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!
I played a fair bit of both of these games around their original era, and I think they were generally enjoyable. Unfortunately, only one of them still holds up - SWAT 1. Despite the fact that it's aged the worse of the two in technology terms, it's well built and amusing and quirky and you can have a lot of fun with it. Perhaps it benefits from the fact that there's not really too many games in the same FMV heavy style being made any more (if any). I actually purchased the pack for SWAT 2, since I'd probably been pretty awful at the game when I was younger but had good memories of the terrorist subversion campaign. Let me say blankly that if you've played any tactical games like Jagged Alliance 2 then this is going to play extremely clunky and you might simply struggle to get to grips with how you're meant to play the game. The complete seriousness with which it's all presented does little to keep you going as you read up on hotkeys and how the interface wants you to control your team. Once you work out how to get things moving along and attempt a mission, you can quite easily blunder through it with very little praise or criticism, finish a mission, and wonder what you just achieved. At this price it's worth it for the first game but don't make the same mistake I did and assume that you'll be able to get over the dated presentation. It's all been done A LOT better and unfortunately this really hurts SWAT 2 in this era.
