Review: King of Dragon Pass

[Hottentot]

Intro

Very recently GOG released King of Dragon Pass, a game I thought everyone knew about. When following it's release discussion, however, I was surprised to see how many people said they had never heard of it. Thinking the case might be the same here, I thought I'd write a little review about it.

Before I start, I'm saying it out loud: yes, I like this game, I'm very excited that GOG released it and I'm a human being. Despite of that, I'll try to take as objective look at it as possible to give you an honest picture instead of mere hyping or mixing my own excitement to it. I should hope that years in the academic wonderland had taught me at least that, but let's see.



Settings

The game takes place in its namesake place, a piece of land called Dragon Pass. The game's era could be described as prehistorical. The player assumes control of one of the many tribal clans in the Dragon Pass that lives by cattle herding and agriculture. The goal of the game is to become a ruler: In the long game the high king of the whole Dragon Pass and in the short game to form a tribe (a coalition of many clans), become its king and keep that position for 10 years. However, majority of the game consists of guiding the life of your tribe throughout the years and keeping them happy, or at the very least alive. Sometimes you might find the latter to be much more urgent than deciding what kind of crown you want to wear.

The game's world is what I'd call "realistic fantasy", as much of an oxymoron as that might sound. It's definitely fantasy, so there are trolls, elves and magic. However, the fantasy is believable in a way that real prehistoric tribals for most parts believed in a similar reality. It's similar to Darklands (another good game, by the way) where praying to saints could actually make miracles happen like the medieval folks believed.

Therefore things like curses, evil spirits and pacts with the ancestors are everyday stuff in King of Dragon Pass. If you piss of your ancestors by doing something they traditionally didn't do, you'll be in troube. Magic is a gift from the gods instead of farting fireballs: if you sacrifice to a certain god, the god may give you something nice. If you maintain a shrine or a temple to the said god, the nice thing becomes permanent. There are also "magic points" that you allocate at the beginning of every year to different aspects of life with various results. If you allocate magic to crops, you might have a better harvest and if you allocate it to diplomacy, the other clans might like your offers better. Or then not. Magic is anything but reliable in King of Dragon Pass.

Another example of this are the vital quests that you can embark on when you feel ready (or suicidal). Unlike in a normal fantasy game, "quest" is not synonymous to "hey guys, let's get drunk, go slay a dragon and share lots of gold between those of us who won't die horribly." Instead there is a set of quests related to several major gods. These quests emulate the lore's myth of some deed the god supposedly did. If you (as in you personally, not your alter ego tribe) don't take time to learn what happened according to the myth, you won't know what to do in the quest. However, studying the lore is not a guaranteed way for victory. The quests are perilous and it's quite likely that the person you sent there won't come back at all. But the rewards are worth the risk.



Gameplay

The game is entirely text based. There are lots artwork pictures functioning as backgrounds for various events, but there are no animations whatsoever. On regular basis you have to deal with an event that can vary from someone wanting to marry to someone complaining that his house is haunted. There are, according to what I've heard, hundreds of these events, so they won't get repetitive at least during one game.

In the events you choose the most appropriate decision (and get "helped" by yours advisors, whom I found to be incompetent morons), and the decision will have either instant or delayed consequences. Sometimes a decision you made years ago can (literally) come haunt you later. If, for example, you give home to some escaped slaves from another clan, their former masters can be quite disgruntled when they eventually come demanding their property back. That's not a nice time to find out that they outnumber you 100 to 1.

Despite of the somewhat cliche goal of the game, this is not a strategy game. You don't build cities, improve technology or control vast armies. You have your own clan's village and a few fortifications you can build in there to defend against enemies, plus temples for the various gods of the clan. A huge army in this game is 20 dedicated soldiers and some 100 peasants with a spear. And those are used mostly for raiding and looting instead of conquering. I'm not sure if you even can wipe out another clan completely, but in any case it's not necessary. The strategy part is more about deciding how do you want to divide your lands, how many crafters, hunters, farmers or warriors you want to have and when you are going to do what. For example, it's not smart to go raiding on the planting or harvesting season, because men on a raid are men away from the fields.

Randomness is a thing you will learn to love and hate in King of Dragon Pass. Sometimes you just will fail, no matter what. You will have a string of bad events, lose a raid that seemed fool proof on paper or get killed in a quest over and over again. While I like random element in my games, with Crusader King 2 being a great example, in this game it becomes ridiculous occasionally. It's not just once or twice that I read after a raid a report saying: "The enemy completely crumbled under our charge. Our magic was much stronger than theirs. The odds were 4:1 for us. Oh, and you might also be interested in knowing that we utterly lost."

Likewise when trying to make someone become my ally, he basically says: "I love you like my own brother, you gave me thousands of gifts, you are my best buddy ever, I want to have your children. Now bugger off!" The decisions and outcomes are not always explained enough. Sometimes the events just don't follow any apparent logic either: people I have never ever even heard of come to my doorstep and greet me by saying that my offences won't be tolerated any longer and this means war. When I look at the map, I see they live on the other side of Dragon Pass. Whuh? Did I forget to send them a birthday card or something?



Interaction with the other clans

Biggest part of the game, apart from managing your own tribe, is interacting with the other clans. You basically have three options, all fairly simplified: diplomacy, trade and raiding.

Of these three diplomacy is the most important, because the game's goal is achieved mostly by it and deeds. Before you can form a tribe, the other clans must respect you enough to accept you as their king. This is done by helping them, bribing them and being successful in general: if you are more busy burning every other clan's cottages than taking care of your own, you'll just have everyone hating you.

However, the diplomacy is very simplified. Basically you want to be everyone's ally, except maybe a few clans whom you can raid every now and then to thump your chest and keep your warriors happy. Allies will occasionally come whining for something from you, but if you are running your clan even relatively well, it's nothing you can't give them and keep them happy. Heck, I managed it and you know from my AARs the kind of ruling style I prefer. You can also have sworn enemies, who will become a serious nuisance in a short time, so again, getting allied with just about everyone is better just to keep the backstabbers off of your back. If you utterly beat your enemies, you can make them pay you annual tribute, but it's often not worth the effort, unless you are doing it just to spite the emotionless AI.

The diplomacy only becomes more interesting when you are forming a tribe and have to promise different clans different benefits, but once you are successful, those benefits don't really affect your everyday life in any way. You can pretty safely play a traditional politician and promise everyone everything. However, keeping the clans in your tribe happy is still a task of its own, because they won't like each other just because they are now united as a tribe. They will come whining to you about everything you can imagine, but more often than not the decision is just about whom you want to support.

Trading is likewise very simple. You can form permanent trade routes, or sent caravans on single trading missions. You can only decide what you want to sell and what you want to buy. Basically it's nothing more than "we have lots of this, they have lots of that, let's trade". Then again, these are prehistoric tribal clans we are talking about.

Raiding equals gathering a huge mob and hoping for the best. There are several tactical options you can choose before unleashing your men. First you choose what you want to achieve (plunder, take captives or kill enemies, for instance) and then how you want to achieve it: by maneuvering, skirmishing etc. This part is basically an abstracted rock-paper-scissor game where you can either gain or lose advantage. You can also decide how many magic points you want to allocate for the battle (if you have any), if you want to use any magic treasures and if you want to sacrifice to the gods before battle. During the battle you may also have events, like one of your advisors meeting an enemy commander on the battlefield, and you can decide what he should do. But as I implied, luck still plays a huge role and the whole thing is abstracted, so again: this is not a strategy game. You can only improve your odds, nothing more.


Conclusion

TL;DR: King of Dragon Pass is one of those games that you will learn to play in one evening and will never fully master. The randomness can make you rip hairs out of your head, but at the same time gives the game immense replay value, because no two games will be the same. The basic functions are sometimes too simplified, as the real heart of the game is guiding your tribe through the years and dealing with all the events that get thrown in your way. As the game doesn't have graphics to speak of, no high end machine is required to run it. Being text based, you also have all the time in the world to make your decisions. Therefore it's something you might want on your laptop if you are going on a long trip. Despite of the shortcomings, it can be surprisingly addictive journey to the life of a tribal chieftain.