King's Bounty: Crossworlds
Score: 88% ESRB: Not Rated Publisher: 1C Company Developer: Katauri Interactive Media: Download/1 Players: 1 Genre: RPG/ Turn-Based Strategy
Graphics & Sound: Not too long ago, I reviewed a great game called King's Bounty: Armored Princess. Now, the creators have made a great game even better by giving us more campaigns and an expansion of the original game with King's Bounty: Crossworlds. The graphics look exactly like the original game, but you get some new outfits, characters, and areas so everything really seems new. You also get to play as someone other than Amelia this time. Your outfit and appearance will be be based on the class that you choose to play, whether as Amelia and Arthur (the hero of one of the campaigns). Once again, you will get to choose what your emblem is, and there are a lot to choose from. The graphics are still absolutely beautiful. Even with the bare minimum graphics card, you can tell how beautiful things are. Granted it ran very choppy for me, but I was still able to play. The new additions are even more impressive than the previous game. The music is really pleasant in King's Bounty: Crossworlds. As soon as I first launched it, I just sat and listened to the background music for a few minutes, just because I was enjoying it so much. Of course, it's not going to distract you during the game either, so you don't have to worry about that. You do still get sound effects in the battles, which are just an added bonus for you to hear.
Gameplay: King's Bounty: Crossworlds provides you with so many different options to play that you'll be entertained for quite some time! First, there is the original game for you to enjoy. It is the exact same as before, if you choose to play it. But if you're looking for more, it's here. There are two new campaigns and an expansion. The first new campaign is Champion of the Arena. Here, you will play as Arthur and you will be able to choose his class, which will determine his appearance, and you'll choose his banner. Arthur is a mercenary, but this time his client wants him to be a gladiator. His mission is to win 8 battles in the arena and claim the championship belt. It is that belt that his employer wants. You'll be given 40,000 gold to start off and with this money, you're expected to hire an army, buy equipment, buy scrolls, and anything else that you might need. Believe me, money goes quickly. After you win the first battle though, you'll earn quite a bit more and you'll have access to the guilds. You can join as many of the guilds as you want, at once, or even all 9 of them, if you prefer. I don't really recommend that method though as they don't all get along and it can cause you more problems than you want. Eventually you'll win the belt! The second new campaign is called Defender of the Crown. This time, you go back to playing as Amelia again. After choosing her class and banner, you'll be taken to a whole new world for Amelia. Here, she has to fight new enemies alongside new allies just to pass a test so that she can be called the Defender of the Crown of Darion. Her enemies are the Lizardmen this time, instead of Orcs or Demons. You start with 50,000 gold to hire your army, buy armor, scrolls, weapons, etc. You'll be able to earn more as you go, of course, which is good because it's going to take a lot more than that to prove yourself worthy! The final new addition, Orcs on the March, is an expansion of the original game. It basically starts out like Armored Princess, but there are so many new things for you to do that you'll spend many hours exploring all the new things. There are new units, items, skills, quests skills, and a new Orc skill as well for you to overcome.
Difficulty: Since King's Bounty: Crossworlds is turn-based, the real difficulty comes in figuring out your own strategy. If you prepare properly you shouldn't have too much difficulty, but there's always a chance. At first, things are difficult to prepare as you really don't know exactly what you're doing with troops or what spells and armor you need, but the game developers realized that and so the beginning shouldn't be too difficult to get the hang of. I recommend making sure that you have as many troops as you can safely afford as the more you take into battle with you, the easier your life will become. There is no difficulty level for you to choose in the new campaigns, but that's ok. The difficulty level that you default to seems to fit very well and the difficulty of it increases as you go so that nothing is ever too easy or too hard.
Game Mechanics: I've been impressed with how intuitive King's Bounty: Crossworlds is to play. You simply click on just about anything that you want to do. To move a character, just click where you want to go. To talk to someone, just click on them. Click on whatever it is that you want to buy. In battle, click on where you want to move to. The available areas for you to move to show up in a different color so that you know where you can put your characters. As you can see, there's really not much to have to learn to control. It's all very easy to learn! King's Bounty: Armored Princess was a wonderful game to play and now this expansion and new version is even better! If you like RPGs, I highly recommend that you pick up the new King's Bounty: Crossworlds today.
-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl
Minimum System Requirements: MS Windows XP/Vista; DirectX 9.0c; Processor 3 GHz; RAM 2 Gb; Videocard nVidia GeForce 7950GT with 512 Mb or equivalent ATI; DirectX-compatible soundcard; DVD-ROM; 5,5 Gb free hard disk space; keyboard, mouse   Test System: Windows XP; T8300(2.4GHz); 3GB RAM; 100GB 7200rpm HDD; 128MB nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M
Related Links: Official King's Bounty Site Game Vortex's Review of King's Bounty: Armored Princess
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