Great moments in PC gaming are bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories. 

King's Bounty: The Legend is a Russian fantasy strategy game where most of your decisions are pretty normal for the genre. Focus on ranged units or melee? Recruit more elves or giant snakes for your army? March back home to replenish before fighting that big kraken? Standard stuff, except for one decision: Who do you make your wife?

King's Bounty: The Legend has a dedication to following through on the implications of marriage in a magical fantasy setting that is unmatched except by Divinity: Dragon Commander and maybe some Japanese games I'll gloss over here. You can marry an elf or a dwarf, sure, but you can also marry a demon, a pirate, a zombie, or a frog.

Each comes with their own complications. You need permission from a tree to marry the elf. You have to defeat a kraken to impress the pirate. The zombie lady has to be freed from the curse of undeath and also purchased from her current boyfriend (he is not a great guy).

Then there's Feanora, the frog. She's part of a quest given by an earl who sends you to the swamp to rescue a princess who has been cursed. Turns out that actually the swamp is full of talking frogs who can be transformed into princesses with a kiss, not because they're cursed but just because that's their whole deal. The Earl's been "rescuing" princesses from the swamp for years, but when love runs its course they transform back into frogs and he dumps them in his dungeon. You can just play along with this weird saga, collect your reward, and move on. Or you can liberate the frogs, at the end of which the swamp princess the Earl hired you to kidnap in the first place reveals she's fallen in love with you.

Anyway, that's how I ended up married to a shapeshifting frog who kept referring to our children as "tadpoles". The internet tells me I should have married the demon instead because she can carry two weapons instead of just one. The internet has its own priorities.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Heroes of Might and Magic 3 is not only one of the best PC strategy games ever made, but one of the best games period, perfectly capturing the magic of building castles and battling fantasy armies. Unfortunately 3DO filed for bankruptcy soon after producing the disappointing fourth entry in the series in the early 2000s, taking New World Computing, the developers of Might and Magic, with them. Ubisoft swooped in to take over, and would then go on to produce increasingly mediocre sequels. 

But fortunately for us, in 2008 King's Bounty: The Legend came from Russia, with love.

King's Bounty: The Legend was actually a reboot of the 1990 precursor to the Heroes of Might and Magic series, the original King's Bounty. It had laid down the template, combining turn-based tactical combat with stacks of dozens and even hundreds of units battling on a hex-grid map, as well as managing resources and raising armies via a strategic overland map filled with treasures and enemies. 

That campaign easily stretches over 50 hours, with dozens of side quests and a gigantic world map sectioned off into a nice variety of locations, such as an undead-infested swamp with an earl who keeps trying to turn frogs into princesses

King's Bounty was developed by New World Computing just as their Might and Magic RPG series was just beginning to pick up steam. In the mid 90s, they took the main concepts from King's Bounty and adapted them into the Might and Magic universe, creating the Heroes of Might and Magic series. The original King's Bounty was reduced to a quaint acknowledgement mentioned in passing in the Heroes 3 rulebook.

"The King's Bounty name was forgotten long ago," says Nikolay Baryshnikov, head of games at 1C Company. "I had the idea to revive it and restore its previous glory. I actually came up with the name for King’s Bounty: The Legend." (Prior to that it had the working title 'Battle Lord'.)

A decade ago Baryshnikov was leading 1C Company's international publishing division, and hadn't been paying much attention to the drama surrounding the Might and Magic brand. They had recently published Space Rangers 2 from fellow Russian developer Katauri Interactive, and were excited about making a third entry. "It seemed logical to make Space Rangers 3—fans were requesting it," says Baryshnikov. "So of course we decided to make a new King's Bounty title instead!"

Katauri Interactive had grown tired of making space games and wanted to flex their fantasy muscles. "After looking at the initial game design, we realized that it was somewhat similar to the old King's Bounty," says Baryshnikov. "This immediately motivated me to get the IP rights."

The turn-based, hex-grid combat in King's Bounty: The Legend remains largely the same as the Heroes of Might and Magic series, though with a greater emphasis on individual tactics. Almost every unit in the game has access to several different active abilities as well as passive traits and stats, so learning every unit's strengths and capabilities becomes richly strategic and rewarding. 

King's Bounty: The Legend separates itself from its siblings with a focus on a single, giant campaign with character progression and skills. It's less turn-based strategy, more RPG with turn-based combat. That campaign easily stretches over 50 hours, with dozens of side quests and a gigantic world map sectioned off into a nice variety of locations, such as an undead-infested swamp with an earl who keeps trying to turn frogs into princesses, and an archipelago where I wooed the pirate heroine by defeating the kraken.

Instead of managing cities and building creature-producing dwellings, my chosen hero, either a warrior, paladin, or mage, has to carefully manage gold and purchase forces from various locations discovered on the world map. The starting castle offers peasants and swordsmen, while a pirate den has, well, pirates. 

Then there's the unforgettable side quest where a man admits to zombifying his wife, leaving me with the option to purchase said wife

Take too many losses after a string of battles and the mage's tower may run out of archmages completely, forcing me to switch up my strategy and adapt to a different army composition. "I loved the randomness of the game," says Baryshnikov. "It constantly pushed you to use a different army set and experiment with new troops and abilities, as opposed to just using Black Dragons all the time."

The Black Dragon comment is a reference to the uber unit of the Heroes of Might and Magic series. But where in those games I would hire half a dozen or more heroes to run around the map, King's Bounty keeps the action focused on a single hero who grows in power over a lengthy adventure. 

The hero has access to three skill trees corresponding to each of the three classes, and a unique foursome of demonic elementals called Spirits of Rage that can be summoned with a variety of spells and skills. "Normally in RPGs warrior classes are greatly limited in magic-wielding abilities," says Baryshnikov. "The Rage mechanics were a great addition to the warrior’s battle skills and army power."

The most memorable feature of King's Bounty: The Legend was the ability get married. Romance and marriage isn't exactly a novel concept in RPGs, but these marriages matched the game's goofy, sometimes darkly humorous tone. That pirate princess I mentioned earlier was one of the more normal brides-to-be. I could also rescue the frog princesses from the Earl and make one my wife, and there was the potential for her to transform back into a frog if our love ended. 

Then there's the unforgettable side quest where a man admits to zombifying his wife, leaving me with the option to purchase said wife, and then the further option to leave her a zombie or cure her. Either way we can have kids together, though in King's Bounty: The Legend children were rarely worth their paltry stat boosts compared to loot, and starting a family paled compared to playing the wandering womanizer. Game of Thrones has nothing on the world of King's Bounty.

King's Bounty: The Legend proved to be a big hit for 1C Company, and was one of the most successful games ever produced in Russia. They published three sequels and an expansion pack, with the last two sequels developed internally when developer Katauri moved on to developing MMO Royal Quest. "My favorite is King's Bounty: Dark Side," says Baryshnikov, who worked on it directly. "I have a great nostalgia for games like Dungeon Keeper and I always wanted to tell the story of the 'bad guys' that are not just mindless Chaotic Evil characters but have their own dark charisma."

King's Bounty: Dark Side came out in 2014. When asked about the future of the series, Baryshnikov is excited and optimistic: "I have played thousands of hours of the King's Bounty series. I am in love with it; it definitely has a future. I don't have specific details yet, but I have a personal dream to push King's Bounty to the next level. Sometimes being an executive in a game development company really helps to make your dreams come true. So stay tuned!"

This article is part of the Class of 2008, a series of retrospectives about indie games that were released 10 years ago. 

1C Company are the subject of this week's pay what you want Humble Sale. Not that you're being offered their full, expansive, and occasionally ropey back catalogue. Instead the bundle focuses on two of the publisher's more notable series. Included are a battalion of Men of War, and a king's ransom of King's Bounty. It's a great collection if you're looking for a large and meaty slice of turn-of-the-decade PC gaming.

Here's what you get:


King's Bounty
King's Bounty: Armoured Princess
Men of War
Men of War: Red Tide


And, if you beat the average price, you'll also receive.


King's Bounty: Crossworlds
Men of War: Assault Squad


As you can see from our reviews, that's well worth doing. While it's not quite the full collection - missing Men of Wars: Vietnam and Condemned Heroes - all included games are bundled with their relevant DLC packs.

The bundle will run until August 8th.

1C Company's Darryl Still has been speaking to CVG about the state of digital distribution. He describes the dichotomy between retailer's in-store stock levels, and customer's demand for products as "quite shocking."

According to the publishing director, the recent growth in digital distribution was inevitable: "I think of it as less a revolution, more a filling of a void. A new government coming in to a territory that has been pretty much ungoverned for the previous few years."

1C publish the Men of War, IL-2 Sturmovik, and King's Bounty series', among other PC stalwarts.

Still credits PC with the industry's technical advancements of late, saying: "The PC has been at the forefront of most technology shifts in the market. I was very aware of this at Nvidia. Most breakthroughs in console technology have their roots in the PC market. Most leaps in games development come to the PC first and then work their way into the SDK's of the console manufacturers."

He also says that PC gaming is still in a strong position, and that customer's lack of demand for boxed products is vastly exaggerated: "For the longest time we've been told by retail, in the UK and US especially, that PC games is a dying market.

"It has been getting less and less shelf space and less and less focus in store, but in all that time we, as a PC publisher have seen absolutely no drop off in demand. In fact the dichotomy between us being told by retail there is no demand for our product and us being asked by customers - by e-mail, phone etc. - where they can find our games is quite shocking.

"My favourite example is when one of our UK publishers came to explain why they had only managed to get 30 copies into the UK's largest retail chain. He passed on: 'They told us there was hardly any demand for the title.'

"At that time I had my digital sales reporting tool open, which tracks download sales instantly as they happen, I hit refresh and informed our partner: 'In the few seconds that's it has taken you to explain there is only demand for 30 units in the UK, we have sold twice as many as that digitally,'" concluded Still.

Digital distribution, and Steam's dominance over the market is a contentious issue. E.A's own download service, Origin has been creating all kinds of headlines over the past few weeks. When was the last time you bought a game in-store? Rich claims Enemy Territory: Quake Wars was his last boxed game, whereas Tom S, Tim and I all bought Starcraft II in-store thanks to the "nice box."

King’s Bounty: Crossworlds is an expansion for King’s Bounty: Armoured Princess, making it an expansion for an expandalone for the 2008 remake of the 1990 turnbased tactical RPG King’s Bounty. Much as in all of those, your job in Crossworlds is to heroically steer a horse around a medieval fantasy world, bump into evil generals, and fight their armies on a hex grid. Afterwards: XP and gold for all.

Unlike any of the previous games, Crossworlds comes with two discrete mini-campaigns to garnish the main expanded content. The first, Champion of the Arena, is about Arthur, a generic wanderer mercenary type who’s been drugged and taken to an underground city to complete a series of boss fights.



It’s easy. There are a bunch of race-themed guilds – Royal Academy of Shouty Men With Swords, Horrible Lizard Swamp, Dwarven Booze-O-Mine, etc. Fight various insta-battles for them and they’ll reward you with ludicrous amounts of cash to buy thousands of fairies with.

Look, I didn’t mean to start hanging out with fairies. I’ve got dryads and druids and shit like that, but it’s really just to boost the morale of my miniature murderous mistresses. Fairies are malice incarnate. Each turn, my dainty legions do horrible things to swarms of demons and undead. After each battle, I go up about five levels without breaking a sweat. It’s brief, silly fun, and I was done with it in about four hours.
Square one
If you prefer a challenge, there’s always the second mini-campaign. Defender of the Crown is set directly after the events of Princess. Princess Amelie has just defeated the Uberlord Demonpants guy, and returned as a battle hardened, triumphant... level one wimp? What? She’s also got to prove that she’s a bad enough dude to defend the crown, despite that whole freezing-time-and-voyaging-to-another-dimension thing she did.

Your resources are tight, the encounters so carefully built that you need to have a plan, and the rewards piled just high enough to make it seem worth it. It’s a frustrating gauntlet if you don’t know what you’re doing, but if you’re itching for a King’s Bounty style scrap that forces you to think, this is it.



The bulk of the expansion is less interesting. Orcs on the March is Armoured Princess again, but with some sloppy dialogue tree cock-ups, slightly more complicated Orc combat, and some more challenge-dungeons around the world. Loads of expensive magical items (which you can’t afford) lie around in shops from the off, and there’s a new Orc-centric quest chain, but it’s still the same old world from last time.

Although Crossworlds won’t rekindle your romance with the original Armoured Princess campaign, it offers enough content for veterans to justify the £15 purchase.