I first tried King of Dragon Pass ages ago but only finished it when A Sharp got around to releasing a modernized, downloadable version. I even wrote a game diary of the experience 10 years ago! Apparently the new version did so well, they decided to make more of them! As with the original game, this is set in Chaosium’s Glorantha fantasy setting but the story here takes place before the events shown in King of Dragon Pass, so it’s really a prequel. Mechanically this works almost exactly the same, with expanded options for battles and of course as it still uses hand-drawn art, it even looks similar. Unfortunately I’ve found that I still remember my playthrough of the first game enough that more of the same wasn’t very satisfying to me and the same approach just isn’t novel enough now to hold my interest.

The game has you guiding a Rider clan that has splintered from a larger one, moving to join others in a relatively unexplored valley. If you’ve already played King of Dragon Pass, a rider clan is effectively an ancestor of the horse spawn. During this time, there is conflict between the gods, so in addition to the usual travails of settling into a new place, the clan has to deal with a climate that is turning colder. This means that it’s impossible to get enough food from farming without relying on the magic of the gods. The Riders are one of the three cultures in the valley, with the other two being the Rams, who are less nomadic and raise sheep, and the Wheels, who use chariots instead of riding on horseback. While nonhuman factions like the elves, dwarves and trolls are present, the main conflicts are against the other two human cultures. The main story in this game deals with the rise of a promising young hero named Beren in your clan.

As with the first title, the game is organized around a year of five seasons and you effective get to do two actions each season. In addition, you get one, later two after you’ve finished your clan hall, major action called a venture that takes place across the whole year. The clan is led by a circle of seven members and you’re meant to choose members to cover different skillsets, deities and family interests. There are statistics recording everything from the number of adults and children in your clan, the cows and goats in your herds, your resources and so on. Combat and events that happen are handled by choosing options from a menu like in a text adventure game. The reason why I was intrigued by the very first game all the way back in the 1990s was because it very much was a text adventure game, except that it’s also backed by solid game mechanics and stats. You’ll have a hard time as a player if you don’t like to read.

One part of this game does play like any other strategy game. Things are dicey for your clan at the beginning as your food supply is precarious and you need to clear enough land for your pastures. You’ll need to keep the clan’s members happy while dealing with random events like rampaging trolls, mischievous spirits and travelling magicians. As your clan becomes richer, you can invest in fortifications and shrines to earn the blessings of the gods. You’ll have to fight off raids from other clans and are expected to conduct raids yourself as this is part of the Rider culture. You must also occasionally carry out large, costly rituals which effectively reenact key events from the stories of your gods. This can earn you powerful, long lasting boons, make your people happy and make the other clans respect you, but also risks the life of the quester.

However there is also a main storyline that is more or less fixed. So in every game, you will face a great crisis that is caused by the gods fighting one another. You’ll also see the same key characters appear and you’ll soon see that the game is really just telling their story. This is a point of frustration for me as once you get the clan running more or less smoothly, it’s not really clear what else you’re supposed to do. You can send out exploration parties who sometimes come back with new treasures or often nothing at all, try to turn the Rams and the Wheels into friends and so on. But you really can’t fight against the main story. Even if you’re best friends with the king of the Ram kingdom, they’ll still gang up on you in retaliation if you raid a Ram clan. And of course, the game ends when the story of Beren the hero plays out one way or another. The only thing you can change really is to make sure that your clan is rich enough and powerful enough so that Beren is better placed to succeed when it’s his time to shine.

But the main reason I found it difficult to muster much enthusiasm is that it’s just too similar to King of Dragon Pass, which in any case tells a more epic story and feels larger in scale. This game just feels less consequential, exploration is purely optional, everything else except for Beren are just additional hazards. The game mechanics have been refined but are still familiar. Why not make this a narrative game focusing on just Beren or at least his family instead of a clan with drastically different mechanics? By its own admission, this game tells only half the story as well, leaving out the things that Redalda did. It really feels to me that they chose the wrong format for the story they wanted to tell. I still have fond memories of the first game but this felt too much like a rehash and I was glad when I finally finished it.