King's Bounty Download (1990 Strategy Game)

As a knight, paladin, barbarian or sorceress, amass an army of creatures to take on the local baddies and search for the Sceptre of Order. A turn based game with a time limit that decreases depending on the skill level you play at.

Depending on your allegiance, you will initially start with a different set of creatures, though the king will not mind whether you're his knight or barbarian. Game consists of four maps, each with more mean creatures to control and meaner opponents to fight, but acquiring those maps early will let you find and buy some mean creatures that will help you easily conquer prior maps.

You can see all the enemies on the map and can literally clear the map of enemies, though random can appear in your castles if you leave them unprotected after the conquest. With each conquered castle (assuming the castle is occupied by the enemy you are currently after), you will get a level up, after first two level-ups king will promote you and you'll be able to recruit cavalries from the castle, after four more promotions you'll be able to recruit knights. All the other creatures are found outside the king's castle and can be recruited no matter the level, although your level determines the quantity of creatures you can find for recruitment, but take care of your money because if you don't have enough for your army's salary, they will desert or turn against you.

There are also two artifacts per each map that will also uncover the map of the place holding the King's Sceptre. The moment you find the sceptre and bring it back to the king, the game will end even if you happen to find it very early in the game.

As for tougher enemies, like the final one having hundreds of dragons and demons, they can also be defeated, but not by the army you can muster in one go. But when you're defeated, you respawn back at the king's castle and start with almost nothing but your money, however, the enemy in the castle will be left without those creatures lost in the battle, unless some of the new comes to aid him as every week the population increases.

Many gamers out there have either heard of or played the brilliant Heroes of Might & Magic series, but only a small percentage of these are aware that they follow in the footsteps of a previous New World Computing release ... King's Bounty! Anyone who has played HoMM 1 will recognize the game. They have so much in common that you may say that HoMM 1 is a remake of King's Bounty.

Now ... What can King's Bounty offer you that HoMM can't?

The answer is A LOT! You have plenty of options when walking around the landscape: you can visit cities, recruit warriors from castles, request a private audition with your king ... and of course defeat enemies all over the land. One of the biggest differences between KB and HoMM is how enemies react to your presence. In this game the monsters can move around freely, and they have a nasty habit of trying to hunt you down. This means that you will have to calculate every step you take if you want to avoid combat with them.

The biggest difference between these games is that you do not use the mouse when playing KB. Some might be frightened by this, as you need to use commands to get what you want, but every new window shows a detailed description of the available commands at the time, so you will master the game controls in no time.

What about the graphics? Well, let us not forget how old this game is ... and although the most popular colour in the game is Ultra Green, some of the scenes and backgrounds are incredibly well-made and a real treat to watch.

The sound is average, but the gameplay is EXCELLENT and more than makes up for the sound quality! So if you are a fan of Heroes of Might & Magic and want to see where it all began, or if you simply like old games ... this is the game for you.

Nice little strategic RPG (haven't been sure where to put it). Somewhere in a distant Fantasy-Land the ruler is in big trouble. The evil Arech Dragonbreath has stolen King Maximus the Sceptre of Order. Now it's your turn to get it back. You'll have the choice to play either as knight, paladin, barbarian or sorceress. Each with it's own ups and downs - the barbarian for example is good in ordering his troups (important, coz' you don't fight RPG-like, but strategic, meaning your men against the enemy's troups), while the sorceress is good in performing magic. Both is useful and knights and paladins are good in both, but no experts in one of it. You choose your troups out of 25 different races of monsters. Your goal is to find the sceptre, to do this you got to find several map-pieces. You got to solve some quests, find some items and so on - little bit of the old Ultima-Style, but surely with better graphics and a strategical touch. A quiet little game that's better than it looks like.

Know Heroes of Might & Magic? Where they got the game engine from? Well here is your answer. King's Bounty is the first version with the famous game engine.

You are a bounty hunter with your own private army and you will have to defeat different enemies so you can collect your bounty. For that you can even more and better armies including different things so your soldiers fight better as well. The control are of course easy to find out all though it's almost only key based.

Back when I became instantly addicted to this fantasy strategy game, I wondered why it didn't sell better than it did, and why so few magazines recognized its quality. Years later, when the game was given a tremendous facelift and reborn as Heroes of Might and Magic (HOMM), the great game concept finally got the attention it deserves. Still, few people know about HOMM's predecessor even when New World Computing included it with the first HOMM game. So here it is.... the true beginning of a classic fantasy conquer-thy-neighbor series :)

How to run this game on modern Windows PC?

People who downloaded King's Bounty have also downloaded:
Kingmaker, Kingdoms of Germany, Jagged Alliance, Kingdom at War, Kaiser, King of Dragon Pass, Joan of Arc: The Siege & The Sword, King's Bounty: The Legend