I’ve always been a fan of these games, and a new one was just released. The twist is that this time, you take on the role of an evil leader. The orc replaces the warrior, the demoness the paladin, and the vampire the mage. And there are of course new maps, items, creatures, rage skills, and so on. I’m downloading it now. Warriors of the North was good but too long/repetitive. It will be interesting to see how this iteration turned out.
I don´t think I ever tried Warriors of the North due to the criticisms of it being too repetitive, but I still love this series. Let us know how it is!
Well, I’m still finishing up a long series of tutorial levels with the Orc, and so far, it’s got more personality than any of the other games in the series. The mechanics are pretty much the same and it’s running the same engine as the previous games, but there’s a sense of urgency and danger to the early quests. You don’t have a base and therefore can’t replenish your starting units easily. Instead, you have to live off the land, using eggs for spiders and snakes and welcoming whoever is willing to join you. The fact that you’re playing as evil is also fun. You can turn captives into demons and undead by sacrificing them once you get your rage-using companion, for example.
I like the concept of these games but the recent ones all ground to a halt for me as I run out of beatable encounters. Early game, great fun. But after a few hours…I guess I have too much attrition in combat but I would inevitably find myself scouring the map for a fight I was able to win.
Yeah, the scouring you refer to has been an issue at various points in multiple KB games. I’m not far enough along to say how large a role, if any, it plays in this one.
Yeah, you either need to come up with some kind of healing/resurrection approach, or you need to be able to overwhelm foes with minimal casualties.
I loved the first, but never completed it. I somehow have Armored Princess, Crossworlds, and Warriors of the North sitting unplayed in Steam. Does any of them rise above the rest?
I’d say Warriors of the North is the worst of the bunch, mainly due to being too long and repetitive. The others are all about equally enjoyable.
I had no idea this was being made. I am a huge Kings Bounty fan so I will be picking this up today. Thanks for the heads up!
I’m pretty sure Crossworlds is an expanded and improved version of Armored Princess, so you really only have to choose between the original and Crossworlds.
Is anyone else playing this on Win 8.1, and if so, how does it look? I’m running it at 1650x1080 on a Geforce GTX 650 TI supercharged, and it looks like shit - characters look “squished” (for lack of a better word) and very cartoonish, the colors are supersaturated (No bloom, I’m pretty sure), and the text is tough to read. Perhaps it’s rose-colored glasses, but I remember the others looking a hell of a lot better.
Perhaps I should reinstall Armored Princess and see how that looks.
[edit] Never mind. I guess I just had to exit the game and restart it. It just never bothered telling me. Thanks, Putin.
I gotta say, guys, Darkside is great so far. I’m done with the tutorials and having a blast on the first two real islands (the White Island map doesn’t really count). Quests are interesting and more involved than in past iterations, pacing is good, and focusing on evil units right out of the gate is a welcome change. I highly recommend it for fans of the series. Newcomers should probably just play the original, though, since I’m sure it can be had very cheaply.
If the demoness is the paladin, then I guess she is gimped compared to the other two. Its good to hear that it is a completely new game. From the screenshots it seemed familiar and looked like re-used content from the first game. If it is all new maps and essentially an all new KB game, then Ill definitely like it. It would be nice if it was more than flavor for the “darkside” ie: the mage is really a necromancer.
It’s fine if you like the series, but they didn’t spend a lot of time on new gamesystems, at least not early on.
I’m in agreement here, lots of fun playing evil and the graphics really reflect that feel, has much more atmosphere than the last one Warriors of the North that’s for sure, though the UI hasn’t changed at all.
They do have more interesting quests this time around, and the little base you build up with your activities is kind of cool. Still a lot of samey old combats over and over again, but then no one is forcing you to play the whole game through in one sitting (not that that’s possible…) so you can just pick it up again when you’re no longer bored by it.
Just hit level 30 and did the quest that enables my horse to fly. I used a lot of throwaway units in the Black Dragon battle and then ran circles around the dragon stack on the sky island that was too strong to beat. Much fun.
Up to level 27 in KBDS. Seems longer than the other KB games. They probably reduced unit availability since you can recruit at your shelter. Playing Demoness which is basically the Paladin. I like some of the changes, but in other ways it seems like they weren’t really trying much. Spelling mistakes from WOTN are still in the game. That kind of bugs me.
It’s on sale on Bundle starsright now.
Shelter recruiting is nice but not limitless. Everything runs out eventually–I’m creating scoffer imps from prisoners now because I can no longer buy them, for example. The amazing dragon riders cost 100K a pop, plus they each require a princess, so that unit has two limiting factors.
I’ve been using those, umm, demon spear girls as “healers” because they can replace my units given a stack of necromancers to summon undead for them to use for their rituals. But now I’ve run out of them, sniff, because they can’t heal themselves. And it seems my familiar guy can’t create more from prisoners. Alas.