Bem interessante, apesar de não muito bem sucedido no que quer ser. É uma mistura de ficção interativa, estratégia em turnos e roguelike. Eu sei nenhuma dessas palavras está na Bíblia. Na teoria, essa mistureba herética criaria uma experiência com alta rejogabilidade e variedade narrativa. Na prática, nenhuma dessas duas coisas.

Pra ficar claro, Pendragon é legal! É bem escrito, bonito e com a princípio combate competente. Como uma experiência curtinha de no máximo um par de horas funciona muito bem. Só que claramente essa não é a intenção do jogo. Com nove personagens, sete níveis de dificuldade de um montão de eventos aleatórios e conteúdo gerado proceduralmente, Pendragon quer ser um simulador da queda de Camelot que pode ser jogado e rejogado várias e várias vezes. Mas depois da minha terceira partida já estava me sentindo mais do que satisfeito, e a quarta e quinta só me deixaram com gosto amargo na boca.

O grande problema é que a variedade de eventos narrativos não é grande o suficiente para justificar jogar diversas vezes, e nem o combate engajante o suficiente para te manter entretido a despeito dos eventos e diálogos repetidos ou similares. Se qualquer coisa, o combate é um grande desmotivador. Simples demais para ser interessante e em dificuldades maiores imperdoável demais para não incomodar. Perder uma campanha por causa de um movimento errado - ou, pior, porque o RNG decidiu não agraciá-lo com uma habilidade útil - para então ter que rever os mesmos diálogos e eventos mais uma vez não é lá muito prazeroso.

Pendragon acaba sendo um exemplo claro de rendimentos decrescentes. Cada nova partida foi reduzindo um pouco meu apreço pela obra. Felizmente parei a tempo de sair da experiência pensando "legal, valeu a pena, mas vamos pro próximo game".

Aunque funciona como una continuación directa de los elementos que Inkle venía trabajando desde 80 Days, si no antes, Pendragon toma decisiones que se me hacen difíciles de aceptar. La idea de configurar un juego de estrategia a pequeña escala con el sistema de narrativa orgánica de Ink invita a la idea de crear tu propia versión de la leyenda artúrica, con nuevos personajes y opciones abriéndose conforme juegas dificultades más elevadas. El concepto no es malo, pero la ejecución deja que desear. La imposibilidad de retomar combates que van como deseas ha de instigarte a aceptar que a veces la narrativa escapa a tu control, pero esa aceptación se vuelve frustrante cuando llevas varias partidas y los encuentros empiezan a repetirse. Sin una opción que te permita separar las rutas más trilladas, el juego acaba sintiéndose con mucha más paja de la que realmente tiene, y eso desalienta a explorar historias menos convencionales o escuchar los cuentos mejor escritos. El sistema de combate, por su lado, no es particularmente ofuscante, pero tampoco muy profundo, y eso se nota mucho en tu pelea obligatoria con Mordred al final de cada historia. Me creo que mucha gente haya acabado dejando el juego por perder ante el hijo bastardo de Arturo.

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While setting itself as a direct sequels of the elements Inkle has been working on since 80 Days, if not before, Pendragon veers into areas I find hard going to. Mixing small-scale strategy gaming with Ink's organic narrative suggests the possibility of creating your own Arthurian legend, with new characters and options opening up as you play higher difficulties. The concept isn't bad, but the execution leaves something to be desired. The inability to rewind fights when they don't go your way are meant to make you accept that sometimes you won't control the narrative. But that becomes frustrating when you're several sessions in and encounters start repeating themselves. With no option to evade the most common routes, the game ends up feeling like it has far more chaff than it really does. And that discourages you from exploring less conventional stories or listening to the best tales. The combat system, meanwhile, isn't particularly obfuscating, but it's not very deep either, and that's very noticeable in your fight with Mordred at the end of every story. I can believe a lot of people ended up quitting the game because they were always losing to Arthur's bastard son.

A narrative focused roguelike retelling of the fall of Camelot with gameplay a bit more similar to chess than a typical turn based RPG. Mordred's lies and manipulations have broken the kingdom and the round table, you start the game being able to choose from either Guinevere or Lancelot with the goal of reaching the final battle sight between Arthur and Mordred's army. Along the way you will attempt to pick up supplies and allies as you choose between locations as you attempt to find the location of the final battle up north.

Certain characters that you can find will unlock new characters to play as such as the witch Morgana, archer Branwen, Rhiannon, Merlyn, and some of the knights of the round table such as Gawaine and Kay. Those characters often being found by finding information or named areas in your travels that will point you towards certain locations. Playing as different characters will give you a different perspective on certain events and different lines of dialogue when meeting people or when you have your climactic battle with Mordred, which can also be fought by Arthur himself in a much more personal moment for both characters. Some of them give you some very different options when it comes to abilities or playstyle with Branwen having a long ranged attack skill, Morgana being able to charm animals and beasts, and Merlyn not having a weapon at all.

As is common in games from inkle the game is well written with characters talking about their goals and pasts as you travel, telling a large collection of tales around campfires while you rest, the conversations between allies, enemies, and characters of unknown allegiances on maps, and the direction the story takes influencing the skills that you learn to aid in battle.

When you reach a new area and the map is loaded, not every NPC character is going to be hostile, and even if they are, they don't all have to be killed. Your goal is only to continue in your travels to reach Arthur, all you are trying to do is to reach the far side of the map, meaning you could bypass enemies depending on how both sides move. Some locations will only have allies that may join you, some may have characters that will offer you something, some will shift between being hostile or not, characters may frequently retreat. The way that I gained Branwen as a character involved me meeting them while they were seemingly hostile, they refused to join me or let me pass. Reading the character information said they were unable to attack with their bow when I was one space away, moving into that range lead to more conversation where you could ask them to drop their weapon, while they backed off I left the map without killing her, a few areas later she showed up again to help me against Mordred's soldiers and joined the group for that playthrough and to be used as a main character on a future playthrough.

That's how the encounters are supposed to go, variety of options, leading to very different events, or ways to play. But things are typically nowhere near as interesting as recruiting Branwen. Most areas are much more generic, or just confusing in what is going on. You may be attacked by sword armed villagers that will advance on you, who say they will kill you, say they nearly beat the last person they found to death, and that they were told by Mordred's army to watch for you. You have no real conversation or movement options to stop them or way to convince them of anything, your goal is just to get through them to end of the map. Killing one brings up text that you killed someone in cold blood, why it would say that in the situation I don't know, but no one ever commented on it, it gained or altered no abilities, and was never mentioned again. Some encounters you will see again and again and again, some locations are more randomized in what can happen but what might happen is literally nothing is there and you walk to the other side of an empty map. One of my least favorite things is in this game, rations. you need rations to keep up your groups strength and morale but your group never seems to think that if they kill all the enemy knights, villagers, bandits, or wild animals on a location that maybe they should find some food among their enemies, no options to hunt either. The very reason why I hate when games have rations, no one needs to eat except for you and yours, and why would you ever try to find food in a logical way?

The actual movement and combat is based on alternating between two movement styles and making use of abilities you have gained through the story (or started with). You have an attack ready style that allows you to move up, down, left, and right and you have a scouting style that allows for diagonal movement. You capture squares to your color as you move with the scouting style also gaining you nearby tiles. Moving through captured tiles allows you to move further or may effect how certain skills work. You kill characters by moving into them, everything dies in one hit, including your allies and main characters (your heart based health icons only drop as you don't eat or due to certain events). Abilities might allow you to attack in a direction not normally allowed by a stance, attack without moving into the square itself, move two or three spaces instead of one, shift stances after moving, crash or jump over obstacles, move through water, move back in different ways, control certain types of enemy characters, etc. All abilities are powered by resolve which his based on your morale, morale can increase due to events or be kept up by keeping your characters fed in your travels. If you spend too much time waiting or just too much time on a map in general morale starts to decrease and you may find it a good idea to try to the flee the encounter instead of pressing on. Story events might gain you new abilities, some that are just learned and some that you have the option of replacing other skills with.


I really don't like the actual gameplay. It's slow, boring, very limiting both as a combat game or in giving you unique options to handle the situations you are in, some ability descriptions are confusingly written, it's cheap with enemies on higher difficulties often reacting perfectly to you but still giving you a way to win because they never seem to know what skills you have. Which, of course, puts morale and lucking into finding food to keep morale up as one of the most important things to do, which is then made even worse by the randomness of characters joining you who will also need food, and also the randomness of what kind of skills you will have the option of learning. Even calling on additional allies that have joined you to appear on a map costs resolve. Everything made even worse with the game being a roguelike, suddenly that nonsense skill description probably not worth trying. Maybe if you do a certain thing you might find a different way to resolve an event? Probably not worth it, after all, you're not even sure of what the game is capable of taking into consideration and if you are nearing the end of a playthrough and maybe have some tips that might get you a new character then you sure as hell aren't going to risk finding out now.

Here's a good example of how the game just doesn't really function at all like it should. I beat the game as Guinevere my first try on the base easiest setting, unlocking Morgana and Branwen. Then I updated to the next difficulty for my second run and beat it as Branwen while unlocking Rhiannon (and getting Morgana and Guinevere in my group). Third time I up the difficulty again and play as Lancelot, and I get Merlyn and four random NPCs to join me (only one joined in the last two games). Not a single character has any useful abilities, Lancelot gains nothing the entire playthrough, except for one of the random women has one of the best abilities in the game, she can move and attack in the scouting stance. Even on the third difficulty up the computer doesn't understand this (and if it did, I suppose it would just create a hell of a lot more problems leaving you with no practical options). She probably killed about 10 soldiers and some creatures through the playthrough and single handedly finished three maps. So in a random map Lancelot starts out with some random NPC guy that joined me that has never done anything or even been used and he thanks him for being a great help and knights him. Also saw some repeated events that I saw in the last two games (but still a lot of new stuff). Last section she again kills three knights because Lancelot and Arthur are useless. So I go to fight Mordred with Lancelot. As the characters talk with Mordred they might gain new abilities. Mordred moves, I move to a safe spot with advantage. Mordred's turn starts he randomly gains a spinning attack that he can use to get out of the stance he is in, instantly uses it, kills me, I lose. Is that basically cheating and incompetence for not thinking to maybe give the new abilities AFTER a character's turn. Yes, but, on the other hand, I don't actually get anything for winning. The end game gives no real story events, the surviving characters don't get together for one more conversation about what they have gone through, Merlyn unlocked as playable as soon as I got him it doesn't matter if I get him killed or lose the playthrough. Of course, that in itself is pretty boring.

The entire final battle with Mordred is poorly thought out in the first place. You are put into a one an one fight to the death but as time goes by your allies just randomly die (even if you beat all the knights and forced them to retreat in the previous area), not that it matters because you don't hear from them again, and your morale goes down which I would assume cause you to lose if it drops all the way. I never saw it drop all the way though because what has happened ever time is that eventually Mordred just kind of lets you kill him by moving into a spot where you can either use an ability or sometimes just attack him normally. Which does make sense he would do that, if one of you doesn't you are basically just playing a game of tic tac toe where unless someone just completely forgets what is going on no one should ever actually lose.

Well written but the gameplay is too poor and limited and while there are a lot of events and alternate lines written a lot of the same scenes and situations will play out and every playthrough has even had completely different characters repeat the same lines in certain situations. Even getting to the last battle with Arthur it just plays out the exact same way five times, with just one of those times playing out the same way but on a different looking map. One of the strangest things is that if you play as Merlyn no one tells stories when you rest at night, taking away the best written parts of the game.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1348326960385048576