King of Dragon Pass

I bought this game without any expectations. 30 minutes later, I was hooked up. The game reminds me of the "choose your own adventure" books from 20 years ago, but it is also so much more! Every decision you make has consequences, the lore is deep and complex and there are many gods that have unexpected impact on the success (or failure) of your endeavors. The RNG had me screaming from frustration quite a few times, but it actually helped immersion, since things really don't always go as planned in real life either.

I honestly cannot recommend this game highly enough. If I could give it 6 stars, I would. You play as a barbarian clan of Orlanthi, a culture of people akin to Vikings. You worship a wide pantheon of Gods, all of whom can be sacrificed to, and you regularly raid each other for cattle, food, or just plain revenge. The goal is to become King of Dragon Pass (hence the name) by uniting all the clans as one into a kingdom, but honestly your primarily goal is going to be to not die, as this game is VERY challenging, as is the way with older games. The 2 most stunning elements of this game are it's atmosphere, which sucks you right in, and it's realism. Almost every turn you are given a clan situation, such as a strange omen, a horse breeder, or a rainbow. The effects of these are rarely obvious, and sometimes are based on chance. The world seems to happen over you, not around you. The decisions you make have short term or long term effects which require a knowledge of the game lore and the advice of your clan ring to figure out which answer is best. There are numerous aspects of this game which are amazing that I haven't even bothered to mention, such as the artwork, music, and world-building. The only kind of gamer I suppose I couldn't recommend this game to is a casual gamer who likes games that don't require you to think as much, such as CS;GO or Castle Crashers, because this game WILL challenge you

This one is a little gem for all those who are a bit bored with today's hack'n'slash "RPGs" and "strategies". Here you have to think, consider and make decisions and lead your clan to better future. The mechanism is simple enough, but the game itself is versatile and actually innovative. The world is rich, interesting and well-developed. Someone did good job on that one, clearly the game was made by someone out of love of gaming, not just for profit (which would probably be higher now, as I have never heard of KoDP before). Be careful, though. This one is a real time-eater.

The game is not exactly role-playing, and it's not exactly TBS. It's more like 'The Oregon Trail + Master of Orion in the 7th Century AD'. It's almost all about chance. The sort of chance that comes with drawing a 'random event' card during a tabletop game (like the 'Community Chest/Chance' cards in Monopoly). Indeed, random events are what this game is all about. Managing resources and looking after the happiness and well-being of your villagers are only conducive to continued play, not unlike making sure you have enough quarters to finish an arcade game. They merely dictate how hard a bad event will hit home when it occurs, or how well a good event effects your game (vis. If your people are already angry, and you're suddenly struck by a plague of undead, you might very well face a revolt of some sort or another). There are a tonne of events that are sequential, meaning you may never see them if you don't first encounter the events that precede them. Furthermore, they branch out in different directions based on your decisions, but not every decision has the same result. More often than not, one decision simply has the highest chance of resulting in a particular outcome. It all comes down to how well you know what the subject of a particular event (such as a group of traveling acrobats or a wandering madman) favours, and what entities might favour that particular subject. Which brings me to my next point, and subsequently the reason for taking OFF one point out of a five-star review: Politics. There are loads of politics to be dealt with, whether you choose the road of diplomacy or the path to total war. You need to figure out which clan likes what other clan, and which ones hate each other. You need to know how far-off civilizations and savage peoples will react to your decisions and any treasures you might have on display. And so on. But on the other hand, I suppose this, as well as the incredible illustrations and story-telling, keeps the game from being little more than fiddling with a probability calculator. Excellent re-playability and lots to discover make this a game to buy. Here's looking forward to a 2-4 player version.

There's being hard, and then there's just being flat-out unfair. I've played games with random generation in them before, but I've never felt as completely clueless as to what I was supposed or expected to do as when I was playing KoDP. Raiding alone all but guarantees your new tribe, however you make it, is completely screwed. Defending your tula? You're screwed- four out of five times, you'll be completely outnumbered because you didn't catch the raiders as they were coming. Want to raid someone else? Well, you might succeed, or you might fail... or you might be raided by another clan while you're out raiding, or simply get counter-raided by whoever your target was several times over. (Did I mention yet that NONE of the other clans can get destroyed? Yep, that's right- yours, and yours alone, faces the possibility of annihilation that all the other clans will be saved from by game-balancing fiat every-single-time.) You start the game, and you immediately find yourself drowning in a system of menus with no means of knowing or understanding what you should do first or why. Your clan ring is supposed to help you, but it's just seven different idiots who all will have five very different opinions on any event that comes up, with no means of understanding who should be actually listened to or when. And, ho-ho-holy MOLY, the events. The damaging outcomes destroy you, and the beneficial ones are either worthless or nominal- if they don't destroy you in their own special way. I understand that's supposed to be the nature of RNG, but are you seriously telling me no one could balance against one of the starting events in a game to be the flood that took 1/4th of my population, food, and herds? On Year freaking ONE? I could go on- herds repopulate at agonizingly slow speeds, sacrifices are punishingly expensive but essential, heroquests can be actively impossible- but with what space I have, I can only implore you, reader. Don't believe the hype. This is nearly unplayable.