King's Bounty: Crossworlds - Game of the Year Edition (PC DVD)

Those that have played the original, will know it's an addictive turn based strategy, much like Heroes of Might and Magic. If buying it for the Crossworlds expansion, be aware that the new campaigns don't add much:

Defender of the Crown : The only new mini campaign (2 very small maps), with the Princess needing to pass a few tests in battle - the difficulty on normal is set with a steep learning curve, I was thrown in at the deep end from the first battle, and quickly had to remember how I played and finished the original.
This is almost 'on-rails' as there is no real choice of order in which to fight the battles, each one levelling you (and pet dragon) several levels and allowing access to level 4 and 5 creatures quickly, then is over after an hour or so.

Orcs on the March : New items, abilities, creatures for the original Armored Princess game. This wasn't enough for me to want to play it through again; but for a real fan or newcomer, it'll be a blast.

Champion of the Arena : This is a rehash of the original Armored Princess game bosses, playing Arthur, a mercenary, but with similar attribute mechanics of Princess Amelie; fighting harder and harder battles and rebuffing inbetween, with a selection of guilds providing access to themed troops.
It's based around a hub, with the guilds accessed around the map, with the arena in the center. It's not particularly interesting, if you've completed the original, unless you liked the boss fights.

For the newcomer, it's an addictive strategy game with many genre references (Dungeons and Dragons, Tolkien, etc), and on budget, good value. The expansion adds little, unless you want to replay it with the new items, the new mini campaigns could have been free downloads, so a must buy for hardcore fans - and a few hours diversion for others, and luckily not overpriced.

Have you played any of the Heroes of Might and Magic series?
How about any of the Disciples series?

If your answerto EITHER of those questions is a YES then you know EXACTLY what you're getting yourself in to. And I mean EXACTLY! In fact, it's so close to the former that you'd be hard pressed, at first glances, to see any difference in game play experience at all!
I only mention Disciples because it's a similar game system... aside from that neither Heroes or King's Bounty are nearly as crap, but more about Disciples III in another review... one that may involve bad language and insults to the developers for being a big pile of moldy toe-nails.

For those that have never played this kind of game before, this is NOT a dynamic game. The more action orientated gamer may swiftly become annoyed with it and those that don't care for tactical games, such as chess, will also be distinctly displeased with it. That being said, the gamer who enjoys a more tactical game will have to wait a little while to get to the more tactical nature of the game as the learning curve of the game is staggered and somewhat unpredictable, but for the more optimistically minded this may add to the challenge.

King's Bounty is a roleplaying, strategy battle game that uses a realtime 3D world map to wander around and get up to mischief and, once finding it, entered a turn-based hexi-isometric combat map to move units around and wallop the opposition. And that's about it, if you don't include a wide variety of different status ailments, statistical buff and debuffs, magical spells and a dragon.
Unlike the aforementioned titles, King's Bounty starts off with a heavy text-based dialogue which takes a while for the interested player to read, and slightly less time for the uninterested player to click through and with absolutely no actual penalty for ignoring all those words stuffed in for the good of the so-called plot. The player is then offered the opportunity to wander around the beginning zone and trained in the mildest of possible tutorials. Once shown the most basic of ropes and the definition of the element system (ie fire, ice, shock etc.) the player is then told to go pick up a baby dragon fresh out of the nappy and told to take it with them on a dangerous quest to blah-blah-blah...
The main quest is one that essentially leads the player through a variety of different islands and maps, toward harder foes; mainly because the thorough player will leave a wake of destruction the likes of which would utterly destroy the average ecosystem entirely - what with the every potential predator destroyed or hired to join the players merry band of arbitrary psychopaths. This main quest for the yadda-yadda-yadda is peppered with smaller side quests the will, inevitably, urge the player to go to the furtherest corners of the map to acquire some form of treasure, quest item or character and then troll all the way back for some paltry reward by the quest-giver.

Same old thing, really...
Oddly, however, despite the slow start, I actually kind of preferred this game to the Heroes of Might and Magic game for the simple reasons is that the exploration mode is in real-time, all the creatures and effects have been freshly designed and balanced, the variety is pretty wide and that they've done more with this franchise in 2-3 games than Heroes have done in 5-6! And, while Disciples has the odd nice render here and there on the character screens, King's Bounty remains consistent throughout... and isn't utterly pants.

If you're a fan of such games like Heroes of Might Magic, this is definitely for you. For those of you that don't fall in to this niche (and that probably makes up a large percentage of gamers, I suspect) you might want to go for something a little more brain-dead.

7 out of 10 (for the RPG Strategy fan)
1 out of 10 (for the mindless FPS fan that thinks Battlefield 3 is a good game)

This is an updated version of Kings Bounty: Armored Princess.
Includes:
Kings Bounty Armored Princess - not quite sure why they included the original game, but ok.

Bonus Campaign Editor - I have not tried this, so no comment on it.

Orcs on the March - Not the 'massive expansion' of the original game it claims to be, rather the same game with new units, quests, items and abilities. I have not played the Orcs, so I don't know how the new Adrenaline system really works. More random items means less chance of getting full gear sets, but I guess that doesn't matter too much.
The Demon abilities that appeared in King's Bounty The Legend are now available to learn as spells, which is a nice touch.

Champion of the Arena - looks like one for the hard-core players. I got completely trashed by the first boss on Hard mode, which is the level I usually play at. Figure out how to beat each boss, and move onto the next one. There are also some side quests to do.

Defender of the Crown - the only really disappointing thing in this game. This 'campaign' takes about an hour to complete. Again, probably one for hard-core players wanting to get no casualties on Impossible mode, but otherwise it's more like a demo than a proper campaign.

I had some issues with game crashes initially, but after downloading the latest patch from their website, I had no more problems (running on Vista).

Why did I give it 5 stars? Because it's a great game and it's very very cheap. If you like turn-based wargames, then you won't get better than this for the price.