GB Feature: King’s Bounty: Dark Side Review

1C Company’s series of turn-based strategy/RPG titles continue to expand with the latest King’s Bounty installment, Dark Side. And since we’ve covered each of them in significant detail in the past, we wanted to make sure to give this one a full critique as well:

Early on in Dark Side, you’re evicted from your home by the forces of light, and that sets in motion your need for revenge. Nicely, the beginning of the campaign changes depending on the race you’re playing. Each race starts out on its own map and has different units available, but eventually the storylines merge and the three heroes meet each other, at which point your hero takes over and the campaign plays out about the same, albeit with a large dose of randomness about how powerful enemy armies are and what spells and equipment you find. Normally I’d say that differences like this give a campaign lots of replay value, but it took me over 150 hours to complete Dark Side, and so you’d really have to like the game to want to play it through multiple times.