In the yers i keep seeing this "king's bounty". Never played it, i am quite curious...

In the yers i keep seeing this "king's bounty". Never played it, i am quite curious. Can anyone shade some light of what is this and what are all those different editions/dlc/expansions whatever?
Are those stand alone? Is that some kind of saga? What's the best one?

bump

It's sort of like Heroes of Might and Magic, only you move around in real time outside of battles, you don't have towns or anything like that, it's more like an RPG with Heroes of Might and Magic battle system. You ride around doing quests, levelling up, finding items, building up your army, finding maps for new islands, etc. Games are fuckhuge, have incredibly cheesy but charming stories, glorious soundtracks. They are all mostly the same minus the storylines and a few new units. Armored Princess and Warriors of the North (with their expansions) are probably the best in terms of balance. Dark Side has some entertaining writing though.

Does it give the feel of going around looking for little rare items and powerful ancient magic ala warcraft 3 custom maps?
Am i forced on rails to follow a story or can i play a la homm as in "fuck around in your map"?
Thanks.

They can be kinda hard too, unless you go full cheese. Maybe I just suck but even on normal Armored Princess wipes the floor with me around the third island.

You can, and actually are encouraged to, bounce around from map to map after you find access to said maps.

It started as a game way back.

Then some russians made kings bounty: the legend. It is a topdown RPG with HOMM combat. Really comfy.

Then they made armored princess. Improving the game greatly. After that they made a bunch of clones. Not improving a thing.

There are a fuckload of equipment, items and spells to find, and the game randomizes their locations with each playthrough so it's always different.

It's not linear at all, in fact you probably have to keep jumping between different islands as you find maps and doing sidequests as a lot of enemies can fuck your shit up. A good strategy is just running around each new map trying to get all the things you can without fighting first. You can freely move between the many islands on your boat (and in Dark Side, teleportation). You also get a flying horse where you can avoid many obstacles.

Thanks for the input everyone.
I see that there's the platinum edition on steam, am i losing out something if i buy legends+crossworlds goty on gog?

no. crossworlds is deluxe amored princess. The coregame+combat focussed extras.

The legend is rough around the edges but the maps are much fuller (princess is pretty much a bunch of islands stuffed with pickups, but tiny otherwise). So you can adventure a bit more. However princess has flight in the lategame to speed shit up. The combat as some great improvements, and paladin isnt the most useless shit ever. In the legend mage is super powerful and warrior is decent. Paladin even has a skill to convert useless paladin talent stones into other stones so you can get the sloppy seconds of the warrior and mage. I played warrior and he is pretty baller. But mage is a lot more effecient and gets double spellcasting. Which is just retarded. Armored princess makes shit more balanced and gives paladin some nice stuff.

As for the later ones. The designers of legends and crossworlds are mostly gone and its just jewing russians.

The nordic one had a gamerestarting bug halfway in and pissed me off so much I gave up on it. The new nordic race monsters are uninspired. They had a neat bear rider, but except for her the thing was completely dull. I believe later they got a bit cooler with rune shit. But those exist more to fuck you up than actually help you out.

The darkside one is another release which while nice doesnt add anything to the table you dont already know. They had a chance to really max out the necromancer army with the female vampire but fucked it up greatly. They basically have nothing what make vampires great and while having the stats of a normal vampire they require the upkeep of a fucking ancient vampire.

The writing is absolutely atrocious though, I can tell you that much

Some people might disagree but I recommend playing through legends first and only getting Armored Princess if you really feel you want more.

The gameplay through the series remains pretty much the same. The main thing that changes is that each version keeps piling on more and more different monster types many of which straight up suck ass. Because of this if you jump straight into one of the later games you may be overwhelmed and have some difficulty putting together a "viable" army that you don't need to reinforce after every battle.

Also keep in mind that these games are HARD, every single one starts out pretty easy but ramps up in difficulty very quickly. By midgame almost all enemy stacks will have 3-10x your units even if you're a high leadership warrior and have to be beaten with cheese and/or OP unit combinations. There are several encounters later in the games that even autistic russians have trouble with.

Don't hesitate to play on easy until you figure things out.

I'm not going to read the thread but as a guy with 2500 hours on the games that have this saga in the top 3 of fucking everything just behind Baldur's gate here I go

Crossworlds is godlike, dark side is bretty fun, warriors or the north is only for fans and the legend is the best way to get into the games, play as a warrior on easy the first game or you will get casual filtered out of the saga

I forgot to clarify the play order

>The legend (no expansions)
>Crossworlds (improved version of the second game)
>Dark side dark side cookies as DLC)
>Warriors of the north ice and fire (improved version of the game) (play this one only if you want more, its the worst one)

There are quite a few worthwhile units in later games. Elven Archer types always rock, the Snow Falcon in the Warriors DLC is fantastic, and the Dragon Princesses in Dark Side are by far the most powerful unit in the entire series (raise morale of other dragons, can summon dragons at around your leadership, and an attack that hits all enemies). I enjoy wrecking shit with some of these new units.

Fucking phone, let me try again
>The legend
(no expansions)
>Crossworlds
(improved version of the second game)
>Dark side + dark side cookies as DLC
>Warriors of the north ice and fire (improved version of the game)
(play this one only if you want more, its the worst one)

proto homm right that got a resurgence in the mid 2000s?

what. The game is not hard as all. Im terrible with these kinds of games and I finished them all

>evil snow white wasn't a playable character
Disappointment of the century.

Fucking hated that bitch. Beat 7 hardass bosses for her, got her a balling castle. Then suddenly she turns against me. Wish there was an option to lock her in a basement with a pack of rapist zombies for the rest of her unlife.

Is Dark Side better than Crossworlds?
Also, is the humor still present? Legend had me laughing for hours.

slightly worse than crossworlds.

No as a game but it have a lot of new mechanics and units and stuff, and being the evil guys and kidnapping elven maidens is fun

Yes