King's Bounty 'expandalone' revealed

By Robert Purchese Published 25 May, 2010

Crossworlds has game editor, tons more.

Acclaimed turn-based strategy King's Bounty will grow again with new standalone expansion Crossworlds.

There's no date, but the 1C website offers a few glimpses of what's on offer. Notably this includes a game editor for King's Bounty: Armored Princess.

On top of that are two enticing campaigns: a boss-battle arena tournament called Champion of the Arena, a random arena-picking and ally/enemy-allocating mode called Defender of the Crown.

There's also several new quests, 70 new items, eight new item sets, three component artefacts, 50 new abilities and skills and 13 new spells.

King's Bounty is very similar to Heroes of Might and Magic. Your hero rides around a campaign map recruiting and improving an army. Battles are fought on a hexagonal grid in turns.

King's Bounty: The Legend - released November 2008 - was excellent. Standalone follow-up Armored Princess came up ever so slightly short.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds. @Clert on Twitter.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (9) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • mingster #1 2 years ago

    expandalone is a good word.

  • Eraysor #2 2 years ago

    I bought King's Bounty in a Steam sale; I hated it, sadly.

  • Inigo #3 2 years ago

    I enjoyed Armored Princess, however, i thought it was getting abit old. It needs a whole new game with new graphics and systems.

    Its worth playing if you haven't, i did enjoy having a zombie wife!

  • arcam #4 2 years ago

    Looking on Steam - Armored Princess for £25, or Legend for £10. Which one should I go for?

  • bulldosage #5 2 years ago

    Great, more of KB. Can't get enough of it. :)
    Btw, the correct statement would be "HOMAM is very similar to KB" not the other way round, as it is in the article. HOMAM is a copy/successor of KB.
    2arcam: Get both! :D If you really don't wanna spend that much, AP is a little better, more balanced and less frustrating when having hard time with the fights. But you'll miss the beginning of the story.

  • Zanuah #6 2 years ago

    I also bought when they had them on sale on Steam some time ago... Sadly I've not yet actually tried it yet, I never got around to it.

    In any case I'm curious about the editor. :)

  • Toothball #7 2 years ago

    @Zanuah

    I'm in exactly the same situation. I even got it for my brother as it sounded like a game he'd enjoy, but I don't think he's played it yet either.

  • Macdory #8 2 years ago

    @arcam Definately Legend - but look out for the Gold pack with both games - it was selling cheap too. Great games once you get the concept - I actually bought HOMM series after playing these games - i'm a new convert to turn based strategy and loving it.

  • SAMagic #9 2 years ago

    Really, there are plenty of reviews out there, but here's my opinion: if you ever wanted a proper remake of the original King's Bounty (but expanded in every aspect), or if you just like turn-based strategy games, then this is the game for you.

    Pros:
    - Lots and lots to do. Mostly scouring the world map, fighting groups of enemies, finding items, gold, quests and units to hire.
    - It's big. This is one of those games I can play for a whole weekend.
    - Beautiful graphics. Nothing stupendously amazing, but it's easy on the eyes for definite.
    - You can have a zombie wife and divorce her (I plumped for the frog princess, personally).

    Cons:
    - Poor localisation. It's not god awful, you will understand what's happening without a problem, but it's as if it was translated into English (from Russian) once and that was it, with no attempt to tidy it up the dialog into a proper script. Characters exclaim like children at times for example, like "You want these undead slaying? Ok I'll do it!". Some conversations have huge paragraphs of text too.
    - It's difficult. I'm only up to the dwarven underground, but I dislike the way I have to kill all enemies in a region before I move on to the next if I'm to have any chance of defeating new enemies. It's like I'm raising a mathematic formula of stats and units so I can fight tougher mobs.

    Overall, I recommend it.