An excellent and very familiar successor to King of Dragon Pass. If you know KoDP, this game is very similar to it. Practically everything has stayed the same, so there's exploring, interesting multi-choice scenes, raids, balancing blessings from deities, politics and lots of lore. The few small changes are not actually to my liking. The new ventures option, where you can choose separate year-long activities from feasting to guarding your herds feels artificial and overlaps the same mechanics elsewhere. Not a big deal but since it is the most notable of the slight changes to KoDP, I mentioned it. The ending part felt a bit rushed and bit too much out of sync from your clan's general progression. Or then I was just lucky (I certainly had been unlucky in the game before with my superleaders getting speared in raids or disappearing in the woods, so I don't know). I clocked 14 hours and paid 16 €, so very good value for the money. If King of Dragon Pass is new to you then you have a very different kind of experience in your hands. You take on a role of a whole clan for years to come in the fantasy setting of Glorantha, a mystical bronze/iron age role RPG setting where gods may walk the earth, spirits protect your kilns and the clan ancestor spirits are a big part of your daily life. Eg. sacrifice to the god of farming to ask benefits for your fields, practice demanding rituals where you need to know the myths. You control the clan by building, choosing its leaders, gaining blessing from gods, trading, doing diplomatic missions, exploring and especially with the choices that come across. Eg. a neighbouring clan might come to demand a tribute from your clan since you look weak (small forces, haven't raided succesfully). You're usually given 4-5 choises from paying the tribute to attacking them immediately. And this was the normal stuff. An ancestor spirit could materialize from your clan's story tent, a T-rex may assault your herds or the sky might tear up.
There's a demo - try it first! The Good: -Replayability - AoD is designed with multiple playthroughs in mind. While your persuasive merchant talker that slithered away from all fights might complete the game in a few hours, your praetor loyal to royal house might take much longer while trying to serve your lord with both silver tongue and blue-steel gladius sword. Thief, loremaster, conman, fighter and assassin backgrounds and your skills all give you different takes on the game's story and consequences. You get a very different view of things happened when playing an assassin built to kill or a loremaster who gets to know what is really going on and especially what has happened before. -Lots of branching/ multiple quest paths - See above -Writing. Dialogue. The story - There's no ancient evil coming to destroy lawful-good elven community with the world. There are power-hungry assholes like in real world - although some of the power hungry assholes are much closer to gods than presidents. Dialogue is good. The story and the lore is good. -Combat - At its best the the combat is like mini-puzzles. Arena in Maadoran is a perfect example for that. You character might survive that berserker easily, but what happens when you get three opponents against you at once? Or a dodging bastard with a long spear that you cannot reach at all? Or an archer + heavy hitter duo? At its worst? Read more: The Bad: -Combat. It can be really hard if you don't have character concentrated almost wholly to fighting. 1 fighting skill + dodge/block + perhaps critical strike - and that's all. Supporting skills such as Alchemy or Crafting are good also. Don't try jack-of-all-trades build with your first playthrough! -Skill points. They are few. They are hard to divide since you don't always know what to use. For example thief build can be tricky - especially if you want to fight also. This leads to the game often being difficult. The Ugly: -It's not very pretty. Small indie team...
