King's Bounty

King's Bounty was a video game made in 1990 by New World Computing back when they were still young and filled with hope and dreams, the game play was much like the Heroes of Might and Magic games of today but rather then controlling an entire kingdom you played a single hero with a salary and unit limit determined by level, rank, and other things.

King's Bounty was popular enough in Russia to spawn a couple of unofficial fan sequels for the Amiga called King's Bounty 2 and 3 (Regrettably neither of these are available in any language but Russian) and two modern sequels for the PC called King's Bounty: The Legend and King's Bounty: Armored Princess, both of which have been translated into English.

Can be beat in under 0.3 seconds.

The series makes use of the following tropes:


 * Action Girl: Amelie in Armored Princess
 * Actually Four Mooks: As usual, groups of enemies are represented by the model of the strongest creature on the map but can be composed of up to nine stacks in actual combat.
 * Affectionate Parody: The recent Russian reboot of the game doesn't take itself very seriously, and constantly lampoons fantasy tropes. Possibly an Indecisive Parody, because it plays many of the stuff unflinchingly straight.
 * All Trolls Are Different: They change depending on the day and night cycle. At day, they are thougher and turn to stone when killed, providing an obstacle. At night, they got a lot more movement and regenerate.
 * Always Chaotic Evil: Demons, though you can find (and even marry) an Affably Evil Succubus.
 * Animate Dead: The Necro Call spell
 * Attack of the Monster Appendage: In Legend you first see the Kraken's tentacles on the man sinking the ship of the pirate captain who lead you there. Later you have to face the whole beast, but you have to kill the tentacles.
 * Badass Adorable: Amelie's pet dragon pup. As cute as the name suggests, and spends most of it's time idling next to the battlefield sleeping and eating. Also capable of a wide range of powerful attacks and useful utility skills.
 * BFS: Zerock's basical attack consist in turning in a colossal sword and dive on the target.
 * Beef Gate: You can go almost anywhere you want from the start, but good luck outrunning the guards in high-level zones.
 * Better Than a Bare Bulb: The remake lampshades it tropes to hell and back.
 * Big Bad: The Wicked Dragon Haas in Legend.
 * Breast Plate: Amelie on the cover of Armored Princess. That's only the mage version of her, though. The warrior and paladin versions have relatively realistic armor.
 * Class and Level System: The more recent games offer 3 different classes: the might-oriented Warrior, the magic-oriented Mage, and the Paladin, a mix between the two with a side of holy powers. Most talents are available to all of them, but leveling up mainly rewards the runes of their specialisation tree (Might, Mind and Magic).
 * Conservation of Ninjutsu: You can either hire a truckload of weak units or a handle of very powerful units as you prefer.
 * Cursed With Awesome: The main character of Legend accidentally cuts himself on the Chest of Rage, binding the artifact to himself (originally, he was supposed to bring it back to his king so he could entrust it to someone else).
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Higher difficulty playthroughs tend to favor the AI when it comes to RNG. The AI can also field a lot more units than the player, and AI heroes got a lot more mana than it would be possible for the player character (however, they can't regenerate it).
 * Dark Is Not Evil: While mostly played straight, there are several undead and demon towns that are friendly towards you. The Nameless Island in Armored Princess in particular. A necromancer took it over after the population was wiped out by a plague, and reanimated everyone to continue their lives, so to speak.
 * One of the people "living" there even gives you a quest to bring money they worked up to their living relatives on another continent.
 * Reaper, the Rage Spirits, looks like Death himself, but is actually on your side, if you help him.
 * Dem Bones: Common undead units, as melee or archers.
 * Dishing Out Dirt: Zerock, the Rage Spirit of rock can smash enemies with boulders, form walls or crystal spikes and even turn himself in a gargantuan sword to impale his foes.
 * Distracted By the Sexy: The Dryad and Succubus units have the Beautiful ability, which causes any attacks made by male humanoid units to have a 30% chance to miss because they are "Befuddled by the image of a beautiful girl"
 * Elemental Powers: Fire and Poison have their own element, everything else is considered magical
 * Enemy Exchange Program: Happens quite often, as you'll find buildings in every area offering creatures to hire that tend to be the same set as the ones you fight the most.
 * Enemy Mine: In The Legend, after fighting your way through a lot of orcs, you end up convincing them to help you.
 * Fearless Undead: They can, however be poisoned.
 * Geo Effects: depending on where the fight takes place, the walkable terrain, preset obstacles and other objects vary. A few units also prefer certain types of battlegrounds.
 * Giant Spider: Avaible as low-level monsters capable of poisoning and spinning webs. A really big one (and with big I mean... the size of a castle) is a boss in the Dwarven Kingdom in The Legend.
 * Global Airship: In Armored Princess, your horse can turn into a pegasus later on.
 * Good Bad Translation: The Legend's translation while bad still manages to be pretty hilarious in a rambling walls-of-text sort of way.
 * Gotta Catch Them All: The original 1990 game revolved around gathering the scattered pieces of a map showing the location of the MacGuffin you needed to get to win the game.
 * Although you don't really need all the pieces to figure out where the MacGuffin is
 * Guardian Entity: The four Rage Spirits:
 * Zerock, a spirit made of stone and magma.
 * Sleen, the prince of swamps.
 * Lina, the Ice mage.
 * Reaper, the Time Guardian.
 * Idle Animation: Tend to play so often that they cross into Most Annoying Sound for some units.
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Dragons: Armored Princess replaced the chest of rage with a pet dragon.
 * Infinity+1 Sword: The Equilibrum Sword in Armored Princess, which can turn into either the Sword of Light or Darkness depending on your choices. Both provide a hefty bonus to Attack, which doubles at day or night, and either increases or decreases the defense of good units on the field.
 * Killer Rabbit: Cute pet dragon.
 * Legions of Hell: Various kinds of demons. You can summon them with the Demonic Gate spell.
 * Lethal Lava Land: Demonis.
 * Limit Break: Rage abilities and the "adrenaline" speciality of orcs in Crossworlds
 * Lost Forever:
 * Nintendo Hard: Impossible difficulty.
 * Our Dragons Are Different: Fairly standard except for the Emerald Dragons, which don't have a breath attack nor the usual immunity to fire. Instead, they can drag enemies to them and damage nearby enemies while restoring some mana to the hero.
 * Our Dwarves Are All the Same: The most technolgically advanced race
 * Our Elves Are Better: Not one, but two archers.
 * Our Orcs Are Different: Tolkienian to the max, but not always evil
 * Optional Party Member: All of the wives/companions in the newer two games. You're bound to meet a few of them without even trying (in The Legend, three of them are involved in the main questline), but you're free to go solo all the way, or abandon them if you find a better option (however, divorces are costly, and some of the companions also want money before they leave you alone)
 * Poisonous Person: One of the Rage Spirits can spit poisonous goo and turn into an acidic raincloud to kill your foes.
 * Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Giant snakes. Subverted with one of the Rage Spirits, a huge reptilian creature that can help you in battle.
 * RPG Elements: Quite a lot of it. In The Legend, you can even get married and have kids!
 * Sequential Boss: The Driller in Armored Princess.
 * Spiritual Successor: The remake, to Space Rangers.
 * Standard Fantasy Setting
 * Stripperiffic: Mage Amelie.
 * The Succubus wears nothing but a collar with two tiny straps extending on their breasts to cover their nipples.
 * Troperrific: The remake plays with every fantasy cliche in the book. It's up for debate whether it makes the game itself impossibly cliche or not.
 * Turtle Power: The very first boss in The Legend is a colossal turtle manipulated by an evil orc shaman. After her defeat you can summon her to depower said orc shaman when you find him.
 * Unwinnable By Mistake: It is possible to run out of troops and money to buy them, making it almost impossible to continue since money is mostly gained from killing wandering armies and completing quests (which mostly involve killing wandering armies).
 * Averted in Armored Princess, where one can find eggs, seeds, and such on the ground that can be converted from items to troops. It's possible to scrape together enough forces this way to win a few fights and start putting your army back together.
 * What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: The Legend gets... creative with the possible wives, to say the least. Not only can you be married to a zombie or a toad, you can have kids with them... somehow.
 * And that is topped by succubus with SM streak, who actually has to be beaten into becoming PC's wife. Extra points if you are playing Pladin.
 * Worthy Opponent: Karador the Death Knight in The Legend considers you one when defeated.