Before Heroes of Might & Magic, there was King's Bounty.
Heroes of Might & Magic puts you in the lead as you collect spells, artifacts, and recruit further heroes and armies to take over other lands and castles. With turn based mayhem, you can lead your army to great victory, or your opponents will find a way to steal your resources, encroach on your land and eventually beat you to a pulp.
This is probably a surprise to many, but King's Bounty actually was the forerunner to the aforementioned series and once you put it in to play, the similarities are hard to ignore.
To begin, King's Bounty puts you into a role of a generic hero who needs to find a lost scepter from the villains of the world. You can choose between four classes but the advantages and disadvantages of each class is hard to note since the game doesn't really give you a clear indication of what one class has over another. There are actual differences but playing with any class is still a challenge.
As your avatar travels around in the world, monsters and enemies will chase you around until battle ensues. When battle starts, the battles begin with you controlling your army versus the opponents. You have a maximum of five army types but be careful which ones you put together because having different types of recruits can cause morale loss. If that's the case, they'll do less damage. If you can get the right group of recruits together, you can get increased morale and therefore more damage.
Controlling more castles and catching more bandits, increases the amount of money you get per week and in turn, allowing you to hire more recruits. Exploring the world and choosing which battles to get involved in, is critical to your success. The game has a nice balance of this but sometimes, the enemies in starting areas are far too difficult and it seems brutally unfair. At the beginning of the game, you could go around and fight the first pack of monsters you see, but you'll probably lose. The game rewards for persistence and intelligence more than brute force, but that has a role to play as well.
Your hero can also cast spells damaging enemies or teleporting you around to various parts of the world. This can play an integral part simply because the time is constantly ticking down until you can find the scepter. To find the scepter, there is a puzzle that you have to complete by finding artifacts and collecting bounties. As each piece is collected, the puzzle becomes more clear, eventually allowing you to dig in the right spot to find what you need. Once you have, you've won the game so it actually isn't necessary to defeat the strongest enemies in the game.
In summation, King's Bounty is a fun game that rewards thinking more than any other attribute. It's a tough balance between getting really powerful monsters that can drain your resources like nothing, and getting beaten handily by your enemies. The time is slowly getting shaved off so get to it and find that scepter. If this version is any indication of the future King's Bounty, I'm looking real forward to playing it!