Added to my journal.

King's Bounty: The Legend

There is probably no point in talking about this game on the Heroes community forum. If you happen to not know what it's all about yet, take a look at the corresponding section. In short: little heroes with their own campaign on a big, big global map with tons of quests, enemies, battles, various... things, well, you already know everything yourself. It came out like five hundred years ago, and before that, somewhere two hundred and fifty years BC, its predecessor was released, which people used to run on soot-covered cast-iron stew pots.
The graphics are pleasant, just like in Heroes V, but a bit better. You can rotate the camera, grab gold from the ground, peek into the houses of lonely milkmaids; overall, the possibilities are fine. Elements unnecessary for this kind of game concept have been removed: turn-based movement on the global map, your own castle, and dependence on weekly troop growth. I once saw a game that tried to implement such an idea, like solo heroes, but it was completely turn-based and everything was just done stupidly, so it faded into oblivion.
Battles here, in my opinion, are still not as tied to tactics as in Heroes, but they are still well-made and interesting. So if you, my dear random reader, love Heroes but haven't played King's Bounty, then play it anyway; it's a pleasant way to spend time.

I start, like any self-respecting fighter against the undead, naturally, as a Paladin. A fine fellow; you can tell right away that an army under his command will go into battle with incredible morale! I set the difficulty to Hard—I've been playing Heroes since I was eight, surely I can handle some casual strategy game from unknown developers? Ha-ha, forward, into battle, crush the undead and sip white wine from a crystal glass.
There aren't that many differences between classes in terms of skills. And there are three skill branches: punching faces, mental efforts, and throwing fireballs; essentially, two of them can be characterized as "combat," and it's completely unclear what the second one is for—collecting money and training inquisitors? This isn't the church you're looking for, warrior of light. Now, each class has two unique abilities (there are three classes, if you haven't guessed yet—mage, warrior, paladin) and they... are peculiar. While the mage truly has a unique thing for additional spellcasting per turn and alchemy that allows for more spell upgrades, the paladin has some runestone that gives runes of other classes. What kind of nonsense is this? I came here to chew church wafers and exorcise dead asses; why the hell do I need your runestone? A bit weak; I would have liked more class uniqueness. It's a sin not to quote a successful modern philosopher: "they could have done it better."

After completing the tutorial, I immediately ended up with the king, who sent me to look for some alternative money stolen by thieves. Leaving the gates of the "city" consisting of three and a half buildings, I, of course, didn't go looking for any alter-money. I rushed to the nearest village in search of adventure. I chopped carnivorous flowers into salad, gained a couple of levels, and thought: "I'm so great, nothing can stop me now." I ran into the forest, where I encountered the first moment of the game that made me loudly shower the developers with holy curses. What was there in the forest? Wolves with a howl that inflicts FEAR on the player's low-level troops. And what does fear do? Cut stats? Force them to run away from the enemy? No, it takes control of the troops away from the player, and they run around haphazardly attacking random targets. Superb; what could be better than random combat in a strategy game? I would have punched the face of that scoundrel who implemented such an idea in the game. Fool, despised by the church, I've confessed your mother in her sins. It would be one thing if the number of wolves somehow affected the situation, but no—three thousand peasants run in fear from the howl of two beasts.
Anyway, those cursed werewolves and forest sorcerers forced me to retreat, but I didn't lose heart. I caught a bear, fixed a talking stone, and completely by chance, while rushing about my business, stumbled upon the bandit who stole the royal pseudo-money. The king was glad, rewarded me with gold, and gave me a task to deliver something important to his brother. But the kingdom's affairs can wait, because a village resident urgently needs help—he has turned into a zombie! When I found the bandit responsible for this unpleasantness, it turned out that not only did the farmer suffer the ailment due to a cursed ring, but also the wife of this very fence! After fixing the ring by punching its guardians' faces, I, like a true Paladin, champion of good, holy warrior, noble man of the king, bought his zombie-wife from the fat merchant for five thousand gold. By reading a magic word, I turned her back into a human. That's how great I am!

Now I have a wife, the first child is on the way, and my combat mastery has grown immensely! Oh right, the king's errand—let's run to another location. The king's brother asks to deliver a letter to his beloved, whom he has never seen, ahem-ahem, somewhere in the swamp. The swamp turned out to be interesting; half of it is littered with graves and is a cemetery, while the other half swarms with snakes and spiders; also, three humanoid toads live here, possessing their own castles. The toads have a mania for hanging their flags on other toads' houses, humiliating and dominating them. I kill them all, trample the dust of wretched bony spawn into the ground, loot graves (of course, in the name of good).
Next, the king sends me to retrieve a certain artifact from the academy of magic. There they handed me a wonderful box, which I did not want to part with under any circumstances. Four spirits live in the box—a stone slab mindlessly mumbling "kill all mages," an ice girl adorned with technological trinkets and very proud of it, a swamp nuisance spitting poison, as well as Mr. Death, some kind of guardian of the temple of time. The gentleman with the scythe kills everyone; the others are on the verge of uselessness—who would have thought.
Off to adventure, we sail to the pirate islands! I hope there are undead and heretics there. So, I'm sailing across the sea, enjoying the beautiful view, and then some unshaven crooked face under pirate sails swims up to me. The face says "give gold," to which I, of course, board him, kill the pathetic pirate crew, and sink the ship. For the king! I repeated this several times until there were no pirates left at all. Dug up a couple dozen treasure chests, looted well, KILLED A HUGE KRAKEN THE TERROR OF THE SEAS BECAME A LEGEND. Time to return!
The next task places me first in the dwarf mines and then in the dwarven winter, where demons are everywhere. Also, they have an underground sea where there are also demons, and life somehow goes on two levels—above and below, in the mines. I rode a steam train, a submarine, defeated myself, then defeated my older self, saved everyone, and sealed the portal to the demons. In the name of light!
We sail to the lands of the elves, where one can hear the strange language of people from the island of Russia. Here, to my all-consuming rage, I discovered that an intellectually limited heretic, sodomite, dirty vagabond from Nival, by all appearances, got a job at Katauri and brought his favorite "miss" element into the game. It makes for a great picture in a strategy game where calculation and thoughtful action are important: first, a haze taking control of troops, then enemies you can simply accidentally miss—pure bliss.
If there were demons everywhere with the dwarves, then there is undead all around with the elves. An entire location where everything is dead and necromancers walk in formation, skeletons cover the ground by the thousands. Now that's work for a true Paladin, warrior of light! This is where the first "difficulty" in my journey arose. Some general who imprisoned the soul of the elf queen in a black crystal suggested I try to hit his bony face with my light-bearing fist. But it turned out not to be so simple, because first you need to destroy the crystal, which resurrects a bunch of undead every turn. In the end, I sat, thought, tried, used various strategies in storming the unfortunate citadel of filth, but achieved nothing. I had to gain a couple of levels, study higher magic containing teleports, and throw four thousand peasants straight into this crystal of evil, which shattered in a couple of turns. Saved everyone, killed everyone, looted even more graves—but these were graves in the realm of necromancers, meaning they were evil.
During my wanderings, my little wife has already given birth to four children. How wonderful it is to have such a fertile spouse! Especially considering that children provide decent stats.

So I returned to my homeland, appeared before the king, received a new title, and now I can hire heavily armed Knight in service! My path leads through the labyrinth of the ancient dragon into the land of orcs. I wandered through the labyrinth for quite some time, killed a bunch of dragons, helped another bunch of dragons. Finally made it to the land of orcs, where a bunch of green-skinned savages are preparing to fly far into space to escape the end of the world. Damn uneducated Barbarians! After dealing with a four-meter orc, the Paladin, warrior of light and good, flies on an orc spaceship onto the back of a huge turtle to defeat a bunch of dragons, thereby saving the world and a young princess. Woke up in a castle, my head hurt terribly, but the princess was indeed there and the world, seemingly, did not collapse. Or maybe I shouldn't have drunk that potion the shaman offered me.
But, in any case...
The magnificent paladin has once again saved the innocent, defeated evil, and dispelled the darkness!