Kings Bounty: Armored Princess Review

Kings Bounty: Armoured Princess is the add on to the original game in the series, Kings Bounty: The Legend which in itself was a remake of the game Kings Bounty, brought out way back in 1990 on the Commodore 64 and the Amiga.

Armoured Princess carries on from the original game, only this time you are given a new hero to control in the form of Princess Amelie. It seems danger has hit your father, the King’s kingdom of Endoria. Constant fighting against the forces is proving fruitless and your people are starting to give up and loose hope. In your possession is a watch, left in your safe hands by a knight of the realm, Bill Gilbert. He has asked you to look after this watch until his return.

Amelie is summoned to go and speak with her father where it is explained to her that this watch is of great importance in regards to the future of Endoria and she is to hand it over to the kingdoms mage. Amelie is then told to flee the kingdom in order to save her life. However it turns out that Amelie has a bit of an attitude problem when it comes to obeying higher authorities and follows the Mage, much to his disappointment, and destroys the watch, magically transporting her to the mysterious world of Teana. It is here that she must start her search for the knight Bill Gilbert and put an end to the terrible fate that faces her homelands.

Kings Bounty: Armoured Princess is a RPG but with some tactical elements thrown in.
The way the game plays is classic RPG. It has a good solid storyline to it with plenty of plot twists and turns to keep you interested and lots of things to see and do. As you wander from town to town you can continue on with the main story or make yourself available to the villagers of various towns and see if you can complete some jobs for them. This is a great way to earn experience points and money to be able to buy more troops for your army, but this is something I will cover later.

The other usual RPG traits are all there, statistics, statistics and yet more statistics! You name it, there’s a stat for it! You build these stats up by doing well in battles and completing jobs as already mentioned. The stronger the stats the stronger you and your troops are.

But battles are where things change from your usual RPG romp to a game of tactics.
In villages you can buy different troop types for your personal army because no Princess fights her own battles right? What if she broke a nail or something? Heaven forbid!

You are given 5 slots in which you can fill with different types of soldiers. You can however fill these slots with 5 of the same types of soldiers but that would leave your battle plan incredibly flawed. Soldiers come in all different varieties, from Monks to Paladins, Mages and Priests even down to legendary beasts like dragons, huge lizards and giant walking trees!

If dragons are your beast of choice though, you are in for a treat here. Right at the beginning of the game you are given a baby dragon of your choosing who grows along with you and becomes more and more powerful. I personally love dragons so this was a good thing for me!
While Princess Amelie doesn’t personally make an appearance in battle it is down to you, playing as her to control the army. This is where the tactics really come into play. Using Amelie on the field maps and outside town, walk into an enemy and you will initiate the battle screen.

Battles are fought in rounds and each round of fighting is turn based, kind of like a game of chess. You are given a set amount of spaces that each character is allowed to travel, you must plan your attacks and movement keeping in mind that you don’t want to put yourself in any danger. Once moved to the desired space, you simply click on the enemy you want to hit and watch as they go to fisticuffs, getting treated to a nice short scene when one of the enemy troops have died.

There to give you an extra helping hand is your little dragon, or depending how far into the game you are, your big dragon. He is available to use once every 3 rounds and he can deal quite a crushing blow to an enemy or even use a defensive spell to aid you when things aren’t quite going your way. Very helpful indeed! Also available to you is the chance to cast spells you have picked up whilst wandering this world at the beginning of each round, but be careful, you can only use each spell once so plan your spell casting efficiently and efficiently. Battles are won or lost when all of the opposing team’s soldiers/beasties are dead or you are. You are then rewarded with xp, money and drops from the enemy.

I personally really liked the battle system as it added a element of thought to things, it’s ok at first to just put your soldiers anywhere as your troops seem to be stronger than theirs but later on you find yourself really having to think about placement and actions and how they can have a knock on effect to the rest of your troops.

Another thing that I really liked was how the game looked, I was very impressed by how beautiful everything is. It is very evident to me that a lot of hard work had gone into creating the worlds of Endoria and Teana. No detail has been left out at all, characters are brilliantly drawn, even your troops look fantastic. They have created what I believe a fantasy world should look like, Enchanting and mysterious.
The graphics are beautifully complimented by the musical choice. It succeeds in setting the medieval fantasy world scene well in my opinion. From lively pieces when in towns, to sinister music when in battles or in somewhere particularly dodgy.

The one thing I find this game suffers from is bit of bad translation, some sentences just did not make sense. But a few misplaced words is not something that will ruin a game for me.

Having not played the original unfortunately I cannot compare between new and old so am judging Armoured Princess as a stand alone game. In my opinion, it can be quite difficult to pull off a mixed genre game without seeming like your trying too hard and ruining everything for it. Kings Bounty: Armoured Princess just feels right to me. It plays well, has a compelling story and is fabulous to look at.

A must buy for anybody who likes their RPG’s with a touch of strategy.