Another of my favorite guilty pleasure games, the Game of Thrones RPG is a great example of how a good adaptation of a license and a great story can carry an otherwise mediocre to bad game.
I'm a huge fan of both the books and the HBO shows, and right out the gate the first thing I noticed is how the rough presentation is. The graphics and art design are a mix between the show and the books, faithfully recreating a lot of the most iconic locations like King's Landing and Castle Black. But any positives this might add are held back by how dated the graphics and character models look. Animations are stiff, the textures are blurry and the voice acting for almost every character ranges from boring to downright terrible. Even the two main characters suffer from this, with Alester's voice actor sounding confused half the time and Mors sounding like he's been smoking 12 packs a day since he was 9. Only the characters voiced by the actors from the show do a good job, especially Varys and Commander Mormont, who serve as the narrator and one of the main quest givers, respectively.
Combat is also pretty decent, with the entire system reminding me a lot of Dragon Age: Origins. Hell, on PC the UI even looks the same as DA:O. It's fine for the most part, but the lack of permeant party members really hurts it since it makes it almost impossible to plan for combat encounters going forward. And even when you do get a permeant party near the end of the game, it only consists of 2 people and a dog, so it always feels like the game is holding back from letting you go all out.
So by this point, this probably sounds like it's just another forgettable, low budget licensed game thrown out to tie in with the show. And it would be, if not for how good the story is. It was apparently co-written or edited or overseen by George RR Martin himself, and he officially gave it his seal of approval by voicing a character named "Maester Martin" modeled after him who shows up as a cameo. It's very clear that he had a hand in the writing since the format of how the story is told matches the style of the books and the show almost perfectly, alternating between Alester and Mors whenever the chapters switch before their stories sync up and they team up for the rest of the game. The story starts out slow but it gets really interesting as it goes on, with tons of twists, a decent amount of side content and one of the coolest final boss fights I've seen in a western RPG. I won't spoil it, but how that reveal and fight is handled is proof of how important a good ending is to a story like this, something that Game of Thrones the show would spectacularly fail at years later.
If you're a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire or either of the HBO shows, then you owe it to yourself to play this. It's $15 at most and goes on sale for much cheaper than that all the time on Steam. Even if it's just to set it to the easiest difficulty and playthrough the main story, it's a worthwhile experience that's backed by the author of the books himself.
I'm a huge fan of both the books and the HBO shows, and right out the gate the first thing I noticed is how the rough presentation is. The graphics and art design are a mix between the show and the books, faithfully recreating a lot of the most iconic locations like King's Landing and Castle Black. But any positives this might add are held back by how dated the graphics and character models look. Animations are stiff, the textures are blurry and the voice acting for almost every character ranges from boring to downright terrible. Even the two main characters suffer from this, with Alester's voice actor sounding confused half the time and Mors sounding like he's been smoking 12 packs a day since he was 9. Only the characters voiced by the actors from the show do a good job, especially Varys and Commander Mormont, who serve as the narrator and one of the main quest givers, respectively.
Combat is also pretty decent, with the entire system reminding me a lot of Dragon Age: Origins. Hell, on PC the UI even looks the same as DA:O. It's fine for the most part, but the lack of permeant party members really hurts it since it makes it almost impossible to plan for combat encounters going forward. And even when you do get a permeant party near the end of the game, it only consists of 2 people and a dog, so it always feels like the game is holding back from letting you go all out.
So by this point, this probably sounds like it's just another forgettable, low budget licensed game thrown out to tie in with the show. And it would be, if not for how good the story is. It was apparently co-written or edited or overseen by George RR Martin himself, and he officially gave it his seal of approval by voicing a character named "Maester Martin" modeled after him who shows up as a cameo. It's very clear that he had a hand in the writing since the format of how the story is told matches the style of the books and the show almost perfectly, alternating between Alester and Mors whenever the chapters switch before their stories sync up and they team up for the rest of the game. The story starts out slow but it gets really interesting as it goes on, with tons of twists, a decent amount of side content and one of the coolest final boss fights I've seen in a western RPG. I won't spoil it, but how that reveal and fight is handled is proof of how important a good ending is to a story like this, something that Game of Thrones the show would spectacularly fail at years later.
If you're a fan of A Song of Ice and Fire or either of the HBO shows, then you owe it to yourself to play this. It's $15 at most and goes on sale for much cheaper than that all the time on Steam. Even if it's just to set it to the easiest difficulty and playthrough the main story, it's a worthwhile experience that's backed by the author of the books himself.