King's Bounty: The Legend

Very similar to HoMM with turn based combat. Gorgeous graphics, nice storyline and several nice touches bring the genre bang up to date.
Lots of spells, monsters and places to see. The ability to return to places you've been before and continue to interact with NPCs is a nice touch.
Having wives and children was unexpected and surprisingly useful!
Play as a warrior (pure combat), mage (pure magic) or paladin (a bit of both).
Nice shortcuts around the gameworld using derigibles, ships and even trains.
Still playing it and not finished after over 30 hours of gameplay.
At the price it's a steal - my only complaint is that there's no sign of any expansion yet!
In short, if you like TBSGs, buy it!!
(By the way, it's NOTHING like chess!)

I'm really happy with King's Bounty: The Legend, it's a great game to satisfy my need for a turn-based fantasy RPG. Having loved Heroes of Might and Magic 3 to an obsessive level in my younger years, this ticks all the boxes for a sequel a decade later - everything you expect to be there, is there. The spells are hard-hitting, the creatures diverse and well-balanced and the the graphics are lush (though I do have a high-end PC and can't vouch for those with a low spec). At no point so far have I been tempted to automate my battles, as each one presents a new and different challenge, and even some treasure chests scattered around the battlefield to collect before annihilating the opposition. The map is absolutely vast which is another huge plus, and with lots of tangents you can go off on and three character classes to choose from (Warrior, Paladin and Mage), I feel like I'm definitely going to have to go through the game with each one before I've really had the full experience.

If I had to criticise the game, I would say that when running around the landscape on horseback it can be a little overwhelming at first - everything is so colourful and vibrant you can hardly tell the difference between interactive objects and arbitrary ones that are just part of the scenery. Also, so far (and I haven't got THAT far into the game, in fairness) I'm finding myself having to run absolutely everywhere with no option to jump between locations which could get tedious. The controls are a little clunky at first too, but you soon get used to them.

However, with those small drawbacks aside, I'd thoroughly recommend buying King's Bounty: The Legend - particularly if you've ever loved a HOMM game in the past. I've already lost days to this game because just as I think I've found its plateau, I gain another power or recruit for my army and think, "go on then, just one more fight" until the wee small hours. I think you'll find this game is one of those rare occasions where a game developer has made a sequel that actually improves on the original without compromising what you loved about it in the first place.

Yeah this game might look nice but really... it's just like playing a wierd game of chess over and over again! Really boring in my opinion, sorry.

Wow what a good game this is if you like to use your brain a bit this is a great little title graphics are good gameplay is very good

I was always looking for something that would refresh the Heroes of Might and Magic genre, and this has done it. Its the same stuff, only with a new way of looking at them! Classes are less, there are no factions to choose your castles and you focus more in developing your hero and your army then developing a city. But its filled with NPCs you itneract with and ongoing quests in an RPG like system. Some of the quests have actually a good level of humour built in! I recommend the game with 4 stars, thinking that it could still be a bit better in the stuff that you actually control. Oh, and the game looks GREAT!