King's Bounty 5 Warriors of the North Gameplay Walkthrough Part 1-KJS

Any fan of the modern "King's Bounty" series would probably be highly interested in new iterations of the popular franchise. And what's there not to be excited with? Tactical battles of great depth, a vast variety of class skills and spells, cute and comprehensive visual style... But several hours in, you'll inevitably discover that "Warriors of the North" made next to none progress since its grand predecessor, "Crossworlds". Sure, no one was expecting an overhauled engine, revamped graphics or a lot of completely new assets. But the rest of the series' games already set up a quality plank high enough to raise our expectations to the appropriate level. What did we get in the end? A fairly bland story about vikings fighting undead (tons of undead... gargantuan armies of undead) throughout several isles and continents without any particular variance. Don't hold your breath for amazing plot twists or engaging discoveries, there simply aren't any. You can expect to meet some familiar faces from the previous chapters, but then again, takes time to even get to that point. But the plot never was the reason we love "King's Bounty", right? The REAL reason was always the tactical battles - oh, that hex-based warfare, with every unit having his/her own unique capabilities, stats, affinities... And those things are still there - in fact, you can expect a whole new race of vikings with their own synergy and special perks. But this brings us to another problem - there's a certain lack of sources of creatures that belong to any other faction. Good luck finding enough spawn points to raise your own army of vampires or dragons or whatnot. Most likely you'll have to stick with one and the same setup throughout the major portion of "WotN". What's even worse, the game is long... in the worst sense of the word. There are games that constantly challenge you, give you new tasks and make you think out of the box. "WotN" is not of these games. It's pretty much a grindfest, for the lack of better word. When embarking on the glorious journey to cleanse your land of evil, be prepared to hack and slash your way through 700+ generic enemy armies that only differ in size. Yes, sometimes you'll meet hostile heroes, but don't hope to have a nice chat with them - most of the time it's going to be yet another bleak fight that'll take 10-15 minutes if your life before you can continue to the next pointless skirmish... Of approximately 80 hours of gameplay, 90% is extremely mind-numbing experience. Power your way through if you want, but keep in mind that in the end, it's not your wits that will bring you victory, but only your sheer stubborness to finish the damn thing. Good features include a new utilitarian school of magic with some fairly curious ways of use (refer to guides, there are pretty good ones in the corresponding section at the moment), new artifacts (can never have enough artifacts... right?), new units (the aforementioned viking race, which you'll have to stick with for as long as the game lasts) and a new companions system (different from the previous chapters, which is good in itself, but not very interesting for my personal taste, since it limits your abilities to combine items equipped by your main character and by his current companion). All in all, "WotN" is a typical case of "more of the same", with a huge accent on "same". Only buy if you are sick to death from replaying "The Legend" and "Crossworlds". Although in that case, I'd rather recommend you to explore a fan mod "Red Sands" for "Crossworlds", which improves on the original in several ways and provides enough content to warrant a full re-play.