King's Bounty: Introduction
No, not the Jon Van Canegham classic. The Russian series that came later.
The first game -The Legend- was extremely well-received, and quite justifiably. The writing is witty, the story is decent without being intrusive, the gameplay is novel and enjoyable, the music is fantastic, the art is distinctive and interesting (Which is surprising, given how clear the World of Warcraft influence is), and what few strong criticisms worth leveling at it I can think of are usually understandable difficulties, given the context.
Even better, each following game -Armored Princess, Warriors of the North, and Dark Side- clearly learned from the last and worked to refine core elements into ever-tighter gameplay. This isn't something I'm particularly used to from modern games. Reinventing the wheel and in the process throwing out everything good about the old wheel is more typical, or alternatively you get new teams trying to recreate the magic of games they never worked on and clearly don't really get. Those are a lot more typical.
It's especially amazing because the games are so enormous, and so many things interconnected -that the balance and utility of units cannot be looked at in the vacuum of simply comparing units against other units, because Skills and Spells and Companions and even items get involved in the question of what's good at what jobs in what ways. It's so easy, with that kind of interconnected design, to in the process of 'fixing' one portion ruin another, and yet the King's Bounty games manage to overall improve with each game. Not perfectly, but it would frankly be a miracle if it were perfect, and it helps a lot that the developers are clearly self-aware of not only what didn't work but more-or-less why it didn't work.
Much like my XCOM Analysis posts, I'm going to be covering all four modern/Russian/whatever-you-want-to-call-them games. I'll be talking about units, I'll be talking about Spells, Skills, Companions, Rage.
Partly because... honestly? There's only one decent source of information on the games out there, and not only does it have a number of errors and cases of only partial information, but it's really only focused on The Legend. Trying to get details on the later games tends to involve trawling through the 1c forums and still missing out on lots of information, compounded by issues like how Dark Side doesn't actually have its own separate sub-forum.
Here we go.
The first game -The Legend- was extremely well-received, and quite justifiably. The writing is witty, the story is decent without being intrusive, the gameplay is novel and enjoyable, the music is fantastic, the art is distinctive and interesting (Which is surprising, given how clear the World of Warcraft influence is), and what few strong criticisms worth leveling at it I can think of are usually understandable difficulties, given the context.
Even better, each following game -Armored Princess, Warriors of the North, and Dark Side- clearly learned from the last and worked to refine core elements into ever-tighter gameplay. This isn't something I'm particularly used to from modern games. Reinventing the wheel and in the process throwing out everything good about the old wheel is more typical, or alternatively you get new teams trying to recreate the magic of games they never worked on and clearly don't really get. Those are a lot more typical.
It's especially amazing because the games are so enormous, and so many things interconnected -that the balance and utility of units cannot be looked at in the vacuum of simply comparing units against other units, because Skills and Spells and Companions and even items get involved in the question of what's good at what jobs in what ways. It's so easy, with that kind of interconnected design, to in the process of 'fixing' one portion ruin another, and yet the King's Bounty games manage to overall improve with each game. Not perfectly, but it would frankly be a miracle if it were perfect, and it helps a lot that the developers are clearly self-aware of not only what didn't work but more-or-less why it didn't work.
Much like my XCOM Analysis posts, I'm going to be covering all four modern/Russian/whatever-you-want-to-call-them games. I'll be talking about units, I'll be talking about Spells, Skills, Companions, Rage.
Partly because... honestly? There's only one decent source of information on the games out there, and not only does it have a number of errors and cases of only partial information, but it's really only focused on The Legend. Trying to get details on the later games tends to involve trawling through the 1c forums and still missing out on lots of information, compounded by issues like how Dark Side doesn't actually have its own separate sub-forum.
Here we go.
I couldn't help but thank you for your analysis.
ReplyDeleteI've been replaying The Legend and was honestly surprised to see such a comprehensive view on the series, something I've never seen done in Russian sadly. Side note, any idea why it could be called 'The Legend' in the west, while in Russian it's roughly 'The Knight's Legend'? All the other titles have been translated directly, so...
To this day I don't know how they pulled off this Strategy/RPG mix and made it so enjoyable. I don't really play TBS (or RTS for that matter), but I always come back to this game. Plus, it's one of the few Russian games, which I'm really proud of and glad to be able to play untranslated. I haven't had any experience with English localization and I honestly don't know how they handled a lot of culture reference. E.g., there's a character in Armored Princess I think called Gromozeka, who is named after a character from USSR books/cartoons, and I anyone in Russia born before 2k knows him. And in Warrior of the North (it's plural in English, why) one of the tutorial bosses is a cyclops Kotuzov, as in Kutuzov (one-eyed Russian military officer) + Russian word for male cat. I adore all these little things and it's kinda funny to see you struggle with some of them :)
All in all, thanks again! I've a few things to say about the 3rd game, but not until you'll have it covered.
Geez thanks for not letting me fix my typos google...
DeleteOh, glad to hear somebody is enjoying it. Not sure how I missed this comment for so long...
DeleteMy best guess as to why The Legend is named that in English is a class thing. To a lot of English-speakers, 'knight' and 'warrior' would tend to go hand-in-hand, or alternatively they might associate 'knight' to the Paladin class. Just calling it The Legend ducks around that whole thing.
And I have no idea why Warriors of the North is called that in English, either. To allude to the Vikings as a whole, I guess? To allude to how the Valkyrie fight alongside Olaf and could be thought of as warriors who are also from the north??? My only other guess is that it has to do with differences in pluralization between English and Russian.
The Legend's English translation is pretty witty and full of subtle (And a few not-so-subtle) cultural references. I've no idea if they're appropriate approximations of the original Russian, but The Legend's translation sounds like it's broadly in the same spirit? Armored Princess is a bit more... straightforward. I'd always wondered if that was true to the original Russian or if the translation was just flatter. Warriors of the North is, uhhhh, uneven. Like, the blatant Batman reference just ends up feeling out of nowhere in English, because Warriors of the North mostly stays away from references in English. I'm pretty sure it was outright rushed, and I know for a fact Dark Side was super-rushed all-around.