Seven Kingdoms II (PC)

Have you ever heard hard-core history nerds start debating which civilizations could have kicked which civilization’s butt? It starts with military technology and tactics but inevitably spills into what someone saw on Deadliest Warrior that one time. This game is the end all be all of which civilizations could have kicked with civilizations’ butt. Complete with war machines certain civs never discovered and playable monstrous races. I’m certain this game will put all those arguments to rest!

History

Seven Kingdoms II was developed by Enlight Software, designed by Trevor Chan, and published by Ubisoft. Trevor Chan was a programming consultant for an airline sales system when he started his game development career with Capitalism and Seven Kingdoms. Chan and Enlight are still making games today, with a new Seven Kingdoms being planned and a new Capitalism game in development right now.

Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars was released on July 31st, 1999. It’s competition was Dungeon Keeper 2 (PC), System Shock 2 (PC), and Croc 2 (PS1).

Experiences

It’s difficult to imagine a world before commercialized sequels. Where sequels were meant to represent the success of a good product instead of an inevitability of the industry. I adored the first Seven Kingdoms when it came out and the idea that there would be another game that was bigger and better blew my mind. The only sequel series I had experienced was through Super Mario All-Stars pack, I didn’t even know that Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros looked that different. In short, I was completely unprepared and surprised by the graphical update between Seven Kingdoms games and the idea that games could be refined and improved for generations to come… yaaaay…

What is this sequel wizardry!?

Gameplay

Seven Kingdoms II is a real time strategy game in the vein of Ages and Empires. Your goal is to vanquish your enemies via conquest, diplomacy, and/or cloak and dagger spying. To this end you manage resources such as food, gold, people, and reputation — and hoo boy, is reputation important. If you run out of any of those then you’re gonna have your bad time. Human civilizations can also discover new technologies to improve soldier stats, create war machines that take less time to train than soldiers, espionage abilities, and industrial capabilities. Your goal is to be the last kingdom standing, in most circumstances.

The big innovation for this game over the previous installment is that the monstrous Fryhtans are no longer simply marauding creatures, they’re now playable kingdoms or Kwyzans. If all that diplomacy and spying junk didn’t interest you then you can Conan this shit and crush everyone. In ways including but not limited to, sapping natural resources, killing civilians, and enslaving towns — I did mention they were literal monsters right.

With giant spooky lairs, and bizarre structures the Fryhtans offer a completely different way to play.

Shockingly, the latest editions being offered by Steam and Good Old Games still have functioning multiplayer so it’s totally possible to comp stomp with your friends or go toe to toe with them.

The Gush

The learning curve in this game is pretty steep — it’s not Dwarf Fortress or anything — but the tutorials, hints, and scenario editor give the player enough room to experiment and learn. It takes some time but you’ll get the hang of it.

You can actually deploy your spies now! In the original Seven Kingdoms if you tried to infiltrate an enemy kingdom with spies they’d typically get apprehended and executed before they even took their first step… somehow. Now they’ll get as far as the gates of the enemy fort before there’s even a chance of them being discovered. So have fun bribing and backstabbing your way to victory.

The bizarre Fryhtan tech might seem unwieldy at first but once you learn how it works you can unleash your inner monster. Fryhtans don’t engage in diplomacy they only extort and destroy. Playing them is a total rush.

The Kvetch

The campaign for this game is overall unenjoyable. Every campaign is randomly generated with randomly generated scenarios. You have to face down a bunch of Fryhtan Kwyzans and a rival human empire. The effect of randomness can change things immensely and it makes the campaign feel arbitrary. I just wish my actions could snowball my empire and give me mounting power. It certainly doesn’t help that it’s super freaking hard.

Some Fryhtan missions can begin and end with getting completely overpowered and crushed.

I don’t know what’s wrong with the Fryhtan pathing but it’s a huge problem. Your monstrous armies will generally meet defeat because half of them were back at the lair picking their nose or just bumping harmlessly into each other.

These pathing problems are alleviated by ranged attacks but not all Fryhtan species can attack from a distance.

A minor quibble but why do my counterspies dying count against my reputation? It makes sense to be disreputable for infiltrating an enemy kingdom but having some secret police-men keeping an eye out for enemy spies dying in an earthquake should not mar my good name — I mean, I do have 11 assassins ready to kill the enemy’s king but no one needs to know that.

The Verdict

It’s an older game but it was state of the art for 1999 and it’s cheap now. You can get it on Steam or from Good old Games for $10 — GOG even offers a bundle for both Seven Kingdoms games. I started playing this game around 2004 and I’m still playing it today so I would say that it’s worth a look-see if you’re into this sort of thing.

Next Week: The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth/Afterbirth.

Word Realms (PC, Mac, and Linux)

In a world where words can hurt — like not just emotionally but on an extremely physical level– you wake up with an awful hangover — which is to say that you’re a native to this world, you haven’t used the power of booze to astrally teleport or something. The people of the valley you’re now in are being plagued by the evil Lord Nightmare who is, unsurprisingly, making it really difficult for people to sleep. Will you take up the cause of the local villagers, vanquishing monsters until you rush up to Nightmare’s Keep to deck him in the schnoz? Or will you just do all this junk because it means you can leave the valley and move on. You decide! Spell, use items, craft things, and solve puzzles in an adventure for all time!

History

Word Realms was the second game made by Asymmetric Publications and designed by Zack “Jick” Johnson and Kevin Simmons. It’s creation was funded through Kickstarter exceeding it’s asking price, $100,000, by a narrow margin. Johnson and Simmons had been discussing the idea of the game for months on the Kingdom of Loathing Podcast and working on it on and off before the campaign started. The Kickstarter ended on June 21st, 2012 and the game was released on May 21st, 2013. It’s competition was Fez (PC), Monaco: What’s yours is Mine (XBox Live Indie Arcade), and Resident Evil: Revelations (PC, PS3, XBox 360, and WiiU).

Experiences

I’ll just say this, my grandmother is better than me at this game. I bought it for her as a Christmas present because I knew she liked Scrabble so I figured she’d have fun with this. Little did I know that she would blow me out of the water. She breezed through the game and even thought it was a little on the easy side. I’ve been playing games for decades and I felt so upset but… why? What kind of petty jerk feels bad because his grandma is better at a game than him? — the pettiest of jerks, that’s who. So, I recognize my grammie as the resident Scrabble queen, long be her reign.

Gameplay

Word Realms is a lot like Scrabble, except your words score is the damage that your attack will do and that your rounds have a strict time limit. Monsters fight in a similar fashion and have their own abilities to amp up the difficulty, like copying your word, skipping your turn, or reducing the round time. You’ve also got abilities of your own including the power to wear clothes that boost your stats, use potions and scrolls, and use skills of your own. Your skills are based on your class, either wizard or warrior. Warriors play pretty simply but effectively, they’ll brute force their way through the game. Wizards on the other hand are more difficult but have more potential and can do bizzarre things — like wizards do.

Fight a ghost, get some loot, spell some words, feel good about your vocabulary.

The Gush

There’s so much to do beside the main quest. After you defeat Lord Nightmare you unlock Endless mode and get to face new and unique monsters. There’s also a secret underground fighting ring hidden somewhere in the game and it’s filled with a series of optional fights that confer powerful equipment and skills. Happy hunting.

If you’re really hardcore there are a few secret endings that are really difficult to unlock. No spoilers but reaching them will test yours skills.

Every word has a taunt based on its word type and it’s meaning. Fiery words, for example, get special dialogue and some words get totally unique taunts . So you might find a little joke if you experiment with your word choice.

With such classics as…

The Kvetch

There is a song for the main map and a few songs for combat. Ope, wait, there’s a song for the intro menu too. And the main menu music is the only music I can really tolerate. It’s all fine but it gets on my nerves real quickly.

I had to brute force some of the puzzles, attempting them again and again until there was a favorable set of starting circumstances. What really kills me is that only a few of these are mandatory and that those were the ones I got stuck on the most.

Not to say that the puzzles aren’t interesting, just that they were unfun levels of hard for me.

The crafting system seemed really interesting. I was stoked to discover all of these recipes and make some incredibly awesome stuff but I found it overall confusing. It took me a while to realize that one things could get crafted into another, as in, you don’t have to craft two things together. You can instead put one thing in the menu alter it to another craftable. The things I DID create weren’t stellar or even very useful for my strategies.

Look at all this stuff! Which of it goes together? I dunno, man.

The Verdict

If you like Scrabble or other word games then I think an $11 price tag is more than fair. If you’re not a big fan of word games then you’re probably not gonna like this one. It’s well made, humorous, and beautifully priced so if you want some puzzles in your Boggle then pick up a copy.

If you were totally sold on this game then pick up a copy here. http://www.wordrealms.com/

Next Week: Seven Kingdoms II: The Fryhtan Wars.

Kingdom of Loathing (PC and portable devices.)

The Kingdom of Loathing is not your typical fantasy RPG setting. It does not have mere clerics, wizards, and fighting men — I shit you not, 1st edition DnD had the Fighting Man class. It’s instead populated by Turtle Tamers, Pastamancers, and Accordion Thieves. These disparate adventurers have united because King Ralph XI — in the long line of Ralph — has been kidnapped by the Naughty Sorceress. For what purpose, no one can say but it cannot be a noble one because she’s seriously naughty, like so naughty. The Council of Loathing — in a clear bid to rescue their king — must first give you 11 quests before the Council runs out of ideas… I MEAN you are ready to face her naughtiness. Solve puzzles, fight monsters, and become an adventurer in the Kingdom of Loathing.

Behold the Kingdom in all of it’s glory.

History

Kingdom of Loathing begins with one man, Zack “Jick” Johnson and begins with high silliness. Working as a programmer, Johnson made a few games that he never released, thinking that they were too serious. He decided that he’d work on something for a week and then release whatever he had completed. The art was drawn by hand, and all of the initial content was stream of consciousness ideas where nothing but the worst ideas were discarded — I mean, meat became the currency of the realm so just imagine what the bad ideas were.  A year later KOL had 300,000 player accounts. Johnson invited his child-hood friend Josh “Mr. Skullhead” Nite to help him write and design the game.

It grew and evolved as Johnson and Nite added more content on an, albeit, irregular schedule. The game started by running off of donations and eventually Johnson began rewarding donations with in game items releasing and retiring an item every month. In 2005 he and Nite quit their day jobs and started working on the game full time. In 2007 Johnson hired two members of the player-base to help him work on the game, offering their experience as players to design new content. In November of 2014 Nite was laid off from the development team.

Kingdom of Loathing was released in it’s earliest form in 2003 and content has been steadily added and trimmed to this day. It’s current form is known as NS13 which released on June 15th 2007. It’s competition in 2003 was Dark Cloud 2 (PS2), Galactic Civilizations (PC), and Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis (Xbox).

Experiences

I’ve been playing this game for seven years and I still have more to do. There are still enemies I haven’t fought yet, still items I don’t have, and quests I haven’t completed. I run about 300 turns a day in under an hour thanks to the miracles of scripting and assistance tools like KOL mafia. I’m the leader of a clan and still ascend when the latest challenge path rolls out. I make enough meat to purchase the item of the month. And I love this game. The content is always fresh, funny, and has something for a player of every variety.

KOL Mafia: For when you’ve played the game so much that you have the game play itself

Gameplay

KOL is a single player MMO with turn based combat. Single Player MMO might sound like an oxy-moron but in this case it’s just a bizarre descriptor. The community is large and very present in the player economy, a silly PVP, and the ever present chat but when it comes to your character and your adventures you’ll mostly be flying solo. That being said, you can buff other players and throw bricks at them — you know, your choice.

The major mechanic of the game is the turn limit. The player is limited to how many turns per day they can adventure. The player is provided with 40 turns per day and when the player is out of turns well, there’s always the chat to play around with. You can get more turns by eating foodstuff and drinking boozestuff but not all food and booze is created equal. The better the food and drink, the more adventures and experience points it confers. Don’t drink too much though, or you’ll be too falling down drunk to do anything.

Break barrels, hang out in chat, it’s all in a day’s play.

The three main stats of the game are muscle, moxie, and mysticality. Muscle gives you more health, a greater chance to hit, and more damage with melee weapons. Moxie makes you take less damage, harder to hit, and a better chance to hit with ranged weapons. Mysticality gives increased MP (Muscle, Mojo, or Mana points respectively) and greater spell damage. Each class has a primary stat, a secondary stat, and a tertiary stat. Muscle classes hit really hard, soak all the damage, and can dish out more damage with sweet skills. Moxie classes don’t hit very hard, don’t take much damage, and can do weird things with their sweet skills. Mysticality classes might get beaten up in one hit but can generally defeat enemies with a single spell — they also have other sweet skills to facilitate their spellslinging. It’s not all about how thoroughly you can pummel monsters though. This game will also require the player to solve fiendish puzzles — the less mandatory they are the more fiendish they will be.

After the player defeats the Naughty Sorceress the game only opens up further. Between clan dungeons, The Sea, collecting bounties, and ascending there’s still more game to play. Ascension is the real big mechanic of the game. As a player you’re not tied down to your class. After you defeat the Sorceress you can begin the game anew with a new class and one of your old skills. In addition to the standard game there are challenge paths that alter the way the game is played allowing you to play a specific character — like the Avatar of Sneaky Pete, the most moxious man in the lands — or just altering the rules of the game — like in Bees hate you where you cannot use items with the letter B in them.

The Gush

I mentioned Clan dungeons before and I’ve got to bring them up again because they’re just about my favorite thing in the game. A Clan is like a guild in other MMOs and there are certain dungeons that you can pay to open for the opportunity to fight unique monsters and acquire immense and powerful loot. Team up with your Clan-mates and delve into the mysterious stronghold of Hobopolis, for example, and fight all manner of migrant laborer as you work your way towards Hodgman, the Hoboverlord. To what lengths will you go to acquire Roger, his Imaginary Hamster? Will you acquire it for the power it confers or the prestige it offers.

It’s town square holds 3000 hobos between you and your goal, not to mention the offshoot neighborhoods.

If the humor in this game doesn’t keep you playing then the systems just might. The game seems simple — the seal clubber was designed to play through the game doing nothing but attacking monsters — but the systems can get really complex. You can banish unwanted monsters from certain areas or use an item that allows you to run away from combat without spending a turn. It might be hard to believe but people have figured out how to finish their runs in under 800 turns.

My personal favorite part of the game is probably the player economy. Most of my time spent these days is on the mall pricing screen and in the trade chat channel. I buy, sell, trade, and sell my services to the highest bidder. In game currency also retains its value because you can spend in game currency on out of game currency. A Mr. Accessory runs about 23 million meat and I can make that in a month meaning that as long as someone is willing to sell, I am able to buy. Premium content can also be purchased from the mall for a modest — and sometimes exorbitant fee — so if you save your sirloin you can acquire these limited items.

Speaking of Premium Content, the microtransactions of this game are actually really player friendly. Because it’s single player you don’t need them to compete, some of the strongest items can be acquired without paying a cent. For the low price of 10 dollars per thing, it’s pretty cheap. And, as I said before, you can spend in game meat on these premium items.

Some of the premium content aren’t even items, some of them are new areas to explore.

The Kvetch

The game’s depth can be confusing and even intimidating at times. I often need to have strategies of high level play and intense speed runs explained to me in chat and I’ve been playing for a good long while. Jick and co keep adding simple ways to complete quests, but speed runners retain their strategies. It used to be back in the day that a new and casual player would NEED to use the wiki to make headway in the quest line. That’s not so much these days but it can still seem daunting at first glance.

The game may have deep systems but they’re all based on the simple concept of numbers getting bigger. If it doesn’t excite you for numbers to get bigger then it might be really difficult to get into the game. Numbers get bigger, you kill skeletons, you get some sweet swords.

The Verdict

There’s so much more to this game that I didn’t have time to mention. World events will sweep across the Kingdom and change everything for a few days, the game also celebrates out of game holidays. I really like this game and the best part is that it’s completely free. It’s silly and goofy and yet has incredibly deep systems at its core. If you’ve got the time and feel like some goofiness then give it a whirl.

Play it for Free at www.kingdomofloathing.com

Next Week: Word Realms

Tales from the Borderlands (Android, iOS, PC, Mac, PS3, PS4, XBox 360, XBox 1, and your toaster.)

It’s come to my attention that this game is pretty graphic and pretty violent. If you don’t dig graphic violence or buckets of gore you might wanna skip this one.

So far in the Borderlands series we’ve opened one vault per game, the vaults of the Destroyer, the Warrior, and the Watcher. Each of which contained a giant alien monster that earned its title. In each game we’ve played the badasses who’ve shot and blasted their way to open them up. This time around things are a little different. Done are the days of gun toting, level-upping, loot-based vault hunters. Now is the era of speaking, decision making, and high silliness — I mean, you’re playing a con-woman and a pencil-pusher, what did you want from them? You play as both Pandoran native Fiona and Hyperion corporation lap-dog Rhys– con-woman and pencil-pusher respectively– when a struggle to survive turns into a plot to open a vault — you know, because loot. Make choices in this point and click adventure on everyone’s favorite toilet of a planet, Pandora.

History

Talk of a Telltale Borderlands game began after Gearbox and Telltale worked together on Claptrap’s inclusion in Poker Night at the Inventory 2 (Here’s my post for Poker Night 1 if you’re curious). Discussions began as Gearbox designers admitted that the FPS roots of Borderlands prevented them from including elements that wouldn’t mesh with mechanics. These were things that Telltale could capitalize on as well as all of the Borderlands characters who don’t get a spotlight in an FPS game.

Not to say that this game doesn’t have its share of bloodshed.

Tales From the Borderlands was plagued by release delays. The first episode was released on November 24th 2014, the second episode was released on March 17th of 2015, and the final episode wasn’t released until October 20th 2015 (For reference The Wolf Among Us’ first episode was released on October 11th 2013 and it’s final episode was released on November 4th of 2014). It’s competition on its initial release Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor (PS3 and Xbox 360), Assassin’s Creed: Unity (PC, XBox One, PS4), and Thomas Was Alone (PS4, WiiU, and Xbox One).

Experiences

As another Telltale adventure game you’re sure to feel a pit of indecision grow in your stomach. Playing to character might lead to dire consequences and even the most innocuous of decisions will leave you in tears. The emotional tension reaches a fever pitch with the introduction of Loader Bot — one of the mooks from Borderlands 2 but this one’s got a personality. I’ve never cared about robots more in any game ever. Never have I felt so connected with a being of synthetic thoughts, wires, and circuitry. Made all the more impactful considering the terrible things you can do to him.

Treat your loader bot well, he’s sworn to protect.

Gameplay

Tales from the Borderlands is like your average Telltale adventure game. You’ll enter into conversations with people, choose your responses — and remember that silence is always an option (unless someone demands information under penalty of death, you should probably answer that person)– walk around areas, and poke things with proverbial sticks. Tales from the Borderlands is unique insofar that you play as…

…and…

That’s right, you’re playing as two different characters. Certain chapters and sections are played as certain characters so there’s no switching at will. This can make things complicated because sometimes they don’t have each others’ best interests in mind. They’re both in it for the money, they both want all the rewards, and they’re not exactly on good terms — this game takes place after Borderlands 2, you know, when Hyperion tried to conquer the planet and kill the local populace. You can split them apart, and take sides, as they squabble for what they want or you can unite them and they’ll work together more smoothly.

And remember, the other characters will remember and react to what you say and do.

The Gush

Fiona and Rhys’ unique mechanics are just plain fun and characters having mechanics is yet to be in a Telltale game. Rhys’ cyber eye allows him to look things up in the Hyperion database for fun jokes and additional information whereas Fiona has the ability to collect and spend money. Although, I will say, Fiona’s cash was a more useful even though I’m not sure how it impacted things — but that’s the nature of Telltale games, you’ll never know what matters.

Although, I will admit, the scanning function is very entertaining.

The characters in this game are fantastic, as is befitting a Telltale game. One of the NPCs was so deceptive that they legitimately fooled me. Hell, I got fooled a couple of times. Even when the evidence was piling up against people I defended them until they sprung their traps.

Even though it’s an adventure game it feels undeniably like a Borderlands game. Pandora oozes through the content and becomes a character unto itself. Even if you’re not familiar with the setting the game does a great job at getting you familiar with things thanks to Rhys’ fish out-of-water character.

Expect to see new characters and old favorites.

This game will give you an attack of the feels. Some tragedies and events are unavoidable, others will be all your fault — not that you’ll ever know. So just be ready for a few cheers and more than a few tears.

The Music in this game is on point. Between recycling old tracks, licensing music, and creating their own it invigorates Tales to have its own unique style. It’s definitely Pandora, but it’s no longer the Borderlands you knew.

The Kvetch

This game has a lot of graphical glitches. I can’t tell you how many time characters clip through objects and bizarre, immersion-breaking, events take place. It’s really easy for me to ignore because at no point does it compromise understanding of events but it was a little annoying.

I’m not sure why the characters had such a large inventory. I went through the game without using, and without the opportunity, to use most of my items. I was constantly paranoid about a series of grenades I had picked up 3 episodes ago and they never came into play.

The Verdict

Tales from the Borderlands is available for $25 on its various platforms and I’ve got an interesting relationship with this pricing. When I think of it as the full game for $25 I think, “Well, it’s just a choose your own adventure. I’d say it’s really worth 20 .” But when I think about it as $5 per chapter I think, “I would totally spend $5 per chapter on this silly and fun game,” so… that’s odd. In any event, however you have to justify the value of the purchase I’d say go for it. It’s a super fun game that I had a great time. It’s got replay value out the wazoo if you’re the type to investigate how each decision effects play.

Next Week: Kingdom of Loathing