King's Bounty: Warriors of the North

The King's Bounty franchise was a somewhat surprise success for the newly formed Katauri Interactive, a Russian developer consisting of roughly a dozen people. Prior to Warriors of the North we've seen two proper games (The Legend & Armored Princess) along with an expansion (Crossworlds) for the former one. Not much have changed between the releases, with graphics, sound and game play being almost identical, but there have been enough tweaks and polishes to keep people returning for more. An addictive style of game, which combines traditional RPG elements with a chess-like battle style from the classic Heroes of Might & Magic franchise, Katauri surely struck gold with their franchise.

And they do a lot of things right, or rather as expected, with their latest release Warriors of the North. New units, skills, magic school, story, and so on, makes it a delight to jump into the game. However, for every improvement found in the title it also seems that there's two issues found along with it. The game is, even after several patches, frustratingly buggy, with frequent crashes to desktop and quest lines that becomes impossible to finish. It's also heavily unbalanced, almost forcing you into a specific class with specific skills and units. Not only do you get the impression that the title was rushed out to market months before the intended (or desired) release, Katauri have also not patched it for months, leaving you with a semi-working, semi-frustrating title in the King's Bounty franchise.

That said; if you don't mind the above issues, it's still a very addicting and fun title in the franchise. It's truly a shame that the problems drag down the overall enjoyment however, and to newcomers I recommend you pick up the much superior Armored Princess/Crossworlds instead. Hopefully Katauri learned from their mistakes, and that we'll see a new and better entry in the franchise one day.

(Apologies for eventual grammatical errors, English is not my native language.)