As gamers go, I have a dark and dirty secret, something I need to keep hidden when around the rest of the gaming world for fear I may be misunderstood and shunned. And although I live with this every single day, rare are the times it’s worth it to admit to anyone this horrible truth. I do so now only because of my commitment to providing historical context when I write about a game; so out with it. I liked the Sega Genesis more than the Super Nintendo. I’m not saying there was anything wrong with the Super Nintendo, the most holy of gaming holies, but only that Sega’s system had of a lot more support for J-RPG and mature games, which I’ve always been most interested in. I hold Shining Force, Sword of Vermilion and Phantasy Star 2 in much higher esteem than Mario or even Ogre Battle, and although I owned both (and plenty of games for each) it’s always the Genesis I spent long nights as a child grinding away with. And one of my fondest memories comes from the marathon sessions trying to beat King’s Bounty.
In King’s Bounty you are the commander of an army, which you build by buying units from lairs or strongholds, and then use the armies to do battle on a small hex field. You have powers and spells that you can use as the commander to turn the tide, and from time to time the units you are facing have their own commander with the same abilities. You are limited in how big your army is by both what is available to be bought and your resources to buy them. If this sounds familiar it’s because one of the most popular gaming series of the last 10 years, Heroes of Might and Magic, is nothing more than a shameless rip off of this system with some (horrible) 4x game play added. But not really; in fact Heroes of Might and Magic and King’s Bounty were both made by Jon Van Caneghem at New World Computing who were using the “Might and Magic” name to boost appeal and sales, as both King’s Bounty and Might and Magic were owned by 3DO. Unifying them under a single brand just made sense. That is until 3DO was shut down and sold the rights to Might and Magic to Ubisoft, leaving King’s Bounty an orphaned IP that got picked up in 2008 by Katauri Interactive, who released King’s Bounty: The Legend.
King’s Bounty focuses on the RPG aspects of army management, which skills to learn and what items to equip, like a traditional turn based RPG. Without the 4x elements of Heroes, combat is far more tactical with strong risk vs. rewards elements built in. Where the obvious solution in Heroes is to send in overwhelming numbers to deal with every situation, in King’s Bounty you need to weigh the price of new troops with the gains that can come from better items or more skills, and the benefits of using a minimal army supplemented by your own skills with the risk of failure. Unit selection is also far more organic; without the need to “build” your troops you can hire a much wider variety of monsters and create a much more varied set of teams. All in all the game creates a fantastic mix of RPG, turn based combat, and strategy that any fan of games like Shining Force or Fire Emblem is going to love.
No comments:
Post a Comment