King's Bounty: Armored Princess Impressions, Part One

After being thoroughly impressed with Katauri's initial offering, Rock, Paper, Shotgun turns their attention toward King's Bounty: Armored Princess in a new multi-part impressions feature.  From part one:
With the exception of some over-enthusiastic lore that goes on and on and on and on and on, it feels significantly slicker than KB did in most every regard. It's less fun narratively, but more fun, more liberated as a strategy/roleplaying game. Remember how quickly you got roundly beaten in that first area, how you'd be running desperately away from roaming griffons and archers for ages? Yeah, none of that. AP eased me in a lot more gently. I guess knowing the ins and outs of its combat helped a fair bit, but it was a while until I hit something tagged as essentially unbeatable at my current strength.