KING'S BOUNTY

 KING'S BOUNTY is a new role-playing game with a novel twist: It won't take the
better part of your lifetime to complete. In fact, KING'S BOUNTY was designed so
that players could (and would) play it again several times. The game offers a
nice straight-forward role-playing game, with little of the puzzles and
intertwined plots that have come to dominate the genre. (This review is based on
the IBM-PC version.)

 In KING'S BOUNTY, you choose one of four heroes who will attempt to retrieve
the King's stolen Sceptre of Order. This object has been cleverly hidden by an
evil dragon, Arech. To find it, you will need to collect some or all of the
pieces of a map detailing its location. This map has been divided by Arech into
25 pieces and distributed amongst various castles on four continents. To make
matters worse, you only have a limited amount of time to retrieve the Sceptre.

 The method of retrieval itself is relatively simple. When you visit a town, you
can ask for a contract for known criminals. These criminals are hiding in the
castles, each with a piece of the map. All you have to do is find the castle
that contains the criminal you currently have a contract for, successfully
besiege the castle, and then receive a reward (along with a piece of the map)
for apprehending the criminal. If you garrison the castle, you will also receive
a regular stipend for the remainder of the game.

 The criminals are presented in order, from easiest to hardest. Also, only a
handful of contracts are offered initially. As time passes and you move on to
more towns and other continents, you'll be offered contracts for more difficult
criminals. The difficulty is foreseeable, based on the size of the reward for
the criminal's arrest.

 As mentioned earlier, you'll need to prize a criminal out of his (or her)
castle. To do so, you'll have to raise an army and buy some siege weapons. The
siege weapons are easy to obtain, and can be bought at any town for a reasonable
price.

 The army is another matter entirely. You may hire some human troops of fair
quality at the King's castle where you begin the game. These troops will do fine
for starters, but the best troops are to be found in the countryside. As you
wander around, you will see various dwellings that contain monsters of various
types. There are five classes of monsters, each named for the kind of dwelling
they prefer: Castle, Plains, Forest, Hills, and Dungeon. Every class contains
five specific monsters. For instance, the Dungeon type comprises Skeletons,
Zombies, Ghosts, Vampires, and Demons.

 These monsters vary in power and ability. You may have up to five troop types
in your army. If these troop types do not get along, their morale will be
adversely affected. As an example, Militia do not like Undead (such as
Skeletons), so if you have any Skeletons in your army, the Militia will suffer
Low morale.

 You pay to recruit troops. The number you can recruit is based on the quality
of the troops and your character's leadership rating. Thus, you can recruit
hordes of Peasants, even with a low leadership rating. But you won't even be
able to recruit Knights till you raise your skill level. And when you do, you'll
find that you can't recruit very many.

 However, fewer troops have advantages. First, they are usually more effective
against the enemy army. Secondly, you lose points for each troop that dies in
your army; you'll lose relatively fewer troops with higher power units, while
Peasants tend to die off in droves. Generally, you'll want to recruit the most
powerful creatures you can find.

 Exploration is conducted using a tiled graphic overhead view, similar to the
ULTIMA games and countless others. In VGA 256-color mode, this view was quite
colorful and pleasant to look at. As you roam about, you'll see chests just
lying around, waiting for you to pick them up. A chest gives you money or land
for the King. The money may be kept or distributed (which enhances your
Leadership). The land results in an increase to your stipend.

 You'll also see wandering monsters (literally). Once these spot you, they'll
home in. They usually _can_ be avoided, but they're quite persistent, so you
will generally have to fight them.

 Battles are conducted on a kind of board, with each troop type occupying one
"square." Terrain features are randomly laid across the board, depending on the
type of terrain you were in when the battle was joined. Your troops are arrayed
on the far left, and the enemy troops on the far right. You move your troops
sequentially. Then the enemy moves, and finally adjacent units that have a move
left may fight.

 Combat is resolved by removing casualties from the two troops involved. When a
troop is reduced to zero it is removed. Since troops may never be split, they
can actually be treated as a single unit, with the number of troops equalling
its hit points. Perceived this way, the KING'S BOUNTY combat system can be seen
as a variation on the one used in MAGIC CANDLE and the ULTIMA series.

 Castle combat is slightly different with the enemy army, given more troops and
a battle fought from bottom to top of the screen, rather than left to right.

 Note that troops are not restricted to move-and-smash. Some troops can fly,
while others may shoot bows at long range, or cast spells. Also, your own
character may cast spells, presumably from behind the lines, since your
character is never present in battle.

 Should you fall in battle, fear not. You'll be resurrected and placed back at
the start castle, though you'll have lost your money and troops. Still, I died
several times while learning the game and still managed to complete the quest in
the time limits.

 The graphics in KING'S BOUNTY are nice in VGA, but not spectacular. Animation
is limited except in combat, and the drawings are only fair. The graphics do the
job, though, and are not central to gameplay at any rate.

 The game is also a bit narrow-minded. Basically, you wander around exploring,
till you find the castle with your criminal. You muster enough troops to take
the castle, grab the map piece, and repeat the cycle with another criminal. You
can try to retrieve all 25 map pieces, or attempt to figure out the solution
with a partial map. There is really nothing else to the game. There are no
puzzles to unravel or plot to develop. Nor does your character really _grow_.
You do accumulate more capability, but with your character being hidden during
battle, it's hard to really identify with them.

 Another problem is the shortness of game play. I completed my first game in
under eight hours, and that without benefit of reading the rules till I was
halfway done.

 On the other hand, KING'S BOUNTY was clearly intended to be a game that is
replayed. Point totals are kept and different difficulty levels are offered. And
the game's simplicity and directness are refreshing after the increasingly
Byzantine convolutions of recent role-playing games. I found myself pulled into
the game for quite a while. Alas, the game was over too soon. And the lack of
variation made a second playing more tedious than exciting.

 KING'S BOUNTY supports VGA (320x200x256), EGA (320x200x16), CGA (320x200x4),
Tandy, and Hercules graphics modes. It requires 384K RAM for CGA and Hercules,
512K RAM for EGA and Tandy, and 640K for VGA. It may be installed on a hard
disk; copy protection is manual-based. No sound boards are supported, and input
is via keyboard only. KING'S BOUNTY comes with 5-1/4" disks. 3-1/2" disks are
available for $5.00.

 Bottom line: Buy KING'S BOUNTY as an introduction to role-playing, or for a
refreshing change. Otherwise, you probably won't get enough play out of the game
to justify the price.

 KING'S BOUNTY is published by and distributed by New World Computing.

*****DOWNLOADED FROM P-80 SYSTEMS (304) 744-2253