Hands On: King's Bounty: Armored Princess

Loved dragons, scantily habited princesses and intricate hexadecimal-based battles betwixt robots and mages? Katauri Interactive is piling on the crazy again for its sequel to shoemaker's last twelvemonth's King's Bounty: The Legend.

Baron's Bounty: The Legend came out of nowhere last yr and managed to overcome my apprehensions toward turn-founded scheme-RPG battles and dishonest localizations from Russian to become one of my favorite PC games of 2008 (even if I could never beat it). I'm not sure how they managed to get the follow-up going so damn quickly for a slightly obscure title corresponding this, merely why complain? Rex's Bounty: Armored Princess is looking stellar, though information technology does come with a handful of disclaimers.

First disclaimer: the title of this game is deceptive. For peerless, the eponymous "armored princess" is anything but. Princess Amelie, WHO enters the treacherous world of Teana in seek of her mentor Bill William S. Gilbert, has more hair on her head than armour on her body. This isn't necessarily a ailment. Moreover, the claim doesn't exactly pass wate discerning the nature of the game. Is this an expansion pack OR a sequel?

Publisher 1C Company is calling it a sequel, and considering what passes for part twos nowadays, I'd follow willing to hand over it to them. Gameplay-wise, Armored Princess is essentially the Sami beast every bit The Legend. The biggest differences are that the over-world is entirely revolutionary (and looks a little better than The Legend's) and the combat and character building systems have been beefed up (to a greater extent skills, raised level cap).

In combat, Amelie takes a backwards seat and lets her recruited troops do conflict on hex-based fields. She give the axe usage skills she's noninheritable from the skill trees that give the bet on some of its RPG spirit, but it's the mages/priests, holy knights and, uh, robots with harpoons that exercise the real (number-based) combat-ready. That's fundamentally how things went in The Legend, but in Bulletproof Princess you're as wel aided by a pet dragon that looks exactly care Stitch from Lilo & Stitch.

The dragon, which will develop skills as Amelie gains experience, tooshie be named connected during any render battle. IT has many pretty nasty abilities for being such a cute miniscule tool, like a dive attack that does area of effect damage or an egg that spawns more troops. I'm not sure if the flying lizard functions as a replacing for the Hard drink of Rage from the starting time game, simply it's a worthy friend notwithstandin. Just like in The Legend, your units are expendable and will die (though you crapper e'er buy more) if they take enough hits. The flying dragon, however, sits on the sidelines and grows as you grow. It's always there, adding a entire other set of options in battle that you can forever rely happening, and fashioning fights a bit more accomplishable than they were in the firstborn game.

Not that they're easy. See that your minute disclaimer: The Legend was hard, and Armored Princess is nonetheless No cakewalk, Stitch dragon or no. If you're used to two-minute quicky battles in other RPGs, you'll have to slow your roll: every single battle I fought took leastwise ten minutes and I had to retreat from a good number of them.

The open-ended over-world seemed especially busy, eventide more packed with treasure chests, questgiving NPCs and enemies than the first game, so I was perpetually acquiring into battles before I could finish licking my wounds. When they were against evenly matched opponents, making use of the dragon and the full spellbook I had to frame buffs and defensive barriers usually won the day, but against anything on the far side my tied, I was helpless. I did notice that Amelie does get a pegasus eventually, which should make exploration a lot easier than IT was in the beginning game.

Battles do make the burden of the King's Bounty experience, so I suppose the metal glove I went through was mode of the cosmopolitan Armored Princess experience, but I do bid I'd gotten more time to talk to about of the NPCs, whose dialogue provided some of the same bizarre and twisted humor that gave The Legend its unique spokesperson.

On the whole IT seems like a estimable successor to Armored Princess – prettier, more get-at-able but still unapologetically ambitious. Look for Power's Bounty: Mail-clad Princess happening PC later this year. Beg off that Disney doesn't sue 1C before they lavatory write the game.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/hands-on-kings-bounty-armored-princess/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/hands-on-kings-bounty-armored-princess/

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