King's Bounty

aka: King's Bounty: A Conqueror's Quest, King's Bounty: Nusumareta Chitsujo, King's Bounty: The Conqueror's Quest
Moby ID: 1473
DOS Specs
Buy on Genesis
$41.26 used on eBay
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Description official description

As a knight, paladin, barbarian or sorceress, amass an army of creatures to take on the local baddies and search for the Sceptre of Order. A turn-based game with a time limit that decreases depending on the skill level you play at.

Depending on your allegiance, you will initially start with a different set of creatures, though the king will not mind whether you're his knight or a barbarian. Game consists of four maps, each with more mean creatures to control and meaner opponents to fight, but conquering one of the more difficult maps early will let you find and buy stronger creatures that will help you conquer prior maps easily.

You can see all the enemies on the map and can literally clear them all out, though random monsters can appear in your castles if you leave them unprotected after you conquered them. With each conquered castle (assuming the castle is occupied by the enemy you are currently after), you will get a level up. After two level ups, you will get promoted by the king, which allows you to recruit cavalry units from the castle, then knights once you get four other extra levels. All the other creatures are found outside the king's castle and can be recruited no matter the level, although it determines the quantity of creatures you can find for recruitment. You also have to manage your money carefully, as your army needs to be paid on a regular basis to not desert or turn against you.

There are also two artifacts per map that will reveal the map where the King's Sceptre is lying. The moment you find the sceptre and bring it back to the king, the game will end regardless of how far you progressed.

As for tougher enemies, like the final one having hundreds of dragons and demons, they can also be defeated, but not by the army you can muster in one go. When you're defeated, you respawn back at the king's castle and start with almost nothing but your money, but the enemy in the other castle won't get back their creatures lost in battle either (only the new ones that join their ranks every week).

Spellings

  • King's Bounty 盗まれた秩序 - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

7 People

Developed by
Programming
Computer Graphics
Manual and "Theft of the Sceptre" by
Manual Interior Illustrations
King's Bounty Color Illustration

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 23 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 49 ratings with 6 reviews)

A VERY original idea.

The Good
At the time this game was released, it was, to my knowledge, the only one of its kind. No other games let you amass armies of ogres and demons to stomp on other armies of ogres and demons. Most other games still had these creatures solely as enemies.

The various bad guys you had to destroy all had unique features as I recall - like what types of monsters they dealt with, etc. It gave them something of a "personality" which made it more fun to storm their castles.

The Bad
The battlefields were small, and aside from an occasional fallen log or bog, there wasn't much to impede the progress of troops. The tactical nature of the battles was, therefore, pretty much moot. (This is actually a problem that I think has proceeded into all the Heroes of Might and Magic games, though to lessening degrees with each release).

That's really my only complaint.

The Bottom Line
A fun game on it's own, but also very important to note as the precursor to the Heroes of Might and Magic series. A lot of the elements that appear in later games are also right here. If you're a fan of those games, you owe it yourself to at least take a look.

DOS · by Jeff Sinasac (391) · 2000

Many good elvish bits, a few orcish faults, and lots of ogre-like fun.

The Good
Often thought of as the predecessor to HOMM, this is a misleading as in many ways Kings Bounty is different, and some ways it is superior. I've always found HOMM a pleasant but rather aimless and meandering gaming experience - pleasant to dip into but not truly 'addictive'. Although Kings Bounty is very simple, its simplicity, and the way in which the player accumulates leadership points makes for more compelling gameplay. There are also a few nice game elements missing from HOMM. For example to progress and win 'Kings Bounty', the player has to find and besiege castles overrun by treacherous warlords.

The Bad
I bought this on e-bay and played it for the first time in 2004. It felt like a truly retro gaming experience. The game was on 5.25 disks and the graphics were blocky and pixellated, which was fine. There was virtually no sound, however, and I missed the sumptuous and kitch classical music of HOMM.

The Bottom Line
Worth seeking out. Buying an old PC and playing this on it is definitely a better way of spending £30 than buying the latest of the endless HOMM upgrades and spinoffs.

DOS · by jossiejojo (37) · 2005

The predecessor of the winning game series Heroes of Might and Magic

The Good
The game features an open map for each chapter where you wander around from town to town recruiting your army. Different towns allow different kinds of units to be purchased. This game laid the ground work from Heroes of Might and Magic series of games, and share some basic features such as recruitment of units, castle sieges and treasure hunting.

The graphics are basic but adequate, the sound was not very memorable.

The Bad
The game relied too much on numbers and not so much on strategy. If you lack powerful troops, you can always recruit more weaker units and just hope for best. There is no much variation in the way to play this game, but there was always feeling this game should be so much better in terms of graphics and sound. Of course, the real spirit of this game was finally born when the first Heroes of Might and Magic was released.

The Bottom Line
It's a turn-based strategy role-playing game with elements of chess and modern turn-based games.

Genesis · by BeaconBlue (15) · 2006

[ View all 6 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
split Genesis version? Pseudo_Intellectual (66248) Apr 25, 2019

Trivia

Board game

There exists a board game of the same name - King's Bounty. It was published in 1991 by Task Force. It's played by 1 to 8 players and revolves around catching villains in a fantasy land. It's never mentioned as a derivative of the computer game, and the villains' names are all different, but the basic premise, and, strangely, the cover of the game is practically the same, as seen here.

Development

Vincent DeQuattro:

Jon (Van Caneghem), Mark (Caldwell), and the rest of New World Computing would spend their spare time playing board games. It was part of the development process and helped us with the design of new games. The team would work for several days straight on the next major software release, and in a downtime, we'd play.

One of our favorite games was Ogre. An old AD&D derivative originally from the dark mists of the seventies, but an outstanding strategy game nonetheless. We loved it. John decided it would be a great basis for a new computer game.

Thus began the genesis of King's Bounty. We worked for several months on the game design, re-working interface and strategic flow issues through lunchtimes. Early on, we used graph paper and lead figurines to represent the hordes. It was the stuff of imagination and pure creativity.

Ghosts

There is a kind (well not actually) of bug in King's Bounty that (probably) was fixed and realized in later versions of Heroes of Might and Magic. This has to do with the most powerful creature in King's Bounty.

Dragons you think? Not by a long shot. It's Ghosts. Yes, ghosts. Ten or twenty of them won't do much harm...well under normal circumstances they don't. But have you ever tried facing 1k (one thousand) of Ghosts? For example, when one makes the mistake of bringing a lot of peasants (1000-2000) attacking a castle that initially only had 20-30 ghosts. They (kinda) fixed this problem in the later series of Heroes and Might and Magic by reducing the number of ghosts that resurrect after each ghost attack. In Heroes of Might and Magic II, Ghosts were no longer a force to be reckoned with...and was virtually eliminated as a main castle creature since Heroes of Might and Magic III.

Ghosts were not only dangerous to face, but also dangerous to use because the game offered a single challenging feature which was absent from HOMM. The hero of King's Bounty had a Leadership statistic based on class and Charisma which imposed a limit on the size of the army they could recruit. Ghosts could swell to exceed this limit by adding fallen enemies to their numbers which meant that the hero could lose control of them in the middle of a battle!

But there is another twist. The developers thought of a way to somewhat limit the Ghosts' overwhelming power: When the game calendar showed "Day of the Peasant", all Ghosts were permanently turned into Peasants!

Legacy

This game is actually the precursor to Heroes of Might and Magic.

Remake

The game was remade in 2001 as Heroes of Might and Magic: Quest for the DragonBone Staff.

Information also contributed by Chentzilla, Indra is here, Joshua Dove, Silverblade and Vince De Quattro

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Related Sites +

  • DOSBox, an x86 emulator with DOS
    Compatibility information page about the original game and its DOSBox versions.
  • Hall of Light
    For Amiga: game database entry; digitalised manuals; game packaging; screenshots; additional material.
  • Lemon 64
    For Commodore 64: game entry database; advertisement; magazine reviews; music; documentation; cover art; additional material.
  • Macintosh Garden, an abandonware games archive
    For Macintosh: reviews; game packaging; downloadable releases; manual; screenshots; additional material.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1473
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Jeff Sinasac.

Macintosh added by vital diredfruit. Genesis added by PCGamer77. Commodore 64 added by JRK. Amiga added by Martin Smith. PC-98, Apple II, FM Towns added by Terok Nor.

Additional contributors: PCGamer77, Игги Друге, formercontrib, Patrick Bregger, ZeTomes, Kayburt.

Game added May 27, 2000. Last modified January 19, 2024.