King’s Bounty is one of the funniest DOS games. It was enjoyable so much by all that it leaded to the eventual creation of the 5 games of the Heroes of Might and Magic series. At the beginning of the game, you can choose to have a character who is one of a Knight, a Paladin, a Sorceress, or a Barbarian. Each type of character has different starting strengths, abilities, and army.
The character plays a bounty hunter for King Maximus from whom the Scepter of order was stolen.
The King has only so many days to live in the absence of the Scepter, and the task is to retrieve the scepter and defeat all of the known criminals responsible for the theft. For each criminal defeated, a piece of the puzzle map is obtained, eventually leading to the location of the buried Scepter of Order. Also, contracts are issued for each criminal, and the fulfillment of contract leads to a substantial monetary gain.
Money in this game can be used primarily to buy creatures and pay for their weekly salary for serving you. Money can also be obtained from various treasure chests located all over the map. When you come across a treasure chest, you can either keep the money, or distribute
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the money among the peasants in order to increase your leadership skill.
Leadership plays an important role in this game. If you have too many creatures to be supported by your leadership skill level, the creatures may be unlawful and attack your other creatures. That is to say, they become wild and uncontrollable. This occurrence is not uncommon when ghosts are obtained, because each creature killed by a ghost becomes a ghost in your army, thereby increasing your army’s size rapidly.
This is a very fun, challenging game. However, there can be loop-holes for completing the game quickly and easily. For example, if you defeat enough simple criminals, there is no need to defeat the more difficult criminals as enough of the puzzle map is already uncovered to easily locate the spot where the Scepter of order is buried. Also, if the first thing your character does is searching the continents for all of the treasure chests and takes leadership increases, Dragons can be obtained very quickly. One Dragon is enough to defeat at least the first 4 criminals.
Overall, this is a very good game and I would recommend it to anyone who has enjoyed playing the Heroes of Might and Magic Series.
