King’s Bounty
| Developer: New World Computing | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: New World Computing | Sound: |
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| Year: 1991 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Role-playing game | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
8/10 | |
I discovered the Heroes of Might and Magic series quite late (starting with the fourth and fifth instalments). It’s amusing to revisit its distant ancestor after spending so many hours on its modern 3D iterations.
Your quest is straightforward: save the kingdom from an invasion by the forces of chaos. To do so, you must locate the Sceptre of Order within the allotted time (which decreases as the difficulty level increases). The problem? You haven’t the faintest idea where it’s hidden. No matter—you’ll begin with a less ambitious but far more lucrative task: bounty hunting for His Majesty.
Recruit a few soldiers, comb the countryside for outlaws, capture these scoundrels, and drag them by the hair to your sovereign’s feet. In return, you’ll receive a handsome reward and a fragment of a map. Piece it together, and voilà—you’ll uncover the location of the legendary sceptre…
The game unfolds in two phases: exploration of a vast territory filled with treasures and scattered towns where you’ll gather vital intel (your “clients’” whereabouts) and battles, which resemble chess games. Your troops are displayed on one side, the enemy’s on the other, separated by a grid. It’s this strategic element, combined with the sheer variety of creatures (orcs, dwarves, dragons…), that makes this style of game so addictive.
The main differences from the famous franchise it inspired are immediately noticeable. The maps are far sparser (no resources yet, with barebones scenery and plenty of empty space). Additionally, as the sole hero, you’ll find no proper turn-based gameplay or movement points during exploration. Enemy creatures will pursue you, but politely—one square at a time, always after you move (this changes in the Sega Genesis version, where they opted for real time action). Finally, while towns and castles exist, you can’t build or develop anything in them.
Combat is nearly identical to what we see in Heroes, save for a smaller battlefield and fewer units. One notable detail: the concept of initiative doesn’t exist. Attack a group of enemies, and they’ll retaliate immediately—even before their losses are calculated.
The game is exceptionally easy to pick up. There’s an automatic mapping system, and I found the content quite respectable: four continents to scour, spells, artefacts, and plenty of fantastical creatures. However, the limitations are apparent. There’s little to do in towns, the atmosphere depends on a few (often typo-ridden) lines of text, and more annoyingly, poor optimisation causes mid-game slowdowns along with memory error messages. Be sure to configure an expanded setup on your Amiga emulator (A500+ 4MB).
Lastly, I won’t complain about the lack of background music—I’ve endured more than enough in Dragonflight, The Faery Tale Adventure, and a few others!
King’s Bounty was first released for PC-DOS in 1990, before being ported to the Amiga and Sega Genesis a year later. If you can do without a mouse, I’d recommend the Sega Genesis version—it’s far better presented. That said, they couldn’t resist slapping some endlessly looping music onto it. Typical.
An actual sequel eventually surfaced, 18 years later: King’s Bounty: The Legend (PC, 2008).
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