King's Bounty: Dark Side

Buggy, crashy, great idea done with will half power

Still better than Kings Bounty 2

Not only the worst and most unfinished in the series. Its also the biggest chore to 100%(like 3 times as much hours)

Sexy sorceresses & seductive succubi in a solid turn based strategy game. 11/10

Do you like heroes of might and magic? Would you like a H&MM that has some humor and interesting takes? Look no further.

I have played all 4 of the King's Bounty games, this one was the most convoluted and I walked away from it for awhile but wanted to come back, I did find a few hints online which helped get over humps in quest lines but in the end I think this one has the most depth and creativity in story arks. I found myself smiling a lot ... I think this is my favourite of the 4 in the end.

Turns out I had rose tinted glasses for this game. I had played some King's Bounty games as a kid and I had always thought that they were just amazing.
After completing this game (no exaggeration 76 hours in less than two weeks). I think it is fair for me to state the pros and cons according to my experience.
But TLDR the game is FAR from a good game because of a ton of bugs and the game dragging on for far too long. That said, the combat and progression is fun which is what kept me playing even though the game pissed me off a lot.

PROS
-Turn based
-Grid based
-Interesting leadership mechanic which caps the amount of units you can take
-Spells are cool
-Rage skills and their upgrades are also cool
-Skill tree is pretty cool and offers a really good variety of stuff you can do rather than just stat boosts (you can still boost stats if you wish)
-A lot of different locations and units
-Some units are pretty cool

CONS
-Very long for the gameplay loop it offers
-Most of the units do similar things, melee has run and normal attack and a harder hitting move, ranged has normal attack and harder hitting move sometimes with a dot
-Pathing is bad you get stuck a lot on invisible objects, in fact it is SO BAD that at one bridge of a specific map I thought it was actually bugged and I couldn't go through. It turns out I could also move with arrow keys instead of the mouse and that is the ONLY way I could pass that bridge.
-Writing is horrible and there is a lot to read so i got incredibly bored after a while (40 ish hours in) and stopped reading
-Animations take too long in combat especially summoning and transforming even in quick mode so a turn takes a few minutes in some cases
-Quests aren't interesting and similar to each other and a lot of backtracking required in fetch quests etc.
-You have to mash the D button until you are sure you pressed it in every inch of a new map you discover so you get free loot which is mostly pretty damn good but mashing is never a fun mechanic
-Summoners are incredibly annoying especially in the elven locations DO NOT LET THEM LIVE
-Weird difficulty spikes in some parts of the game I went out of my way to beat a "very strong" enemy and the game opened up for me after getting a ton of experience there
-Quest objectives are sometimes ambiguous or that might have been caused of me stopping reading lmao
-Travel speed is really slow
-The game randomly crashes sometimes, I did not lose much progress as I constantly save but I did have to redo a few fights
-In combat the units go into an animation when you hover over them and they also make noises and it is very annoying that they do that all the time
-Some tooltips in and out of combat get bugged and stay on screen for a long time and it prevents you from seeing the damage you are gonna do with an attack in combat
-The "Zlogn" mechanic in combat is horrible it makes moving difficult and tiresome and sometimes you just get stuck or take the damage and waste your turn unless you have units with "Necro Energy" who can absorb it and heal but still waste a turn
-There is a bugged passive ability which you may unlock in the skill tree that lets you kill half of any troop you attack with a small chance. And when it procs on an attack that is gonna do more damage than half of that unit's hp, even if it is going to get a guaranteed kill normally, it will only do half of its hp as damage.
-The last boss is one of if not THE WORST last bosses I have ever fought in a game

Another one reskin for a heavely outdated game.

Very rough gem, very unpolished, but enjoyable (although the lack of balance can be quite frustrating at times). Some annoying fetch quests, although my main grip was the spell avalaibility being almost entirely random (I finished the first 3-4 islands with only 3 attack spells, 1 only with AoE). The game is huge and there are some neat concepts behind it. It could have been one of the best KB games, a pity the devs had to rush it for release. All considered, I still recommend it to the KB fans, but be prepared for some frustrations.

Doesnt appear stable anymore. Wont launch into world view on Win 11

Not as good as Crossworlds (baby dragon vs blackie) but good anyway.