Somewhere in the great archive that catalogues all games releases, there is a hard-working drone with a clipboard and a marker pen trying to keep track of the King's Bounty series. It's been a mess of expansions, expandalones and DLC for those expandalones since Legend revitalised the tactical resource-based RPG genre way back in 2008 - but as far as I can tell we've not been treated to a proper sequel yet. The just-announced Dark Side isn't that mythical follow-up, but it is another standalone campaign, and one that lets you customise your hero's race for the first time. Will you be a fighty Orc, a crusading Demoness or a spellflinging Vampire? Look, I can't make these decisions for you.
Scheduled to arrive this Summer, Dark Side takes place in a hitherto-unseen part of the King's Bounty universe, a surprisingly bright and colourful place that is nonetheless a stomping ground for KB's less photogenic fantasy races. Standing up against the humanses and elveses that star in the other games, you'll choose a hero from a few opposing archetypes, including Orc warriors, Demoness paladins and Vampire mages. The boxart features a bloodsucking Snow White, so...yeah.
I'll skip the paragraph of impenetrable lore at the above link and post some cold hard facts. Dark Side will feature a new companion system (each character will receive a different one now), along with additional units, artifacts and all that jazz, and "over 100 new quests and 15 new locations". When marketing cracks out the numbers like that I always get the impression that there are no huge mechanical changes on offer, so I'd expect a game very similar to the previous ones - only this time with playable vampires, natch.
Thanks, RPS .
