As the post title indicates, this one is the 2012 RPG by Cyanide, not the 2014 adventure game by Telltale. I’d bought this because it was cheap and I’d heard that its story was surprisingly decent, as in people are used to Cyanide making shitty games and media tie-in games being crappy, but this turned out not to be the case. After finishing this, I have to say that I agree with this assessment. This doesn’t mean that it’s actually good, just that it’s better than it has any right being.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first: this really is an RPG, and a fairly substantial one at that. The closest analogue that I can think of is the first Witcher game. Like that first installment of the series, it’s not really an action game. You queue up commands, either a basic attack or a special action, and the character carries them out. Characters can supposedly deflect and dodge attacks but these are just calculations that are performed automatically without player input. You have stats, equipment slots, talent trees and even potions. You can even choose different stances, each of which comes with a different talent tree. There’s plenty of combat and also plenty of dialogue. There’s a main quest and some, but not many, side quests.

One interesting twist here is that you play not one but two different characters here. The first is Mors Westford, a member of the Night’s Watch and secretly a skinchanger. The second is Alester Sarwyck, the heir of a minor house and a Red Priest. Both can be fully developed and equipped as you wish. Each chapter alternates between them until eventually the two meet up and you get to control both simultaneously. In combat, there a slow-down mode you can turn on so that you can switch between characters and queue the appropriate commands as needed. Since Mors generally has his dog with him, it’s like a party-based RPG with a very small party.

Obviously none of this is canon but it’s obvious that Cyanide put a lot of effort into writing around the official stuff and making it all fit right. Mors is drawn away from the Wall when his old friend Jon Arryn sends a mysterious girl to him for protection and Jeor Mormont agrees to let him go investigate since whoever it is who wants the girl has also attacked the Night’s Watch. Meanwhile Alester returns to Westeros after a self-imposed exile of 15 years during which time he became a Red Priest when he learns of the death of his father. While he has been away, his obviously evil bastard half-brother Valarr Hill has risen high in the esteem of their Lannister liege lord. He needs to both investigate the death of his father and prevent Valarr from being named lord of the Sarwyck seat of Riverspring.

I’m not going to reveal spoilers but suffice to say that true to Song of Ice and Fire tradition the story is a bloody one full of betrayals, tragedy and intrigue. The whole thing takes place roughly parallel to the events of the first book. Many recognizable trademarks from the series show up, including R’hllor magic, scenes of torture, usage of poison etc. Fans should already expect that this is a world in which holding to the principles of honor is never rewarded and this game adheres to the same philosophy. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that though there are multiple endings, none of them are good. The writing isn’t quite watertight (it doesn’t make sense why Jon Arryn sends the girl to the Night’s Watch instead of the Starks and as always Varys’ motivations are mysterious), but it really is quite impressive. I found the final twist to be both shocking and emotionally powerful, which is rather rare in a videogame.

Unfortunately the rest of the game is a real letdown in comparison. The graphics look a bit dated but aren’t too bad, until you start to notice all of the goofs like shields visibly hanging in the air behind the backs of the characters, and how when you switch weapons the models instantly change instead of the characters sheathing the previous one and drawing a new one. The voicework is very uneven as well. I actually like those for the main characters, though it makes Mors seem like a Warhammer 40k space marine, but the recording quality varies quite a bit. Then there are all of the little quality of life issues like the uselessness of in-game mini-map, the fact that you can slow down combat to queue commands but not actually pause it, and how completionists are forced to comb over areas a few times to find hidden loot because different characters have different abilities to reveal hidden stuff.

The most disappointing part is the gameplay, all the more so because it initially looks quite promising with a decent variety of special moves and status effects. Unfortunately in practice the energy cost of the moves preclude much in the way of fancy strategies and the characters are just auto-attacking most of the time. Soon you learn that the best move is just to knock down your opponent over and over and over again, while interrupting their own attempts to knock you down. The system is so clunky that if you’ve queued up a move that performs a special animation on the enemy but the enemy is still going through another animation, your character will stand there and do nothing until the enemy finishes. It’s not awful, just repetitive, kind of bland and frustratingly difficult at times. There’s a reason why so many people advise you to just turn the difficulty down to the lowest notch and just enjoy the story.

Special mention should also be made about the side-quests. I like them. They add flavor and give you explore a bit more of the world. Unfortunately being able to run around the overworld at will to do them kind of ruins the narrative of the main quest. One moment Alester is telling Harwyn he needs to go save a girl like right now and the next you’re happily traipsing off to the Wall to hand in a side-quest. I also note that because Westeros feels more grounded than most videogame worlds, doing videogame stuff like killing armies of mooks feels strange. Alester kills a ton of Gold Cloaks to escape from prison and suddenly Cersei Lannister thinks that’s very impressive and gives him a job? Videogame conventions rely on an endless stream of nameless enemies but that’s very much at odds with good fiction. Part of what makes the book series so good is that no one is nameless. Everyone has a name and a backstory.

In the end, the story was good enough to win me over. Yet I still find it hard to recommend it because its gameplay is so mediocre. It offers so much that it can’t justly be called a half-hearted effort. There are even stealth sequences in which you control Mors’ dog, a fighting tournament in which you can rig the bets, puzzles to solve and so forth. But it just doesn’t quite hit the mark. Gameplay-wise there are just so many better games out there. At the same time, they’re not Song of Ice and Fire and they probably don’t have a story that hits as hard as this one. So make up your own mind.