King's Bounty: Warriors of the North (2012)
Endoria has fallen under the shadow of necromancy. Young Olaf, the Northling Prince, must free the land.
First released
Oct 25, 2012
Franchises
King's Bounty
Developed by
Katauri Interactive
Published by
1C Company
Platforms
Mac, PC
Genres
Strategy, Role-Playing
Themes
Fantasy, Medieval
Releases
- MAC - King's Bounty: Warriors of the North United States
- MAC - King's Bounty: Warriors of the North - Valhalla Edition United States
- PC - King's Bounty: Warriors of the North United States
- PC - King's Bounty: Warriors of the North - Valhalla Edition United States
Community reviews
Great game that got ruined by too many flaws.
I am a huge fan of the King’s Bounty series but King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North did disappoint for too many reasons. Although I really enjoyed the game the same way as the previous installments, it turned into a chore after many hours. I will tell you why below.
The new concept of Warriors of the North is an exceptionally good one. I really liked the new Viking “race” and its new units, and the story line is well thought of. The idea of uniting all the different nations and fight for one single cause, the will to exist, is extraordinarily strong. I really loved the process of getting all the nations together and completing the required quests to do so. The final battles, where you fought as each individual King, Queen or leader against an undead general was epic. Really well done. It kept me interested all the time.
The Viking hero Olaf is also a lovable character, and, like the previous games, I could really empathize with him. His dialog was excellent, and the responses fitted his personality. It is the same as Bill Gilbert from the first game.
I have to say that this game is the most balanced of the series. The enemies are tough, yes, but they level equally with you, giving you a fair chance throughout the whole game, assuming you leveled correctly and invested in your skills.
The graphics of King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North are, once again, the same as the other games, but because of the rushed development they feel less appealing than the previous installments. For example, the line raster of the ceiling in cave areas is always visible and there is a constant outline when light is shining upon characters or scenery.
The music disappointed a little. Although many of the great tracks from the previous games where there, it was just all over the place. Happy quiet forest music was playing during epic battles, epic battle music was playing during a quiet walk through the woods and the new “Viking” soundtracks sounded lame in my opinion, too happy and did not give me the feeling I was in a battle. Like I said, the fact that random soundtracks were playing during random events disappointed me. Also, in one cave, the 10 second “victory” soundtrack, which you get when winning a battle, was on repeat the whole time. It drove me nuts. So, at the auditory department, they screwed it up. My favorite soundtrack was only playing once, the epic battle soundtrack with the trumpets and stuff, in a deserted castle with absolutely nothing to do.
But now the main reasons I do not recommend this game.
Technical reasons I do not recommend this game:
King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North is one of the most unstable games I played in my whole life. It crashed constantly at random moments; it drove me insane! I wanted to complete the game (because I am a masochist) and needed to save every fart. Every step, every breath every blink of my eyes was saved on the Steam cloud because you never know when the game decides to give you the middle finger again. I reinstalled the game, turned off the overlay (this was supposed to be a permanent fix), contacted Steam support but nothing helped. Crash, crash, crash.
The game is a total mess. It is full of grammatical errors and missing letters, programming codes are displayed when hovering over unit, artifact or hero information and whole words are spelled wrong.
After the sixth billion crash, achievements stopped working so a lot of hard to get ones were still locked in Steam. In the game itself, they unlocked fine. After reinstalling the game, they worked again but I am still missing at least 10 ones that are really hard to complete.
Game play reasons I do not recommend this game:
Quests are broken. Some are unfinishable, some require special items that are long gone or donated and sometimes, you half completed something but the game will not register it and still sends you to a person that does not want to talk to you.
Quests are misleading, vague, and never tell you what to do. Sometimes I needed to search on Google where the hell I needed to go.
The rushed development results in different areas you cannot go to. When entering Demonis, I saw a huge area at the north-west that I could not go to. Later, I found out that it is the map from previous King’s Bounty games that has been recycled and blocked off by a stupid volcano. Really? The Marshan Swamps is displayed with HUGE letters on the map but not once you go to it. It is just another recycled piece of the map.
They should have called this game “King’s Bounty: Delivery Boy of the North”. Never in my life have I walked back and forth more than in this game.
The paths to different areas are a disaster. There are few shortcuts, so this means endless, tedious walks to different parts of the world for replenishing your units or completing a quest. Whenever a dude said: “Hey bro, go to Demonis and talk to that guy”, I was like “Oh God no, please not that whole journey again…”.
The final battle was a joke. A huge joke. It was the easiest boss battle I have ever played in my whole life. I am used to the King’s Bounty series and the unforgiving, legendary difficulty, but this, unbelievable.
I realize that the game was rushed and that the developers may not have enough time to finish the game properly, but it is still no excuse to charge us full price (at the time) for a barely functional piece of crap.
It is a shame, but all the above made King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North into a chore to finish. I hope the next one, Dark Side, will be much better.
Better luck next time.
The new concept of Warriors of the North is an exceptionally good one. I really liked the new Viking “race” and its new units, and the story line is well thought of. The idea of uniting all the different nations and fight for one single cause, the will to exist, is extraordinarily strong. I really loved the process of getting all the nations together and completing the required quests to do so. The final battles, where you fought as each individual King, Queen or leader against an undead general was epic. Really well done. It kept me interested all the time.
The Viking hero Olaf is also a lovable character, and, like the previous games, I could really empathize with him. His dialog was excellent, and the responses fitted his personality. It is the same as Bill Gilbert from the first game.
I have to say that this game is the most balanced of the series. The enemies are tough, yes, but they level equally with you, giving you a fair chance throughout the whole game, assuming you leveled correctly and invested in your skills.
The graphics of King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North are, once again, the same as the other games, but because of the rushed development they feel less appealing than the previous installments. For example, the line raster of the ceiling in cave areas is always visible and there is a constant outline when light is shining upon characters or scenery.
The music disappointed a little. Although many of the great tracks from the previous games where there, it was just all over the place. Happy quiet forest music was playing during epic battles, epic battle music was playing during a quiet walk through the woods and the new “Viking” soundtracks sounded lame in my opinion, too happy and did not give me the feeling I was in a battle. Like I said, the fact that random soundtracks were playing during random events disappointed me. Also, in one cave, the 10 second “victory” soundtrack, which you get when winning a battle, was on repeat the whole time. It drove me nuts. So, at the auditory department, they screwed it up. My favorite soundtrack was only playing once, the epic battle soundtrack with the trumpets and stuff, in a deserted castle with absolutely nothing to do.
But now the main reasons I do not recommend this game.
Technical reasons I do not recommend this game:
King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North is one of the most unstable games I played in my whole life. It crashed constantly at random moments; it drove me insane! I wanted to complete the game (because I am a masochist) and needed to save every fart. Every step, every breath every blink of my eyes was saved on the Steam cloud because you never know when the game decides to give you the middle finger again. I reinstalled the game, turned off the overlay (this was supposed to be a permanent fix), contacted Steam support but nothing helped. Crash, crash, crash.
The game is a total mess. It is full of grammatical errors and missing letters, programming codes are displayed when hovering over unit, artifact or hero information and whole words are spelled wrong.
After the sixth billion crash, achievements stopped working so a lot of hard to get ones were still locked in Steam. In the game itself, they unlocked fine. After reinstalling the game, they worked again but I am still missing at least 10 ones that are really hard to complete.
Game play reasons I do not recommend this game:
Quests are broken. Some are unfinishable, some require special items that are long gone or donated and sometimes, you half completed something but the game will not register it and still sends you to a person that does not want to talk to you.
Quests are misleading, vague, and never tell you what to do. Sometimes I needed to search on Google where the hell I needed to go.
The rushed development results in different areas you cannot go to. When entering Demonis, I saw a huge area at the north-west that I could not go to. Later, I found out that it is the map from previous King’s Bounty games that has been recycled and blocked off by a stupid volcano. Really? The Marshan Swamps is displayed with HUGE letters on the map but not once you go to it. It is just another recycled piece of the map.
They should have called this game “King’s Bounty: Delivery Boy of the North”. Never in my life have I walked back and forth more than in this game.
The paths to different areas are a disaster. There are few shortcuts, so this means endless, tedious walks to different parts of the world for replenishing your units or completing a quest. Whenever a dude said: “Hey bro, go to Demonis and talk to that guy”, I was like “Oh God no, please not that whole journey again…”.
The final battle was a joke. A huge joke. It was the easiest boss battle I have ever played in my whole life. I am used to the King’s Bounty series and the unforgiving, legendary difficulty, but this, unbelievable.
I realize that the game was rushed and that the developers may not have enough time to finish the game properly, but it is still no excuse to charge us full price (at the time) for a barely functional piece of crap.
It is a shame, but all the above made King’s Bounty: Warriors of the North into a chore to finish. I hope the next one, Dark Side, will be much better.
Better luck next time.