At its best, King’s Bounty took Heroes of Might and Magic on in its own castle courtyard, stormed the battlements, kicked the po-faced paste out of the venerable old king who sat there wheezing through his life, and then married a zombie and rode off on a spider-steed with the vocal inflections of a country gentleman. Overworld exploration and basic strategic army building, turn-based combat, levelling and loot – it had all those things, but at its best it also had all the bonkers stuff. Legends of Eisenwald aims to be a similar game but takes its theme and atmosphere from a different place, dropping the fantasy cliches of smug elf and bearded dwarf, and aiming instead for a truly gothic late medieval experience.
(more…)