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King of Dragon Pass

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Recently i discovered this game, and must say, even begin a old game is one of the best i have played, really epic. One of the rare games that you can have fun losing, like DF. And no game in the same so huge re-playable.

Did anyone where play it too? Know of a similar game?
(you can get in it GOG http://www.gog.com/gamecard/king_of_dragon_pass )

If you never heard, more info:
One review of its iOS port:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-12-05-app-of-the-day-king-of-dragon-pass

Lets play article:
http://lparchive.org/King-of-Dragon-Pass/
+1 / -0

11 years ago
I bought it purely on your recommendation. It had better be good. :)
+0 / -0
It is, 99% of GOG users agree too, giving it max points in "avg. user rating" and in the reviews.

Later tell me how you tribe die. :)

This is one of the games that is really recommended to ready the manual is you are having difficulties and i can give some tips if you want.

For at least understand the GUI better look at the "Quick Reference Card" (in you start menu GOG or this link http://depositfiles.com/files/pfzz8cvc0 ).
+0 / -0
It's not very good. The GUI is messy but that shouldn't deter DF players. There is also not that much replayability, no matter what kind of clan you play you have to use every tool available and balance offence with defence if you want to get anywhere. You start seeing the same story events again VERY quickly if you play more than once, so you'll already know the outcomes. The story options are easy once you learn them (or look them up on wiki), and you HAVE to do a HEAP of those hero quest dealios, the outcome of which can be improved but is ultimately random. If you fail one, it drastically decreases the chances of succeeding in the next one, and thus you get caught in a negative spiral.

The game takes too long and requires you to repeat the same procedures too many times to make it worthwhile playing through until the RNG falls on your side and you can complete a long game with the 7 hero quest requirement while king.

As much as it tries, it's not really a generative story engine. Even though it doesn't really HAVE any story, DF does this better: it allows you to really pursue whatever you want, pick from a huge range of options and strategies, and build a world and civilization that is unique each time.

KoDP is cute, it does a few clever things such as learning the 'personality' of the gods or situations to make the right decisions (They are not clearcut right-and-wrong). It can be fun, but you will tank your tribe with a bad season and never recover on your first playthrough, and going through those motions over and over is not very exciting.
+0 / -0
Some scenes are just hard to see, but there a lot of them (544?), so you need to try different things to see most of them, and some lucky was some are pure random, but that what did add replay to me trying to get them.

Blog post about the Scenes and Replay goal:
http://kingofdragonpass.blogspot.com.br/2012/09/how-many-scenes.html
And them plan to add more scenes, but unfortunate seems like only for the iOS port and i do not have any iOS device... :(
https://twitter.com/KingDragonPass/status/275343088036225025

And yeah the game is hard.

Edit:
About hero quest, do not try to do it too soon, later if you get a bigger population = more worshippers, it helps, but i admit i used save scumming for hero quest.
+1 / -0


11 years ago
Kodp is pretty good game. It creates interesting atmosphere and engages you with characters. Also harder difficulities are very hard which should keep you entertained for a while.
+1 / -0

11 years ago
It is not 'hard' as in 'challenging', the random factor and snowballing when you fail your hero quest just makes it arbitrary. The thing about the hero quest is that when you fail one, it makes EVERYTHING else collapse: failing a hero quest makes your army, agriculture, everything more difficult and can get you into a negative spiral of losing livestock, population, wars, diplomacy and then if you survive that it takes years to get back to where you were and be fully prepared for another. If these things hurt your chances of doing your NEXT hero quest, and you fail THAT, you just tank. Also, NOT doing a hero quest can be just as bad!!

Savescumming though. Yeah basically... that's what you do when a game uses an RNG like that.
+0 / -0

11 years ago
Yeah, I messed around with it a bit. I like the concept, but it's poorly executed. UI is a mess, color scheme is bad (Seriously? Yellow text on a tan background?), and as Saktoth mentioned, it just randomly throws things at you.
+0 / -0


11 years ago
Its about story. In story - as in RP you don't care about randomness or about losing. It's not really a strategy game.

+0 / -0

11 years ago
There is too much strategy TO the game if it is 'not meant to be one'. The underlying logic is actually rather superb and simple, you build up a large amount of livestock which grow exponentially and then have to balance killing them off during lean times vs losing on that exponential growth rate. You also have to balance large population and livestock vs the amount of land area you can control (though the total cap on clan size which forces a split is kinda lame). The diplomacy also works quite well: You have to be VERY strategic, pick your enemies which can become great resources to raid during lean times, etc.

But that can all be fucked over by the RNG of the hero quests, which is the problem.

It is a cute experiment in sort of... procedural story generation. But I mean, there are only so many times a dragonnewt can come and ask for it's skin back, or a trickster can come to town, before you feel this isn't really a part of any overarching plot as much as a random series of stuffs that happened.
+0 / -0
11 years ago
AUrankAdminSaktoth
You are too much focused in win/end the game, that the only thing the Hero Quests are necessary for. I like the side of story and discovering the world more, for me a sandbox/endless game mod with more content would be the best, there so much that could be expanded in the exploring map and the consequence of how you react to it. SPLOILER ALERT, something like this would be so much better that this.

USrankAntelope
Now i feel bad that i made you buy something you did not like, guess not everyone where have same tastes, maybe its better use Google to "try" the game to see if you like it or not, before deciding to buy it.

Guess that introducing it in a competitive RTS community was not a good idea, a RP community probably would enjoy it more. Well a least Licho liked it :)


Anyway some tips:
You can take land from a neighbor Clan to avoid your Clan from splitting, and in game begin choosing to take lots of land help too.
You do not need to be the strongest/super rich/kill them all/the best Clan/etc to win, mostly you just need to survive and be a Tribe leader a some point (no need to be the first one) to win the "long game".
+0 / -0

11 years ago
Nah, I buy a lot of games to try them out and I'm generally pretty hard to please. I've got something like 60 games on my Steam library. I haven't even played half of them and only beaten 5 or 6 of them. This was a relatively small investment worth trying out.

My dislike of the game has little do with this being an RTS community, because I play all types of games. FPS, RTS, Turn Based Strategy, Sandbox, etc. This one just seems to lack polish.

I think with a reworked UI it would have a lot more staying power. It just felt really clunky trying to navigate the different menus.
+0 / -0
You have to take in mind this game was released in 1999 (and GOG just re-released it not change in UI), so not sure if there was good UI tool at that time...

The devs only reworked the UI for the iOS port trying to modernize it, but not sure how much changed, try looking at SS if you are interested.
+0 / -0


11 years ago
Well I do like RP @[DOOP]fortaleza - i do some RP regularly with friends too. Quantum - old ZK dev likes this game too.
+0 / -0
I am quite aware that this game is primarily focused on being a generative story engine and I criticized that quite heavily in my first post. Even my critique of the winning method is about how you have to repeat the same actions too many times and the same story events keep coming up and thus playing it for long periods quickly makes the story seem stale and repetitive.

But when Forta said 'KoDP is hard' and Licho said 'The harder difficulties are very hard which should keep you entertained', I had to really disagree because while it has some beautifully balanced and difficult strategy in there, it's all overridden by the RNG which enforces artificial 'hardness' while not increasing challenge. No, I don't think that's the primary point of the game which is why your 'the game is hard' comments are beside the point.

But the randomness is VERY important for the storytelling too. If I feel my story is random, disjointed and disconnected series of events it's simply not an enjoyable story to experience. Yes there is some really beautiful set pieces and world building going on here, but they are mostly backstory and do not build into a coherent narrative. I could not really describe what happened to you in a narrative fashion like you can with a game of DF, without it sounding very much like any other playthrough of KODP. THAT is the problem.

Also, if it's going to be a story-driven game, you should not be sitting staring at a spreadsheet for 90% of the game. They could AT LEAST have the map featured more in the GUI rather than selecting from long dropdown lists of locations.

Oh, and here is a random article I found saying all the things I did by a huge enthusiast of the fiction: http://glorantha.temppeli.org/digest/gd7/2000.01/2153.html
+1 / -0
10 years ago
People say this one will be similar to KoDP, so just posting them there for me remember them later.
Unwritten: That Which Happened:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1599677835/unwritten-that-which-happened
Ars Magica Video Game:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blackchickenstudios/ars-magica-video-game
+1 / -0
10 years ago
If someone still interested in this, the game wiki can help a lot:
http://kingofdragonpass.wikia.com/wiki/King_of_Dragon_Pass_Wiki
Blog, just for look at updates:
http://kingofdragonpass.blogspot.com
+1 / -0
I really like this game. The story of an rpg but strategy enough to not devolve into a grind. Inductive reasoning instead of deductive counter to every other strategy game is refreshing. Game should be in "space exploration" thread rather than DF like imho. Academagia and spacerangers2 have similar story decision gameplay.

Am I the only one who is swimming in food and think easy is way too easy?
+0 / -0
FIrankFFC
9 years ago
lol y u rez dis?
+0 / -0

9 years ago
Where do you want my mini review in DFlikes or suggest TB?
+0 / -0
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