Crossworlds and Armored Princess

[Sir Whiskers]

Originally Posted by deadguy

I picked up both games pack as part of the Humble Bundle weakly sale, but I'm a little confused about Armored Princess and Crossworlds. Everywhere I look says Crossworlds is an expansion to Armored Princess, but it's over twice the size, and has to be downloaded separately instead of as add-on content. Do I beat Armored Princess first, then transfer my save over to Crossworlds? Or will they merge once I've downloaded both? Or does Crossworlds include Armored Princess in it, making Armored Princess nothing more than a waste of space on my computer? Is there any advantage to downloading Crossworlds before beating Armored Princess?

A basic overview:
The KB series began with King's Bounty: The Legend.
KB: Armored Princess is the sequel, with a completely new campaign.
KB:Crossworlds is an expansion, not a sequel. It contains four campaigns:
1) the original Armored Princess
2) a modified Armored Princess campaign called Orcs on the March
3) a mini-campaign called Defender of the Crown
4) a mini-campaign called Champion of the Arena

Orcs on the March is 95% Armored Princess, with some added content and some changes, most noticeably to the Orc race. Fighting orcs with their adrenaline-stoked abilities requires different tactics than before. But the overall campaign is little different from AP.

Crossworlds also includes an editor, which may account for much of the increase in file size that you see. Unfortunately, the editor interface is not good and it's still full of bugs. If you ever used the HOMM editors, this one is it's mirror opposite - the HOMM editor was incredibly easy to use, CR editor is incredibly difficult. A real missed opportunity for 1C, IMO.

So, bottom line: AP and CR are essentially the same campaign. In many ways I prefer AP - the main benefit of CR to me are the additional items, some of which are quite useful. I'm not a huge fan of what they did with orcs, but YMMV.

One last note: you do not transfer characters from game to game - each is stand-alone.

Enjoy!