Legend of the North: Konung

aka: Knjaz': Legendy Lesnoj strany, Konung: Legenda Północy, Konung: Legenda severu, Konung: Legends of the North, Konung: The Legend of North

Moby ID: 3325

Released

September 6, 1999 on Windows

Credits

20 people

Publishers

Developers

Moby Score

5.8

#21,867 of 24.3K

Critics

47% (8)

Players

(13)

Review Ranking

#7,463 on Windows

Collected By

21 players

Genre: Role-playing (RPG)
Visual: Isometric
Gameplay: Managerial / business simulation
Interface: Multiple units/characters control
Point and select
Setting: Fantasy

ESRB Rating: Teen

Business Model: Commercial
Media Type: CD-ROM, Download
Input Devices Supported/Optional: Keyboard, Mouse
Multiplayer Options: Internet, LAN
Number of Offline Players: 1 Player
Number of Online Players: 2-16 Players

Included in

Knjaz' III: Novaja dinastija (Kollekcionnoe izdanie) (2009)
Konung 1 + 2 (2016)

Special Edition

Knjaz': Legendy Lesnoj strany (Podarochnoe izdanie) (1999)

Description official descriptions

Legend of the North is a role-playing game out of Russia. The game focuses on the Scandinavian landscape and mostly real enemies (although larger than normal). The game includes a night/day cycle that includes twilight as well. You have the option to have that cycle, or remain in day only if you get tired of not being able to see much at night.

The game's plot is based on three heroes trying to combine an amulet to save the world. However, these heroes are not necessarily friendly to one another. The heroes are the following races: Slavic, Byzantine and Viking. When you start the game, you choose which hero you want to play and some attributes for that hero. Your choice of hero has many effects in the game. For instance, you look different in the game and start in different locations. Also, the local residents will react differently toward you depending who you are.

In order to win the game, your best path lies in conquering most of the towns by peaceful or military means. To conquer the town peacefully, you must complete a quest for that town. If you choose to attack the town instead, you better have many followers in your group and some oil for your arrows so that you can set the town on fire. After the town is yours, you can collect money from the town once in awhile and also get free healing and free repairs for your items rather than paying. You can also have the town build things such as a blacksmith, bridges, wells, etc. However, you will have to get a trained person to work in anything you build. For instance, just building a marketplace won't let you buy items. You will also have to bring a trained merchant to live in the town.

The game allows you to get up to 9 other characters in your party as you gain charisma. However, you will have to pay people to join you. These other characters can be human or even some creatures. They will have different skills and may be best suited to bows or swords rather than both. Each character in your party can equip 3 weapons at once - a bladed weapon (swords, daggers, etc.) in slot 1, a blunt weapon (clubs, maces, etc.) in slot 2 and a bow in slot 3. You can then easily change your weapon using the number keys and can change the weapons for each character in your party. There are 3 kinds of arrows in the game that do different amounts of damage. The game also includes an alchemy skill which allows you to mix items to create potions. For instance, if you mix a White Root and an empty bottle, you get a healing potion.

Legend of the North includes both single player and multiplayer modes of play. The multiplayer mode allows for up to 16 people to play at once using a LAN. No Internet play is available, however, and in its latest GOG release, 1C classifies the game as singleplayer-only.

Spellings

Князь: Легенды лесной страны - Russian spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

20 People

Project Leader	Yury Miroshnikov
Original Concept	Eugenie Inozemtzev Yury Miroshnikov Alexander Nikitin
Design	Alexander Boltovich Yury Miroshnikov Alexander Nikitin
Senior Programmer	Alexander Efremov
Senior Artist	Eugenie Inozemtzev
Programming	Alexander Boltovich Dmitry Gerebkov Boris Kaminer Dmitry Korolkov
Graphics	Eduard Ashrafiyan Alexander Polyakov Olga Rybakova Sergey Vorontzov
Script & Dialogues	Nikolay Baryshnikov Pavel Zaviyalov
Music	Sergey Grigorevsky Sergey Kopeika Alexander Shipnevsky
Sound Effects	Ilya Kocherzhuk
Cut Scenes	Yaroslav Kemniz
Historical Consultant	Henry Talalyan

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 47% (based on 8 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.2 out of 5 (based on 13 ratings with 2 reviews)

A great hero becomes a greater hero!

The Good
Yes, that's right. No matter what character you choose you are a hero! And a well-known one as well. I liked that... I was kinda bored by all those "farmer becomes hero and gets all the girls" plots so I embraced whole-heartedly this game. As it was supposed to be, the story is great, worth following while playing. Your main aim is to create a magical amulet split into 3 pieces (yes, you must gather these pieces). The game has 3 different available PCs (Player Characters) and yes, each one of them has a piece of amulet, and yes, they will meet at a point in the adventure.

The game graphics are really nice. I enjoyed most of the scenery and the humans are nicely drawn. Maybe the water did not look so good, but since it was called "A deadly sea" by the locals, maybe that's why it was so dark... Maybe.

Besides the nice story, the game features some really interesting characters, most of them taking part in the main quest. Oh, and let's not forget about the secondary quests that offer your character experience and valuable items and/or information.

The items are quite numerous variating from weapons to artifacts... Not much to say about the items because, despite their variety they aren't interesting at all... And most of them aren't useful at all.

The Bad
That should do about the good parts... Let's talk about the bad parts of the game.

First of all, I didn't enjoy the dialogue system. And the voices. The selected NPC only says "Hello" or something, and after that you'll have to read tons of dialogue placed on a separate screen...

The speed of the characters is... Oh my god! They're like snails. And that's terribly wrong... especially when you have to travel a great distance... And believe me if you choose to try out this game you will travel great distances! GREAT distances!

And if you won't get bored after travelling for like... one and a half hours just to get an item you may find out about:

-The weak enemies you will encounter by the end of the game.

-The voice of the local blacksmith... or witchdoctor... which was the same voice of the previous blacksmith... or witchdoctor.

-The impossibility to recruit enough characters to fill the party slots.

-and more... which I forgot about.

The Bottom Line
A nice game, for an RPG fan... addict... But if you ain't no RPG fan, nor addict, stay away from this game.

Windows · by Hypercake (1310) · 2008

Way better than its predecessor, but kinda average for an RPG...

The Good
Wha? 2000? Dang, I just finished the game this year in 2005, thinking it was new...doh. Oh well. For some reason, the earlier Konung game isn't in the database yet...maybe I'll add it when I have time.

Konung is an interesting RPG where I can sense that the developers where trying to re-create their RPG fantasies into a game. A game where you are the hero, whilst fighting evil, you try to manage small forces of towns against the enemy forces. The closest game to remotely resemble this was Jagged Alliance 2, but even in that game, town management was too general.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, I'll start with the good stuff I've noticed in order while playing the game. The review of course in relation to comparing the game with its predecessor as well as other RPG's.

The first thing I've noticed was the fabulous artwork involved in the game. I haven't seen much games that put much effort in artwork when it comes to "loading pictures" e.g. save game, load game, etc. In this game, every system option to loading pages have detailed pictures of the heroes in the game. Like real-detailed oil-painting pictures. A big thumbs up for effort in this regard.

Graphics have upgraded way up from the original Konung. Back the characters were a little bigger than your hero in Ultima-Pagan and not so nice coloring either.

Ah, the world of statistics. What RPG isn't without character statistics and not passive statistics that you can't control like in irritating Playstation games, but leveling up and advancing you character to your own taste.

Gameplay was a little better, though it "seemed" that way because of the better graphics.

Didn't have to download a !#!$%! patch to finish the game. Ha! At least most of the programming people got it right.

**The Bad**
Here comes da bomb...

I don't know if the position is called Quality Assurance or Game testing, but I know I wanna fire somebody. I like reading. I especially like reading all the little details the game has to offer. In RPG's, you like reading the most are item descriptions, since it usually gives a lot of information about the game. But what did I find? Was it incomplete descriptions, or is there a scroll button somewhere I didn't find. A one line item description and some of which stops in the middle of some word. For crying out load, you'd think that you don't ever get this kind of thing wrong, but nooo. Someone deserves a kick in the behind for being terribly negligent.

Combat has it's few problems. In all it's not that bad, this is more like a "needs improvement" thing. The first "problem" about combat is that it kinda get's a little messy and chaotic when you have a lot of characters in your team. Not that you can't control you characters since you can click on their portraits, but sometimes you need a fast shortcut which I don't think exists. This is probably the main reason why some of my characters died...load game.

Next combat problem or travelling problem, is these idiot characters of yours don't seem to follow your orders very well. Sometimes they run, sometimes they walk, sometimes they walk when your not looking and when you center on them, then they start running. What the? Seriously, there should've been a permanent "run" button you can use. You have no idea how many times my characters got whacked in combat because they walked instead of running when I double clicked on the screen.

Times like this you know they the Ultima series has combat options like "attack strongest" or "attack nearest". Since combat is somewhat a jumble in this game and character development must be planned carefully, you kinda want your lower level characters to kill more enemies than the higher level ones. But that doesn't happen very often since the higher level characters whack the enemies faster than the lower level dudes can raise their sword. So you try to weaken the enemies and run away, hoping the lower level dudes will finish the job. But what do you get? A "follow the leader" parade, where your stronger character is followed by the enemy who in return is followed by the lower level dudes who don't seem to fight very well while walking or running. Your practically invulnerable when your running, nobody can whack you unless their really lucky.

The story line is kinda "ho-hum". Didn't hire a very good writer I gather or didn't pay'em enough money. Most of the dialogs is one or two liners that seemed to be put in a hurry.

Uh, was the intro sub-titles supposed to be that fast or am I just slow reading. Not likely.

Crappy ending cutscene by the way.

**The Bottom Line**
Well, it's worth the play if your a Konung fan (though unlikely since it ain't that famous, doh). Not bad for an RPG, it certainly has a refreshing approach in RPG management one would like to try.

Windows · by Indra was here (20633) · 2005

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Related Sites +

Konung
Official website

Identifiers +

MobyGames ID: 3325

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kasey Chang.

Additional contributors: Corn Popper, JRK, Riamus, Stratege, piltdown_man, Plok, Evolyzer, Đarks!đy ✔.

Game added February 13, 2001. Last modified March 17, 2024.