range from the mundane (e.g., peasants or archers) to creatures from high fantasy (e.g., griffins, beholders or ents), and can vary in size from just a single unit all the way up into the hundreds. Troops are recruited from various locations in the game, with a limit on the maximum size of each unit determined by the character's "Leadership" statistic. In combat, troops are then assisted by the player's character through the use of magic (spells and scrolls), Spirits of Rage and passive bonuses.
While not in combat or visiting a specific location, players move on the overworld map in real-time, although with the ability to pause. Hence, enemy groups shown on the map will move towards the player if close enough, initiating combat if they touch the player's avatar. Otherwise, players are free to move throughout the various game locations while day and night slowly cycle, without any concept of turn-based play. Treasures and other items can be picked up by directing the player's character towards them, and non-hostile characters can be interacted with by similar means, usually to make purchases or as part of a quest.
King's Bounty: The Legend allows players to play as one of three different character classes, from the choices of warrior, paladin, and mage. Each class specializes in one of the three skill trees in the game, although players are allowed to cross-specialize. By allocating runes received as treasure or after gaining a level, players choose which skills to focus on.
Resource management
The main gameplay challenge in King's Bounty: The Legend is one of finite resource management, with the main resources being gold, troops and magic crystals. If the player does not die, being defeated means a loss of all troops travelling with the player. These can only be replaced by spending significant amounts of gold in order to hire a new army.
Due to the use of randomly generated enemies and treasures, in each location there are often a few very powerful enemy groups. To defeat them and clear the location completely, players generally have to travel to other locations, retrieve any readily available gold, experience, and runes there in order to make the character more powerful, then backtrack to the previous location to complete it. This confused some players and reviewers, as the assumption was that gameplay would be more linear and that each location could be readily completed once accessible.
The different character classes will generally handle resource problems in different ways: The Warrior, due to his combat abilities, fights effectively with almost any army, minimizing casualties. He also has more freedom in using the Spirits of Rage, especially when casualties are high. For a Mage, the type of troops he commands is less relevant, as he relies mainly on his magical power and spells. He can minimize casualties, make any unit more useful, or destroy enemies with magic directly. The Paladin excels in Mind skills and thus receives greater quantities of leadership, gold, and experience, and is often able to recruit a small number of units from the enemy ranks. This makes the Paladin less constrained by most resource problems. He can also upgrade priests into inquisitors, who can help reduce casualties.
