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Amazing - a game that's not a sequel! In the age of System Shock 2, Freespace 2, and the just-gold Thief 2, it's refreshing to see something like King of Dragon Pass, a game without a number in the title. Finally, a title that stands and falls on its own merit, building up a reputation from scratch!

Well, not entirely. King of Dragon Pass (KoDP) bills itself in the fine print as "The computer game of Hero Wars." Hero Wars, upon a bit of research, turns out to be a roleplaying game devised by Issaries, Inc., which is a spinoff of Chaosium (makers of Call of Cthulu) that creates titles based in Greg Stafford's Glorantha world. I must admit, I'd never heard of this particular world before. It was used as the setting for RuneQuest, but I was always more of a Dungeons and Dragons guy. However, King of Dragon Pass turns out to be a fine introduction to the world. For more about Glorantha, check out their web site.

So how does KoDP fare as a game? Quite well, I must say. Read on... Gameplay:

The basic gameplay of King of Dragon Pass is simple. You are given a series of random events, which you decide, based on advice from your advisors, how to resolve. Each game turn is divided into 10 half-seasons, each of which can contain any number of random events and one player-initiated action. By choosing the right responses and actions, you build your clan up from a new arrival in Dragon Pass to eventual leaders of a new kingdom.

What makes this game so great is the amazing amount of detail available. For the most part, your clan can manage the month-to-month business of raising crops, tending herds, and trading goods by itself in the background. However, if you run into major problems, or merely want to squeeze every last unit of food out of your workers, you can dig down into the more detailed management. In addition, much of the history of the world is available through the "background" and "saga" buttons on the interface. Checking these is not only interesting, but required if you want to succeed in the Heroquests.

In Hero Questing, you pick one of your most likely to succeed clansmen (the game selects the most likely candidate for you, but you can override this) and have him or her re-enact a major event of the past. These tend to get the weak killed, but the strong can get major rewards. You don't strictly HAVE to follow the wording of the quest, but that's usually the easiest way through. If your would-be hero has the wrong abilities, he or she can try a different path and may actually finish the quest - but might, along the way, cause major repercussions in the game world.

There are many various higher powers in the game world. Sacrificing your cows or goods (or slaves!) to them will gain you their blessings for a certain amount of time, or teach you more of their ways or myths. And remember, even if they're not working for you, they're probably working for your enemies. Never assume that numerical superiority will always win.

If you're not sure what to do at any given point - which happens fairly often - you can ask your Clan Ring. This is a set of 7 of your chosen clansmen, who are magically enhanced (and thus better at whatever they try to do than a similarly abled non-Ring member) and who give you advice for any screen you're on when you click on them. However, they rarely if ever always agree. Each one has his or her own hidden biases. What truly struck me about the advice they give is that it molds itself to the current state of the game world constantly - and without screwing up gramatically. It all seems very natural, and is quite well done.

A warning to potential players of KoDP: The game is HARD. Expect to lose, several times, while you get the hang of it. Play through the tutorial, and keep the manual handy. Despite this, it never seemed to get frustrating or old for me. There's always something new going on.

You really have to get into the mindset of the world to do well in the game. You can try to play the noble peacemaker type who abhors violence - but you'll get raided out of existence, and no one will respect you. You can try to worship one deity only - and the rest will curse your crops, sicken your herds, and you won't win by any stretch of the imagination. After a couple of failed play-throughs, you'll find it easier to get into the character of the tribal chief, which makes the game more fun (not to mention winnable). Longevity:

There's plenty of playtime in KoDP. A full successful run-through of the Short Game will take you several hours at least, not counting the unsucessful tries. The Long Game, obviously, takes even longer. And all this is at the Easy difficulty level! The game changes every time you play through it, and there's many different solutions to each obstacle. I found myself playing for hours without realizing it. This has its own downfall - you'll often forget to save every so often, and the game lacks Autosave, so if you screw up and start to go downhill, you'll often have no recourse but to start over. Frustrating to say the least, especially after putting many hours into building up your clan. As always, save early, save often.

Worth mentioning is the lack of a multiplayer component. I can see why the feature wasn't included - beyond the obvious cross-platform problems, multiplayer KoDP would be SLOW. The game takes a long time already without having to wait for an opponent every half-season. Controls:

The game is controlled through an intuitive mouse-driven interface. It's good that this is so easy to pick up, since it's all you ever see. When you have numerical choices on what to do, you can use keyboard shortcuts. The interface does have a few problems - sometimes it won't seem like a click went through due to the CD still loading, so you click again and it takes it as a double-click, thus possibly executing a raid against one of your allies! There's a distinct lack of "Cancel" buttons in some key areas of the game, and unfortunately these all seem to be the areas where you can accidentally doubleclick...

In some places the interface just gets clumsy. For instance, when you're looking for a god to sacrifice to to learn mysteries, you can't immediately tell which ones still have secrets to learn - you have to click through each god's Sacrifice menu. This takes a LONG time. And if you want the overview of your land, you can't click something and call it up - you have to wait for the beginning of the next game year. Ugh. Graphics:

The graphics in King of Dragon Pass are a real mixed bag. There's some great little graphical touches to it, but on a whole, the look of the game could use some work.

Some of the decision scenes feature really nice artwork. Every scene in the game is hand-painted, and the pictures give flavor to and a vision of the world of Glorantha and the land of Dragon Pass. In fact, some of the art was available for sale on eBay. There are apparently no active auctions for it at the time of this writing, though. The art varies widely in quality. While some of it is quite nice to look at, other scenes are cartoonish in appearance and really detract from the game. This works in some places, such as humorous events, but not everywhere. Unfortunately, the bad seems to outnumber the good.

All of the advisor portraits (which are unique, and well-drawn) have at least three different faces, which are used in sequence as the advisor ages. This is a great touch, as you can tell at a glance which of your trusted Clan Ring are liable to pass on from old age. Also, the god that the advisor worships is shown on their portrait, as is their status as clan chief or tribal king.

Most of the graphics of the interface have a very intuitive feel, which makes learning the game easier. However, this is not always the case. It's not immediately apparent what some of the objects on the city overview screen at the beginning of each game year are, for instance. Fortunately, these (and most everything else) features mouse-over tips...simply move the mouse over something and a message will appear telling you what it is. Even with this help, though, I still found myself referencing the manual from time to time.

On a negative note, the game runs in 640x480, in a little window in the middle of your scree, the rest of which is black. Which isn't necessarily bad (see my colleague's Outcast review), but it just doesn't seem to work here. If it's going to run in a 640x480 window, don't have it blank the rest of my desktop. Sound:

There is always music playing in the background. The music changes depending on the season, and changes whenever an event occurs. You can tell from the music what the general tone of an event will be. Each song is different, but all of them get a bit repetitive over the course of a game.

What sound effects there are are more of a nuisance than a feature. A sound plays for every executed action and before certain events. The problem with this is that the sound has to be fetched off the CD and played before the action executes. After the 30th or so time the battle sound plays in a game, you'll be looking for the sound effects disable function. They're not of bad quality, they just get annoying and bog down the game. Installation:

King of Dragon Pass refuses to install more than a 50 meg footprint, forcing you to run most of the game off of CD. This helps contribute to the aforementioned long breaks in gameplay while the information loads off the CD during the game. Full install options are always appreciated, and the lack of one is cause for lower marks here.

There is a patch available for the game, which ordinarily I would not mark points off for - but the patch does not install itself. Instead, the files have to be extracted to the proper directories manually. Self-extracting executables are a lot friendlier, and not that difficult to create.

On the positive side, the game hasn't crashed on me yet, which is more than I can say for just about everything else out there today. Hooray for code that's actually tested and not just shoveled out the door to make Thanksgiving deadlines! Not that I'm (Ultima: Ascension) naming any names... Overall:

King of Dragon Pass proves you don't need a fancy tactical combat simulator to make a deep, engrossing, and fun strategy game. Look past the graphics and sound, and pick this one up - if you often have hours to spend on it. It's obviously not for everyone, but it's a great example of how to take a concept that hasn't been done to death and make an enjoyable game out of it.