King’s Bounty: Crossworlds Reviews

The standalone expansion for King’s Bounty: Armored Princess has been out for a few days, so it’s on surprise that a handful of reviews have appeared online for the turn-based strategic RPG.

Computer Games Romania 88/100.

Regarding the changes brought to the original game, Crossworlds comes with some modifications meant to increase the diversity within the Armored Princess campaign. We have new spells, items and quests, as well as a new tower (The Tower of Eventus), where you have to fight all the way to the top, similarly to what you did in The Legend. There are also new skills, while partially changing some of the existing ones (the Alchemist unit has a new ability instead of Holy Flask if there are no demons or undead in the opposing army).

Game Vortex 88%.

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!

GameZone 7/10.

Like Defender of the Crown, Champion of the Arena has the same type of boss rush gameplay, only this time focusing on Arthur, a mercenary transported to gladiator styled arenas, who is promised wealth, women and long life in exchange of defeating eight tough bosses. This time around, armies are amassed through guilds, which are different unit factions, such as undead, orcs, demons and dwarves. The strategy comes into figuring out which units work well together by focusing on morale. Rather than buying random units in great numbers, the key to victory is having a high morale army so that it translates into a higher chance to deal more damage and critical hits.

RPGFan 59%.

As for the Armored Princess additions, yes there are new units throughout the journey and new quests here and there, as well as a unique method of upgrading units, but the game itself is the same. The new “adrenaline” system for the orcs is nothing special. Essentially the orcs have no abilities until they deliver or receive a few blows. Delayed abilities that the player has to earn each and every battle, that’s right. The concept is interesting, and certainly suits the “adrenaline” theme, but who wants to use a unit that has to earn its abilities during every skirmish? I’ll stick to elves, dwarves, and dragons, thank you. Not all together, of course.

So, there it is. The new content adds up to maybe six hours of grind-tastic gameplay, chock full of meh. I understand that 1C may be trying to spice things up using different approaches to the same game design, but to pretend this “expansion” offers a novel approach to gameplay, or even an added experience, is just plain dishonest.

Cheat Code Central 3.3/5.

One flaw in the game’s design is the lore and story, which obviously affects the RPG elements a lot. All the voice acting is limited to the cutscenes, which don’t really provide much in the way of role play. After that, all lore and quest information is given in the form of long text trees. Moreover, you can tell there is an attempt to make the player feel like he or she is actually making decisions because different dialogue options are available when speaking to NPCs. Unfortunately, they are merely cosmetic, as choosing to say something mean or bratty rather than accommodating doesn’t seem to affect the outcome of the conversation in the slightest.