 SEGA DRUNK The Sega Genesis, generally speaking, lends itself to some pretty good PC ports. The best example is Sid Meier's Pirate's Gold. Yeah, I know I mention that game all the time, but that game is way, way better than it has any right to be, especially for a PC port. If you want to turn to other PC ports on the Genesis, there's also King's Bounty, a game originally made for DOS in 1990, eventually making its way to the Commodore 64 and Amiga, before getting a Genesis port a year later. If this game looks familiar, it's because it's the precursor to the Heroes of Might and Magic series that would kick off in 1995, so everything from the story to the combat style, to the emphasis on developing your hero, all stuff you'd typically find in the Might and Magic games, you'll find them here in King's Bounty as well. The basis of the gameplay here is to build and command an army, and you have 4 leaders to choose from. One of these 4 will be the commander of your army, and they each have their own advantages and disadvantages. The Knight's advantage is his leadership, so it's easier for him to recruit soldiers. He starts out with the best troops right from the get go, but when it comes to leveling up his army, it's slow going, comparatively speaking. The Paladin is similar, although his strength is using magic buffs to enhance himself and his army, but the drawback is that he can't command as many troops. The Sorceress has the best magic of the 4, duh, but her leadership sucks, so it's hard for her to recruit an army. She's probably the hardest of the 4 to play as. The easiest however is probably the Barbarian, he levels up quickly and has the highest leadership so he can recruit tons of troops. His drawback is that his magic sucks, but whatever, it's easier to just bulldoze your way through this game by sheer force of will. So while that's all well and good, unfortunately there are some pretty clear limitations with how this game is structured, for one thing there just aren't enough distinct differences between the 4 characters, all the stuff I refer to is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. I mean the name of the game is just to wander around these huge 4 continents, gather an army and kill everything that moves. I should mention though that the Sorceress is the only character that starts with magic, while the other 3 characters have to go someplace and purchase it. But yeah, money is a big part of this game because well, troops expect to be paid. You can find money in treasure chests throughout the overworld map and it gives you the choice of either keeping the money for yourself or distributing it to your army which increases your leadership stats. In my experience you always want to distribute the money because it increases the number of troops you can recruit, and besides the stuff you can buy with money yourself that's actually useful is reasonably cheap anyway, like renting a boat so you can find more money so you can get more troops, so there you go. You also eventually need to buy siege weapons so you can get into certain castles so there's that to keep in mind as well. The combat here as you can see is pretty goofy looking, you wander around on an overworld map seeking out stuff to fight, treasures to unlock, or towns and dungeons to recruit from. When you run into an enemy the game transitions to a grid that sees your soldiers pitted against an enemy army, and the way this is laid out is almost comically simple. You seriously just throw hundreds of bodies at your enemy with the hopes that you'll survive and they won't. I admit there's a bit of an appeal to this streamlined approach if you're tired of being overwhelmed with micromanaging like in an ogre battle game or something, but otherwise the combat here is a bit too simple for my liking. Okay, maybe I'm being a bit too hard on the combat here and maybe I'm just used to other tactical games, I'm sure there is some sort of strategy here and the game is kind enough to let you take a few different approaches in terms of setting up your armies and that's pretty cool, but the actual battles here are really limited. Now there is a key feature here that separates King's bounty from every other game of its kind. You have a treasure map that leads to the Scepter of Order and you must reach it before the King dies, that's why there's a days left counter in the upper right. It seems like a lot, but there's a lot you have to do, so it counts down pretty quickly. As goofy as this map looks at first, every square here represents an enemy you have to defeat or one of eight artifacts you have to find, but therein lies the game's hook. You could potentially get lucky and find and defeat the right couple of enemies or find an artifact that reveals the Scepter right away, and people have done this, there are speedruns of this game that are mere minutes long, or you could end up uncovering some spots that send you in a wild goose chase. Aw man, I gotta fight the dread pirate Rob? Well that does put a damper on our relationship. I should mention that there's one major change from the PC version of King's bounty to the Genesis version, and that's that the latter takes place in real time, everything moves on its own and you'll automatically be engaged into battle. The game also takes on the art design of the Amiga version, of the game rather than the DOS version as you can see. Now gotta mention a couple other things, first is that there's an enhanced remake of this game for PS2, titled Heroes of Might and Magic, Quest for the Dragon Bone Staff, made in 2001, so if you like the general idea of this game but want to play something a little more modern, you might want to check that out. There's also been a spiritual sequel made in 2008 for PC and Mac titled King's Bounty the Legend, so if you dig the King's Bounty games that may be worth your time as well. So yeah, King's Bounty doesn't have a whole lot going for it because like I said, the resource management and combat here aren't much and the music is pretty dang annoying at times, but I do think the treasure hunting thing is kinda cool, albeit limited. This structure would have been really interesting had it been arranged like a roguelike, but that's a lot to ask in 1991. I do think there's a certain appeal to this game where it's like to hell with all your minute strategies and micromanagement, just build up your army and get stronger and that's all you need to do. And to this game's credit, there's a few different ways you can do that and that's cool, but still the combat gets old after a while, so ultimately if the treasure hunt structure sounds interesting to you, then check this one out. Otherwise, you're probably better off just skipping ahead to the Might and Magic series on PC. Alright, I want to thank you for watching and I hope you have a great rest of your day.