King of Dragon Pass

The original PC version of this game had a beautiful UI that was brimming with character. Unfortunately GOG are selling a port of the iOS version, and it looks very shabby by comparison. Text fields often overlap, and buttons sometimes disappear if you tab out, resulting in a soft lock. However the gameplay is still excellent. The various mechanics of warring, exploring, trading, negotiating, appeasing the gods, and dealing with random crises all mesh together wonderfully. Every action feels important, and there are usually significant consequences, both positive and negative, for the choices you make. There's no save-scumming either, so you'll get a unique experience full of ups and downs every time you play.

I have never heard of King of Dragon Pass before it was released on GoG, and I have no idea why. It's probably one of the best games I've ever played, a masterpiece of immersion and atmosphere. It's complex, but it's complexity is unlike many other games where you are forced to learn by heart dozens of numbers or stats. It's an organic kind of complexity. It's mainly based on randomised events, but it never feels random. The lack of artificiality forces you to make decisions the outcome of which are difficult to predict, like they would be in real life. To succeed, you have to try to think like the chief of a clan in a mythical past and to forget the way you play other strategy games based on the illusion of total control. One reviewer here claimed that you have no real control in this game, but this is not true. Just because it's hard to predict the outcome of your actions, it does not mean that they do not matter. It is true that people on heroquests may die even if the correct decisions are made. This is not random, however, but the result of many factors. For example: Did you sacrifice to the right gods before your journey? Have there been bad or good omens? Is your quester too old? Too weak to fight? Does s/he have the right main god for this particular quest? Does s/he have enough magical knowledge? I also have to mention the game's music and art, which are outstanding and create a kind of atmosphere that is rarely seen in games. If you find it refreshing to relinquish the godlike and artificial control most strategy games give the player then buy this game. There are many gods in this game, but you are not one of them.

...but an enjoyable game nonetheless. The lore of Dragon Pass doesn't break any new ground, but it's a well-spun yarn of proto-Celtic, early Germanic, at times almost Finno-Ugric cattle-raiding, outlawing, interclan marriage and serial sacrificing to appease a well-rounded pantheon of gods and curry their favor. Initially, you're swamped with options of people management, resource allocation, shrine building, diplomacy etc., but you soon get the hang of them, as the game does a good job of teaching you the ropes with its tutorial and via trial and error, even if you're not of the manual-reading type. Reading the lore is mandatory, however, unless you want to resort to a walkthrough for the all-important heroquests, without which you won't be able to finish the game. It does need to be said that, towards the end, it gets a bit rote and repetitive, with RNG increasing in weight and becoming ever more slanted, often to a frustrating degree. The sagas you play out are invariably compelling and unpredictable, with highs of triumph borne of sheer luck (and sometimes strategy and calculated risks) and lows that can get you stuck in a rut and destroy your clan. But it always makes for a few entertaining sessions at least, even if you don't play it all the way through, and it's a game you can easily play a couple of rounds throughout the day, or in long sessions, always wondering what it'll throw at you next. The duck people I could have done without, however. They completely took me out of the game whenever they appeared, as the artists actively tried to make them look like Donald Duck. And I just can't take a raid of "armored ducks" seriously.

I've played this game periodically ever since it was first released on GOG, and I feel like I'm always finding something new. There are a truly staggering number of events and variations on those events. Your clan ring advises you every step of the way not just based on their skills and primary god, but also on about 20 personality traits that make them real people with real foibles. Your ring might have an elf-hater, dragon-lover, misogynist/misandrist, bully, or coward, and it might be some time before you realize it for sure. Three years of playing this off and on, and I can still find a new little bit of advice that I've never seen before. I've seen similar things in AAA titles like Guild Wars 2 or Skyirm, but a little-known game from 1999? This is a level of care and passion that you just don't see every day. The gameplay almost feels secondary to the story, not that that's bad because I do like the story a lot. Once you kind of know what you're doing, there's a certain path to success. The most difficult part of the game is surviving the first few years where you are poor and weak. Once you reach a certain level of power and wealth, you become essentially invincible and might just be waiting for the main plot to progress. It can get boring. I'm rating this only 4 stars because I think the remastered version is one step forward, two steps back. Some of the changes they made have (perhaps unintentionally) made the game extremely easy, even on the hardest difficulty. In particular, merging your livestock into abstract "cows" only seems to have resulted in their population growth being much higher than the 1999 version. Once you get to around 1200 cows, it starts climbing so fast that your wealth becomes effectively infinite. It turns an already easy mid- and late-game into a bit of a farce. I still do enjoy the game though, and everyone should play it at least once. The first playthrough is the best one.

Even though it have been a few years since I've played this game, I still remember it as something special. It's hard to explain this game. it mixes story elements with strategy elements. you can say some story choices are like a "choose your own adventure" book. you lead your clan through time, with each season bringing new events and characters. It's not an easy game to learn or master-but a very fun experience nonetheless-I had fun with it, even though I wasn't really very good at it... :) All in all, a very nice game to own, if only for an experience that probably won't be shared in any other game. Thumbs up for this golden classic now available on GOG!