"Life between myths. Clans, cows, choices. The spiritual successor to King of Dragon Pass, Six Ages combines interactive stories and turn-based strategy. Your small clan’s survival depends on its relations with the warring gods and their followers. Play involves actions such as improving pastures, exploration, trading with your neighbors, and raiding. You can even travel to the Otherworld to visit your gods. You also need to deal with crises ranging from marauding dinosaurs to diplomatic requests to illicit love. Your choices have a politico-economic impact, but some consequences might not be obvious for decades. It’s set in Glorantha (the world of the games RuneQuest, HeroQuest, and 13th Age), where the laws of physics are subordinate to the whims of the gods and spirits. Six Ages is immensely replayable, thanks to over 400 interactive scenes with multiple outcomes. Short episodes and automatic saving mean you can play even when you only have a minute or two. The built-in saga writes down the story for you. And advisors with distinctive personalities help you track your cows."
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It's KoDP 2! Good, but not as good as KoDP
If there’s one thing you should take away, it’s that Six Ages and its pedigree of gameplay is exceptionally unique. It knows what it is, and is very confident. But it is also stubborn about itself, and is not going to budge if you find any part of it disagreeable; it’s very much an “enjoy it or else leave” sort of mood the game presents, and that can be off putting even for people who love this challenging style of narrative, text-based gameplay.
It's great, but also flawed in a lot of ways. So let’s dig into this.
Six Ages is BEAUTIFUL, top to bottom. How many games would even dare explore historic steppe cultures? How many games try to make unique fantasy lore, in this setting, that is this intricate and deep, and then dares you to learn it rather than being taught it? The artstyle by itself is stunning, and outshines basically everything. And it’s able to shine because of the sheer density of the narrative, as well as how many different options there seem to be, most featuring unique pieces of artwork. All this combined with a challenging gameplay that doesn’t attempt to hold your hand.
However…
There are problems immediately under the surface. The game is billed as being hard, but why is it hard? Ostensibly, this is a management game. In keeping your large tribe alive, you must keep raiders at bay, keep everyone fed, mediate political affairs, and moderate trade. The challenge, then, is how do you respond to all manner of things that will go wrong: enemy raids, monsters and spirits ruining your vibe, among all manner of other weird things. And that does have a fun gameplay loop to it, because it constantly feels like the world it out to get you, because it is.
But how that gameplay acts in practice is less exciting, because much of it is chalked up to RNG. This game is very RNG heavy, and while a dash of randomness can be fun here and there, the fact that basically every decision is mired in RNG can leave you feeling a bit miffed. In one scenario later in the game, I performed a series of actions that led to my leader getting killed in a somewhat arbitrary way, which led to the complete dissolution of my clan. I rewound time to try again, did the exact same actions, and because the RNG was in my favor this second time, I got a world-changing, miraculous success… even though I did nothing different. No skill, no strategy, just luck and pushing buttons.
And let’s not talk about the combat. Oh so much combat. I get it, these are horse warlords, they’re violent and wild. But you will be in combat at least once every 5 minutes or so, usually much more than this. The fighting itself is sort of strategy based, although many options carry no strategic option at all. On top of that, all decisions in fights are randomized, so you could even take the most tactical and sensible option, and still lose dramatically. This is all due to the invisible dice you can’t see being rolled, yet if you find yourself with bad luck, you could lose your not only your economic advantages, but also your population of soldiers AND your leaders, all because you happened to be a little unlucky at a critical moment. It feels like the game is trying to spite you sometimes, which is frustrating.
But I’m willing to accept some flaws if the whole is better than the sum of its parts. And I achieved the ending, so was it worth it?
I’m torn. Because for all of the freedom and choice the game offers, the ending strips all of that way for a linear experience. The whole onus of the game is, “The world is your oyster, have at it you rascal.” All the RNG and unique scenes make the world feel huge and uncontrollable, which is good at first. But once you realize you don’t have a lot of mechanical agency, you then try to play out the story like your heart desires, pure emergent narrative.
That’s when you learn that there are an extremely limited number of endings, and very few “good” endings, meaning the entire open-ended experience trickles into a funnel, until you’re essentially on rails, except any small misstep results in your demise. Additionally, the ending is largely without consequence for your actions. Once you realize the linear narrative that is given, you MUST follow it; any deviation is a bad ending. Is the linear narrative any good? Yeah, it’s neat enough. But for a game that puts so much emphasis on you and your scrappy clan versus the world, it’s a bit disappointing to learn that it all boils down to “you the player versus the game’s plot.” A good contrast to this is the game Long Live The Queen; the reason that game succeeds where this one fails is because Long Live The Queen does not have RNG; it has strict parameters, on a flexible but linear story, so you can learn exactly how you'll fail, and how you'll succeed, and you know the goal from the outset is to succeed. With Six Ages, there are loads of ways to fail, and you won't know them until you experience them; however, once you actually learn the win-loss conditions, you can still lose if you just happen to have bad luck.
If Six Ages had multiple endings, even neutral endings compared to a “true ending,” where your clan didn't meet a miserable demise, this would all be fine. But that is not the case: there is the “good ending,” and the bad or worse endings, which takes away a lot of the fun in the emergent gameplay that is created by the RNG. In one playthru, I had my leader die, but it felt narratively fun, so I let it happen without rewinding... only to learn that without that leader, I guaranteed a bad ending; the neat story I told meant nothing because it wasn't the story the game felt like telling.
Which is all why this game feel so divisive to me. It’s a fun, beautiful, challenging game. It’s tricky by design, and has a depth to it that requires competency and flexibility, coupled with an extremely unique setting and lore. But as a complete package, it’s hamstrung by its own RNG-based mechanics and its linear storytelling model that strips away all agency and emergent narrative away in favor of playing the game “correctly.”
Is this a good game? I think so. I think it’s really good. Would I recommend it? Maybe... But how much can I recommend a game in this fashion? How can I recommend a game that is amazing in its uniqueness, but just doesn’t really stick the landing? It’s a hard decision to make. It resigns me to a state of bemused acceptance; one of amazing success mixed with strange, unnecessary gaffs that seemed so easy to avoid.
It's great, but also flawed in a lot of ways. So let’s dig into this.
Six Ages is BEAUTIFUL, top to bottom. How many games would even dare explore historic steppe cultures? How many games try to make unique fantasy lore, in this setting, that is this intricate and deep, and then dares you to learn it rather than being taught it? The artstyle by itself is stunning, and outshines basically everything. And it’s able to shine because of the sheer density of the narrative, as well as how many different options there seem to be, most featuring unique pieces of artwork. All this combined with a challenging gameplay that doesn’t attempt to hold your hand.
However…
There are problems immediately under the surface. The game is billed as being hard, but why is it hard? Ostensibly, this is a management game. In keeping your large tribe alive, you must keep raiders at bay, keep everyone fed, mediate political affairs, and moderate trade. The challenge, then, is how do you respond to all manner of things that will go wrong: enemy raids, monsters and spirits ruining your vibe, among all manner of other weird things. And that does have a fun gameplay loop to it, because it constantly feels like the world it out to get you, because it is.
But how that gameplay acts in practice is less exciting, because much of it is chalked up to RNG. This game is very RNG heavy, and while a dash of randomness can be fun here and there, the fact that basically every decision is mired in RNG can leave you feeling a bit miffed. In one scenario later in the game, I performed a series of actions that led to my leader getting killed in a somewhat arbitrary way, which led to the complete dissolution of my clan. I rewound time to try again, did the exact same actions, and because the RNG was in my favor this second time, I got a world-changing, miraculous success… even though I did nothing different. No skill, no strategy, just luck and pushing buttons.
And let’s not talk about the combat. Oh so much combat. I get it, these are horse warlords, they’re violent and wild. But you will be in combat at least once every 5 minutes or so, usually much more than this. The fighting itself is sort of strategy based, although many options carry no strategic option at all. On top of that, all decisions in fights are randomized, so you could even take the most tactical and sensible option, and still lose dramatically. This is all due to the invisible dice you can’t see being rolled, yet if you find yourself with bad luck, you could lose your not only your economic advantages, but also your population of soldiers AND your leaders, all because you happened to be a little unlucky at a critical moment. It feels like the game is trying to spite you sometimes, which is frustrating.
But I’m willing to accept some flaws if the whole is better than the sum of its parts. And I achieved the ending, so was it worth it?
I’m torn. Because for all of the freedom and choice the game offers, the ending strips all of that way for a linear experience. The whole onus of the game is, “The world is your oyster, have at it you rascal.” All the RNG and unique scenes make the world feel huge and uncontrollable, which is good at first. But once you realize you don’t have a lot of mechanical agency, you then try to play out the story like your heart desires, pure emergent narrative.
That’s when you learn that there are an extremely limited number of endings, and very few “good” endings, meaning the entire open-ended experience trickles into a funnel, until you’re essentially on rails, except any small misstep results in your demise. Additionally, the ending is largely without consequence for your actions. Once you realize the linear narrative that is given, you MUST follow it; any deviation is a bad ending. Is the linear narrative any good? Yeah, it’s neat enough. But for a game that puts so much emphasis on you and your scrappy clan versus the world, it’s a bit disappointing to learn that it all boils down to “you the player versus the game’s plot.” A good contrast to this is the game Long Live The Queen; the reason that game succeeds where this one fails is because Long Live The Queen does not have RNG; it has strict parameters, on a flexible but linear story, so you can learn exactly how you'll fail, and how you'll succeed, and you know the goal from the outset is to succeed. With Six Ages, there are loads of ways to fail, and you won't know them until you experience them; however, once you actually learn the win-loss conditions, you can still lose if you just happen to have bad luck.
If Six Ages had multiple endings, even neutral endings compared to a “true ending,” where your clan didn't meet a miserable demise, this would all be fine. But that is not the case: there is the “good ending,” and the bad or worse endings, which takes away a lot of the fun in the emergent gameplay that is created by the RNG. In one playthru, I had my leader die, but it felt narratively fun, so I let it happen without rewinding... only to learn that without that leader, I guaranteed a bad ending; the neat story I told meant nothing because it wasn't the story the game felt like telling.
Which is all why this game feel so divisive to me. It’s a fun, beautiful, challenging game. It’s tricky by design, and has a depth to it that requires competency and flexibility, coupled with an extremely unique setting and lore. But as a complete package, it’s hamstrung by its own RNG-based mechanics and its linear storytelling model that strips away all agency and emergent narrative away in favor of playing the game “correctly.”
Is this a good game? I think so. I think it’s really good. Would I recommend it? Maybe... But how much can I recommend a game in this fashion? How can I recommend a game that is amazing in its uniqueness, but just doesn’t really stick the landing? It’s a hard decision to make. It resigns me to a state of bemused acceptance; one of amazing success mixed with strange, unnecessary gaffs that seemed so easy to avoid.
A worthy successor to King of Dragon Pass.