Not really barbarian Freedom

The game says to win i.e. to become king of the tribes and clans of the dragon pass you should think and act like a barbarian leader would in a harsh land and forget about todays ethics. But thats not exactly true because you can only win by being soft and bribing everybody around you until the become friendly. If you wanna be king you have give out even more presents. Strength or even cruelty mean nothing, instead you have to the noble good guy.

The game goes like this: Do rituals which is actually bribing again to get bonuses from gods. Build stuff to make your life easier, explore, raid, trade and communicate with other clans. All this while dealing with random events and getting advices from you selected staff members! Great! Really. The limits only become visible if you play longer, and they are what brings this really unique game somewhat down.

So for example all other clans are immortal, they have infinite people and resources. You wanna raid some clan 4x a year? No problem. You still get loot and they even have resources to hire mercenaries to buff up their army. Earlier or later they move away, but that only means your army has to walk a longer way for raids. No clan can be completely defeated or even enslaved. Except your own which can starve to death for example.

So why to produce goods if you simply can steal them from an infinite pool? Having a strong army is a good idea anyway. But, and thats the next catch, you can only have about 1000 people in your clan. Then your guys start complaining until the point that neither talking nor bribing helps. They just leave cutting down your mighty clan to where it started! Boring. And again I miss the option to just take some heads and wonder why they even dare to provoke my strong, successful and battle proven leader. There is more though its a decent game, just not soooo great as it may seem.

Jewo76 about King of Dragon Pass, v2.3.1