A complete analysis of various aspects of the gameplay of King's Bounty: Armored Princess.

Many of these posts start from the assumption you've read my posts about The Legend. I mostly explain changes from The Legend, such as new mechanics or tweaks to old mechanics, with my commentary on the unchanged often being limited to 'it's the same' or even failing to mention it at all. Here is the index for my posts about The Legend if you'd prefer to get that context first.

As with The Legend, much thanks to Quaranyr in Old Vigaroe's comment's section for digging up behind-the-scenes info and whatnot. Also as with The Legend, I play the Good Old Games release, so there may be discrepancies between my posts and your experience if you have a different version.

In order;

Introduction. A general overview post before getting into the meat of things.

Units


Humans. Also covers various major mechanics that have changed of relevance to units, such as Morale being made more strongly relevant.

Dwarves. Not as cool as they will be, but a lot more interesting than they were.


Elves. They haven't changed much, but they didn't need to change much.


Orcs. They've gone from one of the most boring species in the game to one of the most interesting. Awesome.


Demons. Like Elves, little has happened to them, and that's fine.


Undead. See above.


Neutral Animals.


Neutral Sapients.


Lizardmen. A new faction. I think they don't quite stick the landing, but there's some really neat ideas here.

I don't cover Gremlins in Armored Princess; they don't really change across the games.

Magic


Chaos. Also covers broad changes particularly pertinent to Spells like how Intellect has been overhauled and summons have been made actually pretty good.


Order.


Distortion.

Hero


Rage. One post for Rage, because there's less Rage stuff to talk about; The Legend had 16 Rage moves spread across 4 Spirit of Rage. Armored Princess has a single baby dragon that gets 9 Rage moves.


Medals. A mechanic new to Armored Princess, and probably my favorite addition. It's got some kinks to work out, but it's a fantastic idea.


Might Skills. Lots of good changes to be found here.


Mind Skills. Massively overhauled, which is good because it needed it.


Magic Skills. Much more recognizable than the other two Skill trees: Magic was pretty solid, after all.

Other


Bosses. They're a bit more standardized in some ways, a bit more creative in others.


Companions. This time they're called 'armor bearers', though it probably should've been squires. Either way, they're hot boys for Amelie to ogle.

Turn Order and Damage Types. Like in The Legend, this lists every unit's Initiative+Speed tier (But leaves out Level) and visually organizes every unit by damage type. The latter is still really, really heavily oriented toward Physical, though this time I had to make an Astral category.


Military Academy: Regular Training. A Crossworlds addition, the Military Academy is a somewhat-opaque system that's more interesting in concept than in execution. Still, it has some uses, and it's worth covering, even if it's perfectly valid to ignore it entirely.


Military Academy: Demonic Conversion. The rest of the Military Academy system, it can be summarized similarly to the main of the Military Academy system: an idea that's interesting in concept but not nearly so much in execution. But more so! I cover it for completeness' sake, but honestly it wouldn't surprise me if not a single player has gotten real use out of this portion of the system.


Leadership to Health Ratios. While Dryads remain queen of this list, they no longer top it by such a wide margin; Armored Princess has heavily dragged up ratios on the overwhelming majority of units.