King's Bounty: Dark Side

 PC
User Score
6.4

Mixed or average reviews- based on 98 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 44 out of 98
  2. Mixed: 31 out of 98
  3. Negative: 23 out of 98

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  1. Sjalka
    Aug 20, 2014
    8
    this series is a bit like a wolf in sheeps clothings. - it looks cartoonish, bright and colourful - but it is certainly on the tougher side of strategy games ( casual strategy games ).

    compared to disciples or homm VI or similar - the other games "look" more serious, but are generally a push-over compared to the kings bounty series, which is very nice indeed. dark side has an    this series is a bit like a wolf in sheeps clothings. - it looks cartoonish, bright and colourful - but it is certainly on the tougher side of strategy games ( casual strategy games ).

    compared to disciples or homm VI or similar - the other games "look" more serious, but are generally a push-over compared to the kings bounty series, which is very nice indeed.

    dark side has an abundance of creatures, items, spells and character development. it offers a long campaign and a good replayability due to randomized progression and loot, which does matter quite a lot.    … Expand
  2. NYX94
    Jul 30, 2014
    10
    a really fresh edition to the king's bounty series, while the game play hasn't changed much, almost everything else changed. you no longer have one campaign for all three classes, there are now a different campaign for each class which really adds to the already long hours to beat. the addition of new units really makes it harder for you to choose from, and the fact that you can takea really fresh edition to the king's bounty series, while the game play hasn't changed much, almost everything else changed. you no longer have one campaign for all three classes, there are now a different campaign for each class which really adds to the already long hours to beat. the addition of new units really makes it harder for you to choose from, and the fact that you can take prisoners and turn them to soldiers is really cool. expect this game to be among the top contendors for Game of The Year 2014.… Expand
  3. socokid
    Sep 22, 2014
    9
    I might not be aware of earlier issues that may have warranted the lower score (so many complaining about bugs). However, I just bought this last week and am having a blast. It says it's at version 1.5.x, so there seems to have been quite a few updates. *shrugs*

    Very fun, lot's of stuff to explore. It's a familiar game (a good thing) that allows you to play the bad guy for once. It also    I might not be aware of earlier issues that may have warranted the lower score (so many complaining about bugs). However, I just bought this last week and am having a blast. It says it's at version 1.5.x, so there seems to have been quite a few updates. *shrugs*

    Very fun, lot's of stuff to explore. It's a familiar game (a good thing) that allows you to play the bad guy for once. It also runs very, very well on my 4 year old machine driving a 27" screen. If you are a King's Bounty fan... not sure what the issue was prior, but it is a must buy. A very good game otherwise, at least in it's current version.    … Expand
  4. mou5emou5emou5e
    Sep 5, 2014
    10
    i haven't played previous series.... but this one is AWESOMEEEE !!!!!! The story is very good ( Dark Side 4 ever ), the interactions with the NPC's i love it even more... other people say graphics bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla ...... shut the f*** up pls... i enjoy this game
  5. LD9000
    Nov 30, 2014
    8
    Pretty good continuation for the series, and a chance to play with full demon/ork/undead army right from the start. Your choice of character determines which units will be available to you throughout the campaign - demoness does not have many orks or undead available at the shelter.

    The beginning of the game is rather repetitive - a lot of human troops, I must've killed 4000 guardsmen    Pretty good continuation for the series, and a chance to play with full demon/ork/undead army right from the start. Your choice of character determines which units will be available to you throughout the campaign - demoness does not have many orks or undead available at the shelter.

    The beginning of the game is rather repetitive - a lot of human troops, I must've killed 4000 guardsmen before level 14, and hundreds of knights.

    There are new talents, new spells, some of which are quite overpowered, for example diversions places up to 3 traps on the map, and this stacks with the traps medal, meaning there are a lot of traps on the battlefield.

    Now being level 31, I find that my army did not change much from the beginning - I still have cerberus, scoffer imps, red dragons and executioners. Later on I added archdemons or executioners. There isn't really much need to experiment with anything else. While there are "traitor" troops, they are exact copies of the light side troops (archers, guardsmen, inquisitors, etc).

    I liked the quests, they require quite a lot of running, and even some googling for solutions.    … Expand
  6. LT_Gruber
    Dec 10, 2022
    8
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Huge sequel with tons of stuff to do.

    I am honest, I was going to write a bad review about this game because of many reasons, but as the game progressed, it became better and better. Although it will not look like it in this review, the game is actually fairly good!

    King’s Bounty: Dark Side is the final installment of the King’s Bounty series. Its story is fairly simple this time. The Light is taking over the world and exterminating every living creature of the Dark. You need to fight back, build a strong resistance movement, and defeat the Spirit of Light. To do this you need to perform an ungodly number of tasks, making this one of the biggest and longest games in the King’s Bounty series.

    The graphics are yet again unchanged or unpolished but still look decent, although, for 2014 it is nothing special anymore.

    On the sound department, the developers screwed up. When playing the game on normal speed, everything is fine, but when playing on the high combat speed setting, like most people do, the sounds are randomly disappearing, not working, half working. What the hell? This was one of the reasons I thought this game was not worth it, because you cannot hear your Demon’s axe carving away the flesh of your enemies. It was a huge let down. I heard there were some fixes, but nothing helped. I just had to deal with it or play something else.

    The second reason I almost “hated” this game was the slow build up, and the immense, unbelievable, gigantic, absurd, unthinkable amounts of quests and tasks that the devs threw at me right from the beginning. I was completely overwhelmed, confused, and did not know where to start.

    And that was the main reason I was about to quit this game. The quests, quest markers and info is so broken, confusing and vague, I had to look up everything online because I just could not figure out what to do. Quest markers remain active after you complete a quest, a person with a quest marker above it’s head does not give you any quests, completed quests remain in your log as if not completed, the “quest complete circle” hovers over incomplete quests and it just drove me nuts. Eventually, at the end of the game, everything fell into place, but it was really hard to keep track of it.

    But after reaching level 40, the game suddenly became amazing! I found cool new loot, fought original and well thought of battles, had fun quests and I got the feeling that I was really accomplishing something here and that I was really conquering the world. It made me excited and I played for hours on edge.
    Sure, the game had its errand boy quests but hey, easy experience, right?

    It is a bummer that there is only one boss fight in this game, but it is not the worst thing ever or something.

    This game is the most stable I have played in all the series. Not once did it crash. But everything has its price, in return, the loading times after each battle are ridiculous, it shoots to eighty percent, stalls and loads the rest in slow motion. This was less than a second in the other games.

    But overall, King’s Bounty: Dark Side is good. It has a ton of original ideas, concepts, new units, cool locations, and epic battles. Despite its flaws, I think it is still a good game. For the price and what you get for it, I would surely recommend it.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
73

Mixed or average reviews - based on 13 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 6 out of 13
  2. Mixed: 7 out of 13
  3. Negative: 0 out of 13
  1. Games.cz
    Dec 3, 2014
    70
    King's Bounty: Dark Side is tasty sweet for fans of the genre and the series. Game offers the chance to play for the bad guys together with a sophisticated gaming system and several interesting innovations. We would appreciate the game play and technological improvement though.
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  2. CD-Action
    Oct 22, 2014
    70
    The biggest strength and simultaneously the most notable weakness of Dark Side is the fact, that it’s the first King’s Bounty all over again. It’s still fun, but how much longer? [Sept 2014, p.66]
  3. DarkStation
    Sep 30, 2014
    80
    It isn’t much of a problem for this game, but for future iterations, the developer will either have to get creative once again or give the series a big makeover.
    Read full review
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