King's Bounty (Amiga NTSC) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
50King's Bounty is a turn-based open world RPG, released by New World Computing in 1991; with treasure to find, monsters to fight and 4 lands to explore. This was the template for the later Heroes of Might and Magic series, so lets see if we can spot any similarities.
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Production Notes:
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Captured: 7-11th Feb 2022
Narrated: 15th Feb 2022
Quite a few people might be shocked to hear that I never played this game before making this video, so just like Infestation and Ambermoon, I was discovering how to play this game as I went along. I think it was back in 2018 when I found out that this game existed, thanks to watching a review on the Lukozer channel, but it was only after searching for Medieval games in 2021 did I decide to review it. I was never a huge fan of RPGs, but I do love Diablo and Heroes 2, so I guess there are some RPGs that I really enjoy.
I had at least 3 false starts, mainly due to my installation of the game refusing to save my progress, but having fixed that, I still had to familiarise myself with how the game worked. After reading a walkthrough guide, it basically said to get to the fourth island as quickly as possible, and get the best units. The guide also said to start with the Barbarian first, as he can rank up after taking the first castle, while the other Heroes need 2 or more to rank up. So I loaded up one of my saves with the Paladin and smartly got my butt kicked on the first island. This is in the video. So I started again, this time with the barbarian. I think the map layout changes with every game, and certainly the items in the chests get moved around, so sometimes not every game play is the same. I looked in every chest for the map, and found it in the very last chest on the map. Here I stopped the recorder, and started it again when I reached the fourth island. I remember I found the second and third maps fairly quickly, as can be seen by the days remaining when the footage resumes. It is important to have a good level of experience and leadership by this stage, or you wont be able to recruit many units. I bought a few Giants to help, but couldn't fly until all those had left my party. Luckily I managed to dump them in the next castle as a garrison. I never used any attack spells, but the Barbarian is too weak to use much magic anyway.
It was a long process to edit 5 hours of footage down to 1hr, and all of the wandering around and most of the battle footage was cut. This might seem a bit rushed but I wanted the video to come in around 1hr in length. I added some labels to the buttons on the side, and added a raindrop effect which I thought was rather fun. There wasn't a good place to put in the images from the manual, but I found a spot later in the video during a battle. This is distracting from the footage, and you might notice the demons strike a Half Points hit during that time. The intro and ending music was added last, and this was just some orchestral music I found, and nothing to do with the game probably.
Danscore:
Back in the good old days of the Amiga, it wasn't uncommon to see NTSC EGA ports of PC games making their way to the Amiga. Particularly the Sierra games, and many RPGs and adventures. Today the 16 colour graphics don't stand up to much, there is virtually no music in the game apart from a few jingles, and virtually no sound effects either, apart from a basic movement sound, a warp gate noise which sounds more like a car alarm, and a dull thud whenever the units hit each other. As with most of these titles, it is in the gameplay where things start to become interesting, and there is no substitute for exploring the blank areas of a map to cut through the fog of war, to find a magic item or a chest filled with just what you need to progress. Anyone who has played the HOMM games will feel familiar with the enemies on offer, and the game tried to break away from traditional turn-based gameplay of similar titles, with it's semi-real time movement and action. For those who were put off by the depth of Pool of Radiance or The Bards Tale, King's Bounty opens the door for novices to explore without having to read a telephone directory-sized manual first. The challenge of completing the game for the first time is interesting and rewarding, and no two plays feel the same, giving some replay value. Gamplay is very addictive, and it isn't unusual to play this for several hours without noticing the sun going down, and then seeing it rising again in the morning. On paper, this isn't a top-class world-beater in any way or department, but having started a game, it is seriously hard to put down. So I give this 7.5 out of 10.