King's Bounty: The Conqueror's Quest for Genesis
Review #4300
King's Bounty: The Conqueror's Quest
The Dread Pirate Rob is here for your soul!
Gameplay
No one's going to confuse this with Shining Force or Fire Emblem, but it's not a complete disaster either. It looks and plays like one of those games if it was made by a 10-year-old. The battles in particular are incredibly simple and you can move one or two spaces depending on which unit type you have. You can attack adjacent tiles on a 4x4 or maybe 5x5 grid. There's a little bit of rock paper scissors, I think. Some units deal little or no damage to others, but beyond that there's no real strategy that I can discern. You just battle in hopes that you earn more money than you lose by having your units destroyed. Feels very much like a game of luck and attrition.
Level Design
There's an open world to wander around in. You encounter enemies on an overworld. They're almost unavoidable, kind of like the random battles that appear in Zelda 2. Visit towns to rent a boat or obtain siege weapons to lay siege to a castle. Ultimately, the game is just a long series of these random three to five minute battles.
Theme
The theme feels like Ultima or every other English made RPG of the time. Your king sends you out to fight and earn money and complete some quests. Feels very generic. Enemy units include gnomes which look like wizards, giants, elves, orcs, etc.
One of your foes is named The Dread Pirate Rob. Who knows, maybe there's a six-fingered man later in the game.
Art Style
Again, this game looks archaic. Like something a 10-year-old drew in MS Paint.
Audio
The music isn't horrible but it's nothing to get excited about. There's a lively battle song and then a cute town song. Each song is just a couple of measures that repeat so it's not a soundtrack you'll want to spend time with.
I proclaim this game to be a “hidden gem” as beneath its rough exterior lies a rather interesting and unique game. My brother actually declared it as “the greatest game ever made.”
ReplyDeleteWhat makes this game interesting is its speed running strategies. The quickest way to beat the game is to find the treasure chests that lead you to the next continent as quickly as possible until you get to Sahara, the final continent. Then you find a flying unit (dragons, archmages, demons, or vampires), buy one, dismiss the rest of your army, then fly around and grab more treasure chests. Your character sprite goes from a guy on a horse to a guy on a yellow dragon (no matter which Sahara flying unit you got). Then you collect more treasure, gather stronger units from Sahara, then go back to the weaker continents like Continentia, and obliterate all villains. Then you use puzzle pieces to determine the scepter location. While gathering treasure chests you cleverly avoid enemy encounters and hope that the treasure chest you need is not surrounded by enemies.
Graphics do stink to high heaven though, and the music is repetitive. This game had a remake on PS2 called “Might and Magic, quest for the dragonbone staff”, but I prefer this version because things happen much more quickly.
Units have morale charts, and if a unit has high morale it’s stats are improved. Elves and gnomes and dwarves have high morale unless you introduce a unit to your army that they don’t like, like Orcs or any undead unit.
I classify this as a hidden gem! Definition being that I love the game but others do not. It doesn’t have universal appeal like Super Mario 3.