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
$44.18 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)

Still addictive decades after

The Good
No matter how much I play this game, and no matter how maps and continents don't change and everything's the same, it's just so plain addictive and likable it's probably the only game I ever regretted for being this short. Sometimes, I just love seeing a game so great in design, so addictive in gameplay, so cute in its storyline, yet above all simple, simple, and simple!

You start easily with low money, small army that can hardly be called an army, and a bounty to collect. There are 25 different unit type in total and yet it's more than enough. You have five units per each territory, for example you can recruit Militia, Archers, Pikemen, Cavalry, and Knights at the king's castle. You can recruit Sprites, Elves, Druids, Ogres, and Dragons (or was it Gnomes, not sure anymore) in the forests, and so on. Many times it will happen you can recruit more than available, on the other hand, when you recruit too much, you'll soon find yourself in a position of not being able to give them the necessary salary and you'll lose part of your army.

But it's all fun as you cannot die, when you do, you just start anew, but with everything as it was. For example, the final contract will be too powerful to defeat in single attack as it has like 150 dragons which you cannot afford to have yourself. So couple of attempts might do the trick. All in all, it's easily possible to outwit your opponents and get all the contracts before you retrieve the king's sceptre.

The Bad
Really, this game is simple and hence doesn't give much of the no-good stuff, since those few it does provide with are all the good. No HOMM game was ever this addictive, or maybe I'm just getting old, I dunno.

The Bottom Line
Simple -- you won't have trouble figuring what to do, how to do, where to do, or when to do, from exploration to battle interface, the game is almost like guiding you in its simplicity.

Addictive -- you fight, you win, and you level up and can recruit even more powerful armies, with advantage to discover new continents where you can recruit armies that can obliterate those on earlier maps, and as the time is running out, you simply can't get enough of the fighting, and soon there will be no army you cannot defeat, that's where the real fun starts.

Fun -- there is no just simple fighting to it, there are strategies, there are tricks, and there are stuff to take into consideration, for example, if you have ghosts in your army, the more they kill the more they multiply and if they go above the number you can recruit they will turn against you. Some units can shoot from afar, some can fly, and some can move quickly. You can outwit your opponents by using your boat and drive them away from the treasure they're protecting and then circle around them to steal it right in front of their noses.

This is game that has a special meaning for me, sort of like Panzer General, people just seem to miss classics like this while they take pleasure in vast numbers of aftershock clones which, no doubt, may be good, but just don't have what it takes to be a classic. I still can't believe how I can love something so simple like this when I take great pleasure in games with cutting-edge technology in graphics and effects, but it holds a great meaning for me, this game, that is.

DOS · by MAT (240759) · 2012

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

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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King's Bounty: Warriors of the North
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King's Bounty: The Legend
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King's Bounty: Armored Princess
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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.