King of Dragon Pass

If you have any sort of inkling towards original storytelling, strategy and role-playing you should get this game! It does things very differently from any other game and does it really well. I think it's main quality for me is the depth of the world and the story as well as all the events that you decide on. It is quite a tough game strategically but really rewarding throughout. Next turn becomes an addiction and you really fell like you inhabit that world, which is very rare for in the gaming industry. Highly original in all areas and very well made.

Cows. This game is about cows. Of course there's wizardry, tribal warfare and infighting, politics, curses and er duck people and - whisper it - dragons (!), but what you really begin to obsess about in this game are cows. How many cows have you got? Are your cows healthy? Will you get through the winter? How many cows do your rivals have? Can you steal any of them? (yes) Okay, maybe I'm overegging it a little. There will be times when you have more cows than you know what to do with, and you will feel like a boss. There will be times when you can't BUY a cow. Literally! But perhaps this is not the lasting impression you'll get from KoDP... The mainstay of this game is the stories you're being told, in the form of mythical legends and the re-enactments of them, and also at the same time, the stories you are creating through your playing of the game. Every time you play you will set out on course to create a little bit of history that you will remember and be able to recall when talking about it to others, and each time it'll be full of tears, laughter, cows and bloodshed (but mostly tears). Each time it'll have something unique going for it. I think this game does this better than any other videogame I have played. In this way it feels actually more like a tabletop or pen and paper roleplaying experience. A throwback. It's totally reassuring. The other part I mentioned is the stuff of pre-existing texts in the game. The writing in this game is excellent, be it the myths which your tribe must learn and attempt to recreate, or the random events which befall your peoples. They are frequently amusing but largely due to the quality of the writing you still take them as seriously as if something drastic and terrible were happening. A ghost has taken up residence in your tribe. Um, sue the ghost? To sum up I'll describe the gameplay which is the reason I have such affection for this game. You are essentially role playing the leader of a tribe, but it's more that you're an invisible guiding hand, the characters seem to refer and consult with you but you're omnipresient and you're an overseer, not actually part of the tribal leadership. This gives you power to control things (to an extent) but also you have to deal with frequent mistakes, foibles and fallout from your peoples which perhaps, had you been a fully realised person in the game, you would have had a chance to avoid. This is King of Dragon Pass. You only have so mcuh control, but the story will kick on regardless and you have to deal with the unexpected. You can shape your tribe how you wish, but you may find your perfect strategy undone by sheer misfortune. Never however is it as explicit as a dice roll would be in other games. The game world is fluid and malleable, it has incredible depth of mechanics and you are largely always making best-guesses and going on instinct and common sense to plot your course. Ah - that's a lot of words, and I feel like I can't really do it justice. Did I mention the art is crazy good as well (as you can see in the screenshots). And the music? You'll be humming that to yourself in the shower (as you dream about your herds of cattle). Buy this game! It's a classic!

A wonderfully unique blend of roleplaying and strategy, presented almost entirely through storytelling and backdrop illustrations. You are chief of one of many tribes colonizing a fantasy wilderness. As you might expect, you allocate resources each season and choose when to launch military expeditions. That's where the game's traditional strategy ends. You spend far more time navigating through lengthy scripts, making decisions to hold your tribe together through difficult times without making too many enemies along the way. There's rarely a right answer. The results often depend in part on the skills of the council members you assign to carry out your decisions. Other times, the traditions and expectations of your population stand in the way of what would otherwise be an obvious benefit to the tribe. This is a strategy game that feels less like moving tokens around a board and more like making real leadership decisions. Like real life, some of the results are easier to predict than others. At times you will be forced to choose blindly. Even the game's battles take place as narrated text. You control the size and quality of your forces, as well as their objectives, but once the battle starts, you affect it by choosing how to react to key narrative moments. The constant stream of narration makes the game feel like an interactive epic fantasy legend. There's not much else like Dragon Pass. There is artwork to go with every scene, and this greatly helps establish a sense of place. The musical instruments and style sound like something a tribe would produce, covering a wide range of moods from joyous to militant, to apprehensive, to mystical. The fantasy setting covers a long history, an extensive pantheon, cultural traditions of your tribe, the geography and populations of Dragon Pass - it's well realized. There's even an important gameplay element where you help characters reenact the roles of gods in their legends to gain knowledge and divine assistance. Not everyone will like this game or the setting. It's slow paced and requires constant reading. Some of the traditional strategy elements are obscured by the interface. It's an excellent game, though. It's absolutely worth buying if it sounds interesting to you. I'm writing this from memories of the CD version. I don't know how well this release runs on modern systems.

As long as this is your sort of game, its amazing, if not, you'll hate it. It is not accessible to most people. If you want clearly defined mechancis so that you can master and win the game, you will hate this game. Even if you have mastered the game as much as one can you'll still be frustrated by heavy RNG and unexplained game mechanics. To top it off, the occational bug will leave you feeling unsure if its worth investing time and effort in for a pay off. That said I love this game, its lore, world building, art, music aesthetic are all perfect. When the game goes easy on me its enjoyable enough to enjoy the progression of your clan. This game has amazing immersion value for understanding an ancient people's world view and values. It's greatly inspired my own world building and creativity. There is a way to enjoy this game, you really have to go into it with a relaxed, open, and unpicky attitude, willing to accept the game punishing you for good reasons, bad reasons and entirely unexplained reasons.