Even though this game continues from the previous King's Bounty title,  both newcomers and fans of the original will have no problem in  jumping straight into the title. For older fans, they can up the difficulty and for those new to the series, they can start on a lower difficulty in order to master the world of the beautiful princess Amelie.

In King's bounty: Armored Princess, players control the buxom heroine, Princess Amelie who has been called to arms in order to eradicate the demons from Endoria. Her job is simple (yeah right),  travel to an alternate universe to find a legendary knight and recover  8 stones to save her world before it is overrun by these evil demons. It's clichéd... sure but the characterisation is quite endearing and needless to say, Amelia has become a favourite RPG character of mine... apart from her looks or clothes sense.

In terms of gameplay, it is quite reminiscent of games such as Heroes  of Might Magic which features a turn-based RPG system that has been  neatly divided into a set number of environments for you to explore.  Like all good RPG titles, before commencing, you need to select the  character class of Amelia which include a set number of generic archetypes such as my favourite, the Paladin or the Mage. Another cool aspect of the game is that the exploration is done in real-time as opposed to turn based manoeuvres which makes the game a damn fun gaming experience.

As you  progress, your statistics increase as do the abilities of who and what  you can hire because the ideal is to create a small powerful army in  order to retrieve these stones. As the world of this current  instalment of King's Bounty has been divided into different  environments, this ensures that the difficulty is quite steady in the  game as opposed to being thrown into the deep end straight away. Of course, by upping the difficulty, the game does become quite difficult at times but thankfully in a challenging way as opposed to the player smashing the game with an axe in sheer frustration!

Exploring plays a huge role in this game and the developers have ensured  that there are quite a few "hidden" bonuses or Easter eggs littered  throughout the gaming environment such as chests filled with god or  magical items. This also adds to the replay value. Like all RPG titles, Armored Princess contains a healthy amount of sub quests that gives the player a break from the main storyline and  offers more chances of funding items, points and new recruits to find. It's definitely a good day to be a princess.

As you either cut or magic your way through the various levels, you  will be awarded points which can then be used to level-up Amelie and the skill tree is relatively quite straight forward as opposed to  Eastern RPG titles. In its essence, it's quite similar to Dungeons & Dragons and similar ported PC games so fans of Western RPG titles will have no problems in  navigating neither the menu system nor the skill tree.

Apart from  relying on your hire thugs or heroes to assist you on the quest, you even have access to pet dragon who can really change the tide of war and best of all, as you level up, it also levels up as well. Enemies  are quite diverse in the game from stock standard enemies such as  Pirates to more powerful creatures such as dragons or demons which sometimes do hand your collective butt back to you. It's all part of the challenge though!

Graphically, Armored Princess is a little dated on the PC and given that this was released overseas last year, it is not as slick as some  of the current instalments. Even so, the game has this cartoon  atmosphere to it that does suit the premise quite well with its detailed and well animated models and good special effects. There  were a few graphical glitches but generally, what game isn't but  overall, it worked quite well and some of the environments looked  gorgeous. The audio is good as if the RPG inspired soundtrack that  would not look out of place from a Sword & Sorcery film such as The Lord of the Rings. Add spells, swords and screams of battle and it comes together rather well.

In conclusion, King's Bounty: Armored Princess, especially for its current price is a very good game and will give you hours upon hours of enjoyment. Best of all, this game can be played a second time around by selecting another character class or exploring one of the  many alternative routes in the game. If you're a fan of RPG titles and  strategy is not for you, the engine works quite well and even though  it is turned based for combat, it does allow for some more in-depth combat as  opposed to a mouse smasher RPG.

Recommended and one was last picture of the beautiful princess!