VentureBeat » King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North

GamesBeat weekly roundup: Humble THQ Bundle, sexism, and The Walking Dead Episode 5

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:55:17 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best video game stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This week, THQ releases Saints Row: The Third and more of its popular games in the first non-indie Humble Bundle, women in the games industry talk about about the sexism they face in the workplace, and Atari celebrates Pong’s 40th anniversary.

You’ll also find reviews for Portal 2 In Motion, Crashmo, The Walking Dead Episode 5, King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North, Adventure Time, and Call of Duty: Black Ops Declassified.

News:

Mobile news:

Reviews:

Interviews:

Pieces of flair:

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat 2013 is our fifth annual conference on disruption in the video game market. You'll get 360-degree perspectives from top gaming executives, developers, and analysts on what’s to come in the industry. Our theme this year is “The Battle Royal.” Check out full event details here, and grab your early-bird tickets here!

Warriors of the North adds to King’s Bounty’s tactics but not to its character (review)

Jason Wilson — Sun, 25 Nov 2012 22:00:25 +0000

I’ve always hated Vikings. This may go back to my love of the San Francisco 49ers and the Vikings defeat Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana and co. in three straight seasons (including the 1987 NFC playoffs). Or it could my intense dislike of Thor (DC Comics for life!). More likely, it’s because Vikings aren’t all that original when it comes to works of fantasy.

King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North is the second full expansion for the 2008 strategy-role-playing game King’s Bounty: The Legend for the PC (and Mac, though this isn’t out for Apple’s platform yet). Four years is a long time to continue adding to one game. King’s Bounty has introduced new lands, new challenges, and new factions through all of its updates. Warriors of the North’s big addition is the Viking faction, something I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about going into my first playthrough. Does is this new army build upon the fun, addicting, tactical gameplay of the previous games? Or has developer Katauri Interactive spent too long working on essentially the same thing?

What you’ll like

The Rune system
The Viking faction brings a significant modification to King’s Bounty turn-based combat: Runes. Each Viking unit has a limited number of Runes it can use in combat — either to boost offense (such as improving your chance of a critical hit), defense, or luck (giving the unit a small chance of taking a second action during a single round). Units from other factions may use them, too. This gives your traditional King’s Bounty tactics a tweak (you must implement Runes each turn), but it’s your abilities and spells that really make these a special addition. An entire new Spell tree, Runic Magic, specializes in using Runes. These spells gather them, distribute to allies, chain Runes (setting up another spell that takes these chained Runes and deals out damage), or use them to power their magic.

What’s fantastic about the Runes and Runic Magic is that, in each round of each combat, you face a decision: How do I use these, and do I want to use them in conjunction with magic? This adds an additional layer to the tactical options you face in battle, and after a couple of expansions, it’s always nice to see a developer give the player new choices.

More loot
Gold has always been at a premium in King’s Bounty, especially when you’re a low-level character. Warriors of the North takes care of this, giving you enough gold that you can still buy new warriors to replace fallen units even on the higher difficulties. And like previous expansions, this one brings a slew of new items as well (and this time, you can actually afford to purchase a number of them early on). Some items have Viking themes (like the Soothsayer staff or an icy spear). Others fit King’s Bounty’s existing factions.

New companions: The Valkyries
Each King’s Bounty has brought about a new set of companions from you. In Warriors of the North, you hang out with the mighty otherworldly warriors of Norse legend, the Valkyries. As you explore Warriors of the North’s world, you find more Valkyries. You may only benefit from one at a time (each of the five gives you a specific benefit, such as increasing your Leadership, thus boosting the size of your armies). You can increase the warrior maidens’ abilities by giving “donating” items to them. Each accepts a specific class of item, like weapons, armors, or artifacts. You may also deconstruct items cluttering your inventory for magic crystals, which allow you to add more spells to your spellbook. Here’s another example of Katauri asking the players how they want to approach combat: This time, it’s about managing your resources and what you’re willing to sacrifice in order to gain an advantage.

The Skald class
Players may take three roles in Warriors of the North: The Viking (fighter), the Soothsayer (mage), and the Skald, who assumes the middle path that the paladin had in previous King’s Bountys. But the Skald is more than just a mix of melee and magic. Before each battle, the Skald can “sing” one of a series of buffs that boost your units’ capabilities — or debuff your foes. This gives you yet another option when deciding how you’re going to take on your foes.

Surprise and delight
Warriors of the North provides a few surprises that I’d prefer to leave unmentioned for now. But several times, I found myself smiling when I reached a new area and realized where I was or what I was about to do.

What you won’t like

Vikings are boring
As a faction, the Vikings aren’t the most interesting lot. The Vikings (yes, one unit bears this name!) and Berserkers don’t feel all that different from the Berserkers and Barbarians of previous King’s Bounty games (sure, they look different but have similar abilities and cannon-fodder roles). The archer units are likewise uninspiring; the Soothsayer is the Viking mage, and he fills the role of both magic cannon and healer (though he does neither well). The Warrior Maiden combines the roles of archer, warrior, and healer, and while it does fight well, in my playthrough, these valuable units were in short supply. These are all missing the charm of King’s Bounty; the faction takes itself far too seriously (well, save for the quest about the arguing drinking buddies).

The only Viking unit that has any character to it is the Skald. Like the warrior bards of Norse lore, King Bounty’s Skalds focus on their musical abilities. One ability gives each of your units a random spell buff, and the other debuffs the enemy (including inflicting such powerful spells such as Pygmy, which shrinks your foe and reduces its damage by 40 percent). The Skald is the only must-have Viking unit, but since you only get a morale boost when your army consists of units of the same faction, I found myself using other Norsemen as well.

The other thing the Vikings have going against them is Warriors of the North’s first act, which has you using this faction almost exclusively (Neutrals exist, but they aren’t as plentiful as Vikings). This always can lead players to grow bored with it.

Is this King’s Bounty or Twilight?
The Undead are the big bad of Warriors of the North, but fight after fight against these shambling corpses grows tiresome. The Undead have always been one of the shadier factions in King’s Bounty, but making them the main villain faction in Warriors of the North doesn’t result in an epic conclusion. Because you don’t end up fighting much against other factions, you spend too many of your battles against the Undead, and consequently, you find yourself falling into similar patterns as you plot out your strategy because you’re facing the same foe again and again and again.

Where are the Lizardmen?
The second expansion added the Lizardmen faction, which has disappeared from Warriors of the North. I see two reasons for this: Either because it didn’t fit the story, or King’s Bounty coding can only support a specific number of factions, and it was either the Lizards or the Vikings. If it’s the latter, this shows me that it’s time for Katauri to move from this version of King’s Bounty for a King’s Bounty II. Certain Lizardmen units appear as Scruggs, beasts you can summon with Rune Magic. But considering that the Lizardmen are some of the more interesting units in King’s Bounty, it’s a shame that the faction isn’t in Warriors of the North.

Conclusion

Warriors of the North gives franchise fans something they love: more King’s Bounty. I’m a fan of more King’s Bounty, yet the magic is missing with this latest expansion. The Viking faction isn’t as fun to play as other groups. The tweaks to combat, though, give players more tactical options, something any player of a strategy-RPG can appreciate. And this makes it incredibly hard to hold something like a faction’s aesthetic against it. But the Vikings just aren’t interesting, and for the first time, a King’s Bounty expansion doesn’t measure up to the charm of the 2008 game.

But if Katauri is wise, the developer will kick the current King’s Bounty code out and begin development on King’s Bounty II. It’s time.

Score: 70/100

King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North released Oct. 26 for the PC. The publisher provided GamesBeat with a Steam digital download code for the purposes of this review.

Filed under: Games

GamesBeat Weekly Roundup

Jasmine Maleficent Rea — Fri, 04 May 2012 18:13:15 +0000

If you follow VentureBeat but don’t regularly check our GamesBeat site, here’s a list of the best games stories we ran over the last seven days that you may have missed.

This was a crazy week for major game announcements. Activison officially revealed Call of Duty: Black Ops II on Tuesday, and GamesBeat has an amazing amount of coverage for it. Bethesda teased the first DLC for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and announced The Elder Scrolls Online.

You’ll also find reviews for The Walking Dead: A New Day, Fable Heroes, and Naval War: Arctic Circle.

Pre-Mortem: King’s Bounty WotN project lead discusses deadly lady companions (exclusive)

Sebastian Haley — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:30:51 +0000

Editor’s Note: Welcome to the second exclusive Pre-Mortem for King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North. In each Pre-Mortem, an individual team member will discuss specific aspects of a game, shedding light on the decisions made, sources of inspiration, and much more. We hope it provides an informative, personal, and entertaining look into the art of game design. Enjoy! ~Sebastian

Hello everyone, my name is Denis Maltzev and I’m the King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North project lead at 1C Company. I hope you had a chance to read the first developer diary so you know the main storyline of the new King’s Bounty game, as well as figure out which of the units from the new Vikings race to use. So now you have the board, the chess figures, and know how to play. But there are some other things that influence the battlefield, right? Read on.

As you know in all the King’s Bounty series games, one of the biggest roles was always dedicated to special companions, the ones who helped the main protagonist fight through. The first game featured four Spirits of Rage and some wonderful wives, whereas Princess Amilie was followed by a cute, but highly powerful Pet Dragon along with various replaceable armor-bearers.

We had a long brainstorming about who could become a worthy ally to our Viking. The initial idea was to give our strong and powerful Olaf a selection of new, even more beautiful lady companions, a.k.a wives. But since similar characters were in King’s Bounty: The Legend and also because there were journalists and players who joked about Princess Emily’s armor-bearers whom they called ‘hubbies’, we decided to skip the family thing all together. But getting rid of fascinating females would have been wrong, so the decision was made to choose Valkyries – the gorgeous goddess-like female fighters from Norse mythology.

The key thing about Valkyries in King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North is that — unlike the aforementioned ‘hubbies’ and Pet Dragon — they act both as companions while traveling and Spirits of Rage on the battlefield. So they are quite handy.

We chose five to be in the game. Every Valkyrie has her own unique abilities. Apart from the active participation in the battle our Valkyries play an important role in the development of the main character. Valkyries will give various and considerable bonuses to Olaf’s specific stats. Moreover, Olaf travels along with all five female-fighters, however he will need to choose one of them to become the main Valkyrie (not the favorite wife!), and her bonus will be 100 percent active unlike the other four with just 25 percent of their powers. Of course our female warriors will gain experience during the battle and it will only improve their combat abilities. If you want to increase their level, and hence raise the bonus they give to Olaf, you will have to do the following. I’m sure most of you have had lots of unneeded equipment items while playing the King’s Bounty games you wanted to get rid of. Olaf will now be able to sacrifice to a Valkyrie a specific item type allowing them to progress and gain levels faster. The higher their levels the more bonuses they give. Valkyries can reach the level cap only if you accomplish a special quest unique for each of your companions.

Now let’s get to know two of the fierce lady-fighters a little bit better.

Hildr loves being in the heart of the battle. She feels the rage and anger of the fallen and the victory of the ones that win on the battlefield. She respects the gods and the traditions, and she prefers axes. Finally she loves anything that inflicts maximum damage to the enemy.

When it comes to fighting, she is not a fan of tactics and strategy, she’s a true warrior – just give her something to smash the enemy with, and a couple of tough soldiers to cover her back, and she’ll be happy. So, strong back and a weak mind, as they say. Hildr is always in the first lines of offense; hence she’s highly respected by the warriors.

Hildr has the “Valhalla Bane” skill – the hero troops become heavily inspired and receive +1 to speed and initiative for 1 battle.

She also has the combat ability, “Hildr Arrows,” which casts energy beams inflicting astral-magical damage to three random enemies. If an enemy is killed by this attack, the corpse vanishes, summoning an energy bunch that contains rage and mana.

No one could ever tell that Hrist is one of the most well-known fighters. She looks like a doll, always wearing luxurious garments, but she’s also so perfect at handling weapons that even Thor was once fascinated by her combat talents.

Hrist can overcome any competitor, be it even the most skillful and powerful one, if she has her favorite Krostar sword with her. Hrist is a real gem for everyone who’s into treasure hunting increasing the amount of gold in the chests. She also has a unique skill to reimburse partial cost of any unit killed in action.

She can also use her Greed skill on the battlefield summoning a handful of gold in a selected cell close to an enemy unit. The latter gets considerable damage if it picks up the gold. No friendly unit can be hurt though.

I’m sure some of you would like to have such a fighter around you!

That’s it for today. Hope you enjoyed this one. Next time we’ll tell you about the new magic and Olaf’s special abilities.

Filed under: Games

Pre-Mortem: King’s Bounty project lead introduces new race and units (exclusive)

Sebastian Haley — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:04:45 +0000

Editor’s Note: GamesBeat is proud to kick off our exclusive Pre-Mortem series of dev diaries with King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North. In each Pre-Mortem, an individual team member will discuss specific aspects of a game, shedding light on the decisions made, sources of inspiration, and much more. We hope it provides an informative, personal, and entertaining look into the art of game design. Enjoy! –Sebastian

Good day everyone, my name is Denis Maltzev and I’m the King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North project lead at 1C Company.

We are very excited to bring you the new title as it is our finest to date with more places to explore and creatures to add to your army, plus it would be cruel to deprive fans (and new-addicts) from a good portion of the developer’s diaries. Let’s start with some general information although I’m trying to escape from being boring.

The new game, as it’s been already announced, is named Warriors of the North. There were several options but, firstly, we definitely wanted it to have the word “Warriors”, since the main protagonist represents one of the most war-oriented races – Vikings. (No, not the football team, the ones with pointy helmets….) Secondly, the entire story is heavily connected to the northern lands of Endoria. So we went through rounds and rounds of trying different names until we came up with one we really liked.

Warriors of the North tells the story of Olaf, the Viking, the youngest son of Tormund the Ferocious, who sets on a path of war against the undead swarming the land of Nordlig. The path is soaked with blood, treachery and love. Olaf has to withstand tons of dangerous challenges, visit lots of places he’s never been to (although some of those will be very familiar to those of you who played King’s Bounty: The Legend) and fight back the hordes of the undead.

It’s been always one of the key features of the King’s Bounty series that if there’s a new race, or simply new unit added, the game will also feature all the units ever shown in the previous titles. This time around we introduced an entire new race, yes, the Vikings I just wrote about. It was pretty easy to guess… To prevent you from major spoilers let me showcase just about half of new units and show some of their specific abilities. Hopefully this will also help you plan out part of your army in case you prefer these guys to your favorite standbys in the game. (I like an army of assassins, but that’s just my tactics.)

It’d be quite strange if the Vikings did not have a Viking warrior in their roster: lvl 2 Unit with 2 talents/abilities: Berzerker (pretty usual feature of this northern race to eat mushrooms, gain bloodlust and become enraged, uncontrollable and crush anything in front of them) and Shield Blow (smashes the enemy with 30% chance of stunning for 1 turn inflicting 3-7 damage).

The next unit is Skald. You might recall the scalds were composers and reciters of poems honoring heroes and their deeds in Northern lands. So we considered it a must to have someone on the battlefield cheering up the Vikings with their Song of Praise or saddening the foes with Foul Jest.

Warriors can’t go into battle though without healers to make sure they drink enough….no, wait that’s not right. Oh well, here are their stats:

4 lvl Soothsayers with 10-14 magic distant damage and 5-7 melee damage can do some Sorcery (heals 13 HP for a selected unit, curing it completely and/or reviving the fallen ones; dispels Plague and Poisoning.) This unit is very strong both in support and damage dealing.

We also wanted to add in some of the creatures from the frozen northern lands, not just the Vikings but the monsters they have been fighting for centuries. To do this in this game we decided that one of the fifth level creatures will be the Ice Dragon. We know that the Dragons are so much adored by many of you, that we thought it would have been incorrect not to give the new Viking race this cold and fearful creature. The Ice Dragons can use Ice Blast to crush the enemies with ice splinters from their skin inflicting damage to all enemies within 2 hexagons distance. The mere presence of these huge beasts in your army will boost the effectiveness of your cold magic spells. And lastly these flying ice monsters will be able to give birth to minions, which we don’t quite have a name for yet. Icicle Dragons? Dragon pup popsicles? We will figure this one out….

Before I go, I’d like to extend my sincerest gratitude to the loyal fans of the series who have been with us for so many years now and to the new fans of the series, which we hope will be many of you. It’s been a couple of years since we revisited the King’s Bounty world of Endoria and many new and exciting things are happening there.

That’s it for this Pre-Mortem. Hope it was a nice read for all of you. Stay tuned for more about the new King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North.

Filed under: Dev, Games