Where do I begin? You've probably heard of King's Bounty The Legend, either as the sequel of a title long lost in the sands of time, or as a new game reminiscent of the Heroes of Might & Magic series. I'll simply try and review it on its own merits. At its core, you'll find a genre that used to be big on PC, a simple strategy-RPG. As of late though, this type of game has been far more prominent on home consoles and portables, with popular Japanese franchises like Fire Emblem and Final Fantasy Tactics. Most of these -- excluding their Eastern style -- have one major difference, as they only consist of battle scenes and story sequences, without giving players any opportunity for exploration. King's Bounty The Legend however, remains true to its western RPG roots, offering a vast fantasy world to explore, with a seemingly limitless amount of NPCs, quests, and loot.

What the strategy part entails, is that while you will basically run around a fantasy world, exploring and questing at your leisure, combat is actually done in a turn based fashion, within small, hex-based battle arenas. This might remind you of console RPGs, where combat appears separated from the rest of the game, but here the encounters don't occur randomly. You can actually see the wandering mobs within the game's world and only initiate combat upon touching, or perhaps after conversing with them. The Hero character you choose in the beginning -- out of a limited three cliche archetypes -- doesn't actually participate in battles conventionally. Instead, his statistics affect the strength of your recruited troops, while he also allows you to cast various spells.

Combat is a meaty part of the game, since even in the beginning there is a large selection of troops to choose from, as long as you've gathered enough gold to hire them with. The game also takes on a sort of collectible card game's feel, since you can only bring a limited amount of troop types with you -- five with two extra reserve slots to be exact. Many of them fare better, or worse, depending on the terrain and enemy types, so you soon learn to always consider what lies ahead during your rest in a safe haven, where you restore your troop supplies or purchase new gear for your Hero.

While combat is simply too deep to analyze outside a dedicated multi-page guide, it's worth noting that, as the game progresses, you gain access to an ever growing pool of troop types and quantities. You can get anything, from the expected human knights and elven archers, to native beasts such as bears and snakes, strange types of undead creatures and demons, dwarves and orcs that use weird devices, and even mythical beasts like dragons. Some of them are more rare than others, so you'll need to use them wisely if you don't want to exhaust their numbers before you really need them. These are all complimented by your Hero's constantly improving selection of gear, spells, and eventually some powerful summoned creatures with unique special abilities, which are called Spirits of Rage as they consume rage earned in battle, instead of mana.

The variety of your enemies is equally diverse. In fact, aside from a few special bosses, your enemies make use of the same troops you do, and your available troop types increase as you traverse new areas with new inhabitants. After all, if you find yourself in elven territory, it's only natural to fight against such enemies, or be able to recruit elven units for your own army when you come across neutral or friendly forces, perhaps after aiding some of the local NPCs.

Speaking of quests, while equally integral to the game, exploration and questing is a much simpler affair than combat. You simply click where you wish to go, avoid or run into enemies to do battle -- pro tip: always check the enemy's level before that via a right click -- and click on NPCs to initiate conversations, buy various goods or troops, and choose from any available dialogue choices, to either learn more about the world and characters, or affect the course of a given quest's plot.

This could all get boring in the long run, but the game manages to keep your interest with its involving quests. They still consist of RPG cliches like fetching items, defeating certain enemies, or saving damsels in distress, but you can often solve a situation in different ways, perhaps even by betraying the original quest giver if another NPC makes a better offer. If you don't pay attention to the given text and simply click through everything, you just might get yourself in trouble, or lose a particular reward you would otherwise receive, had you chosen better. All in all, like a true explorer, you have to pay attention to get the most of this game. Even the world map promotes some thinking since only major points of interest get marked, while if you want to keep track of other locations, you have to mark them by yourself. On the other hand, the writing and humour, even with a less-than-perfect translation, complement that notion and ensure that your time has been worth it.

Exploring the vast and varied fantasy world is a very engaging experience. Hidden loot always seems to be right around the next corner, perhaps beside a wonderful castle to recruit new units from, a quirky character with zany quests -- and rewards -- or a funny, if menacing, adversary to defeat. The more you explore and quest, the more unique, hilarious, or just plain weird characters and events you will come across. Even many hours into the game, you will be surprised by occurrences you never saw coming. I'm tempted to list some of the memorable moments of apparent genius here, but I'm sure you'll love discovering them for yourself.

While there actually is a lengthy main storyline, with often hilarious progress and plot twists -- especially by the time you get closer to the game's epic ending -- it seems to flow well with your own pace of exploration, opening more of the world up as soon as you're just about ready for it, usually by introducing a new vessel for you to use, whether that is a ship or, well, something else. Even so, you rarely feel too restricted as most of the areas are vast, with room for the adventurous explorer to discover many secrets before moving on with the main plot and opening up new areas, themselves ripe for more exploration.

On the technical side, the game seems to fare just as well. The graphics are not impressive like, say, Crysis' or Fallout 3's may be, but they are certainly constructed with care and attention to detail. While obviously inspired by Blizzard's art direction for the Warcraft series, the designs are far from cheap knock-offs and creativity is evident throughout the whole experience. Stating that the visuals are Blizzard-esque is a testament to their quality, which extends to most everything you see, with the various effects, animations, and amazing vistas. The music is of similar quality -- though, perhaps not variety -- with distinct, fitting themes for each area. The game manages to characterize races and locations, not just via their visual style, but also with excellent audio. The battle themes, while not memorable, serve their purpose too.

If I had to compare King's Bounty The Legend with another game, I would be hard pressed to not mention World of Warcraft and other MMORPGs. The game obviously lacks the online social aspect, but the pace of the gameplay is actually very similar, and just as addictive, as your journey through a MMORPG can be. Even if it didn't have its engaging quests and plot, as presented with the writers' excellent use of humour where necessary, King's Bounty The Legend would still be an addictive gem of a game. It simply keeps making you play for just one more battle, to get just one more level up or one more quest completed, finally ending with one more continent explored by the early morning -- and it still keeps you eager for more. As a testament to that, I couldn't even let myself begin writing this review before actually finishing the game, which I've been playing almost non-stop. Keeping in mind I purchased this myself, I think this is the highest praise one can give.

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