King's Bounty $9.99 on GamersGate this weekend.

Thought some of you might enjoy this game. It's a CRPG/tactical combat hybrid, similar to Heroes of Might and Magic, but better, if you ask me. You choose a hero from one of three specializations, and then roam around various locales with your army in real-time, fighting baddies, doing quests, and hunting for treasure. You level up as usual.

Movement around the world is real-time, but all combat is turn-based tactical. When you encounter a baddie, your army squares off against your opponent's on a relatively small hex grid. Different armies have different strengths, weaknesses, and powers, and you can recruit dozens of different kinds of troops. Your hero also has spells and other powers he can use to help turn the tide of the battle.

Besides the real-time movement, KB is different from HoMM in that it's not mission-based. While you are restricted to certain areas until certain storyline quests are completed, you can go anywhere and attempt anything, if you can get there. In a sense, the movement around the map is more Diablo-style than HoMM.

The game is made by a Russian dev team (same one that made Space Rangers 2) and has that characteristically insane Eastern European humour. (In one quest, you can marry a zombie, if you like that sort of thing.) The game is also looooooooong. Really long. It's one of the few games where I actually thought it was maybe too long. Which, at any rate, means you'll get a lot of bang for your buck. At $9.99, it's an absolute steal.

For those of you who don't know it, GamersGate is a digital download service like Steam, but doesn't require client software to play it. You just buy it and download it any time you like. There is no download limit.

King's Bounty? I killed many an hour on that game!

Thanks for the Info..Ive been wanting to try this game out.

NeonPeon wrote:

King's Bounty? I killed many an hour on that game!

On both my Genesis and C64. Loved that game.

Yeah, the original King's Bounty was the game that then spawned the HoMM series back in the day. I never played that game (nor most of the early HoMMs). To be clear, this is a totally new game, properly titled King's Bounty: The Legend.

Thanks for the heads up! I've been meaning to pick this up for a while now.

OK--moron on computers here---how can I tell if I actually have the system able to handle this? It is Lenovo T61 laptop...but the video card, etc...I have no clue how to find out what I have...a former work computer.

Any suggestions from my computer expert brethren?

Merkles wrote:

OK--moron on computers here---how can I tell if I actually have the system able to handle this? It is Lenovo T61 laptop...but the video card, etc...I have no clue how to find out what I have...a former work computer. Any suggestions from my computer expert brethren?

Hmmm...you're under the recommended specs on CPU speed and video card memory. That doesn't necessarily mean you couldn't play it, though.

Your best bet is to get the demo here: http://files.filefront.com/Kings+Bounty+The+Legend+Demo/;11799044;/fileinfo.html and try that out. (Google king's bounty demo for other links if that doesn't work for you.) If it runs, the full game should work, too.

I see I can get Hearts of Iron 2 on there for Mac. I've been curious about that game for a while. Any recommendations?

metalface13 wrote:

I see I can get Hearts of Iron 2 on there for Mac. I've been curious about that game for a while. Any recommendations?

I've played it. I thought it was pretty good, overall. It's fairly complex. There are a lot of options and choices to make. One big plus is that you can play as literally any country that existed at the time. I ended up conquering most of South America with Canada, which was entertaining.

You're kind of getting screwed on the Mac pricing (as usual). The PC HoI2 Complete contains Doomsday and Armageddon for the same price as the Mac Doomsday.

Bullwinkle wrote:

metalface13 wrote:

I see I can get Hearts of Iron 2 on there for Mac. I've been curious about that game for a while. Any recommendations?

I've played it. I thought it was pretty good, overall. It's fairly complex. There are a lot of options and choices to make. One big plus is that you can play as literally any country that existed at the time. I ended up conquering most of South America with Canada, which was entertaining.

You're kind of getting screwed on the Mac pricing (as usual). The PC HoI2 Complete contains Doomsday and Armageddon for the same price as the Mac Doomsday.

Yeah, Macs always get screwed. I also see Europe Universalis 3. Have you played that?

metalface13 wrote:

I also see Europe Universalis 3. Have you played that?

Nope. I played the first one way back when for a while, but I don't think I ever bothered to get over the learning curve. I'm not sure why; thematically, it's the kind of thing I like...but then, maybe I was playing Medieval: Total War around the same time and EU came out a poor second in that fight. I guess for me, that series fits somewhere in between Civilization and Total War. But when I want civ-building, I'd rather play Civ, and when I want combat, I'd rather have the tactical battles of the Total War series. (And when I want to personally kick some peasant ass, I play Mount & Blade.) But I have heard good things about EU3 from gamers who love a ton of detail in their games.