King’s Bounty: Armored Princess is part role-playing game, part turn-based strategy title, a combination that proved to be winning in its predecessor King’s Bounty:  The Legend.  In the game you play the role of Princess Amelie and, though peace has reigned for a decade in Endoria, the demon that was banished by Amelie’s mentor has returned.  Amelie must embark upon a quest to explore the dangerous world of Teana in order to locate her mentor.

King’s Bounty: Armored Princess offers the option of playing as a mage, warrior or paladin when you create your game, each of which offer their own unique bonuses.  For example warriors develop leadership faster and therefore can command bigger troops, paladins receive the special skill ‘Resurrection’ and mages find the study and use of spells less costly to them.  You are also given the opportunity to set the game level with a range of options from ‘Easy’ right through to ‘Impossible’.  Changing the difficulty setting affects things such as how much gold you will receive after each battle and how large the enemy troops will be.

You are also bestowed with a pet dragon in the game, which will aid you during battle.  The dragon will gain experience throughout the game and additional spells and abilities will become available to it.  Your dragon can deal huge amounts of damage to multiple troops during a battle or provide help in other ways, such as by building a wall to hinder enemies’ movements or casting a spell to help you find hidden treasure on the battlefield.  Unfortunately, however, the dragon cannot be used during boss battles.  Considering the great amount of use I got out of my dragon, I found that particularly disappointing and it certainly made boss battles much more challenging  - but I guess that’s the point!

The world of Teana is made up of various islands and continents to explore, each providing a wealth of quests to undertake and enemies to vanquish.  In fact the game boasts over 110 different creatures, including vampires, priests, demons and shamans.  There are seven races in the game: lizardmen, humans, dwarves, elves, the Undead, demons and orcs.  Many creatures neither belong to one of the seven races nor ally with them and these fall under the category of ‘neutral races’.  In addition to the day-to-day enemies you will meet, there are also five main bosses in the game, all of which require an awful lot to kill them, so always save if you’re anticipating a boss battle!

You begin the game with basic skills, equipment and spells.  As you gain experience both through quest completion and combat, might, mind and magic runes become available to you which you can spend to upgrade your skills and acquire new abilities.  You will also pick up more spells during your travels and many can be bought from shopkeepers as well.  As your skills develop, you will be able to upgrade your spells so that they have a bigger effect or do more damage.  Like the dragon, the spell book is actually a separate entity on the battlefield and you can use it independently of your forces in battle to deal damage or cast curses/bonuses on troops.  Unlike the dragon, however, you can use the spell book in boss battles.

As I said earlier, the game is part RPG, part turn-based strategy.  The RPG part comes into play as you ride around the country on your horse (or sail around on your boat), explore dungeons, pick up quests and so on.  The strategy aspect kicks in during battles, which require you to move each of your troops in turn, as well as using your spell book and dragon.  Your dragon requires a certain amount of rage to complete each action and rage builds up over the course of a battle as damage is dealt or received.  Additionally the dragon may need to rest for turns between actions, depending on which you choose.  The spell book can be used once on every turn provided you have enough mana.  Mana accumulates when you are out of battle and on the world map but as your character develops can you learn the skill required to allow mana regeneration in battle.