This is something I remember spending a fair bit of time on when I was younger and gaming on a potato. I experimented with a couple of builds and completed a fair few quests, but I never managed to finish the game's main story. Recently returned to it on a whim and completed the main quest, and I can say it's the best open-world "quicksandbox" browser-based RPG I've ever played (and the only one I've ever played but that's neither here nor there).
About half an hour into my quest, I step into an alley and "get bum-rushed by a rushing bum". As I deliver the finishing blow to him I slice off one of his cheeks and lo, a "bum cheek" is now in my inventory. I later realize I can synthesize two bum cheeks together to create an "asshat" - a piece of armor I can wear on my head that bestows resistance to one of the game's primary elemental sources: stench damage.
I normally roll my eyes at perfunctory attempts to shoehorn juvenile humor into games, but most of KoL's attempts at humor stick the landing - being able to knead puns with toilet humor with double entendres, and then unironically weaving the resultant wordplay pasta into a world's mechanics and lore requires not just humor but a fertile imagination. And that's the main draw of the game. Kingdom of Loathing doesn't give you super robust mechanics or a host of viable character builds - it gives you cowardly W imps, kinky G imps and injured L imps drinking imp ale and working together towards imp unity. It's the kind of humor that wouldn't work in any other format but that translates perfectly into the text-based medium and gives the game its unique charm. You get a whole host of treasures to find, dungeons to explore, and quests to fulfil, and a pitifully small amount of them will be optimal - but it almost doesn't matter because the process of discovering them is really good fun.
I like that it's meant to be played in bite-sized chunks; you have a limited number of 'adventures' you can play per day, and it seems to nudge players towards logging in once every couple of days, lending it a very casual feel that goes hand-in-hand with the rest of the game's tone. I also really appreciate that as a free-to-play game that runs on player donations, it avoids being predatory by not including the option to 'buy' extra adventures with real-world money.
I do feel that while the game's world and quests are crafted with humor, wit and heart, the quality of the writing can be spotty - particularly in its brief detours into a more serious or dramatic writing style. And some of the later quests seem to forget what makes the game so charming, forgoing the exploration and discovery of an intriguing world whose rules
kiiiinda make sense when you think about it, in favor of repeated "go to this battlefield and fight dozens of battles until we decide you can continue". By the end, the game got tedious enough that I found myself skimming a lot of the text, and a uniquely-flavored adventure kinda devolved into a mid MMORPG with no graphics.
There is a lot to like though, and I don't regret coming back to finish this. The host of additional content available on repeat runs - coupled with the relatively small time investment required per day - means that I could see myself coming back to give it another go.
About half an hour into my quest, I step into an alley and "get bum-rushed by a rushing bum". As I deliver the finishing blow to him I slice off one of his cheeks and lo, a "bum cheek" is now in my inventory. I later realize I can synthesize two bum cheeks together to create an "asshat" - a piece of armor I can wear on my head that bestows resistance to one of the game's primary elemental sources: stench damage.
I normally roll my eyes at perfunctory attempts to shoehorn juvenile humor into games, but most of KoL's attempts at humor stick the landing - being able to knead puns with toilet humor with double entendres, and then unironically weaving the resultant wordplay pasta into a world's mechanics and lore requires not just humor but a fertile imagination. And that's the main draw of the game. Kingdom of Loathing doesn't give you super robust mechanics or a host of viable character builds - it gives you cowardly W imps, kinky G imps and injured L imps drinking imp ale and working together towards imp unity. It's the kind of humor that wouldn't work in any other format but that translates perfectly into the text-based medium and gives the game its unique charm. You get a whole host of treasures to find, dungeons to explore, and quests to fulfil, and a pitifully small amount of them will be optimal - but it almost doesn't matter because the process of discovering them is really good fun.
I like that it's meant to be played in bite-sized chunks; you have a limited number of 'adventures' you can play per day, and it seems to nudge players towards logging in once every couple of days, lending it a very casual feel that goes hand-in-hand with the rest of the game's tone. I also really appreciate that as a free-to-play game that runs on player donations, it avoids being predatory by not including the option to 'buy' extra adventures with real-world money.
I do feel that while the game's world and quests are crafted with humor, wit and heart, the quality of the writing can be spotty - particularly in its brief detours into a more serious or dramatic writing style. And some of the later quests seem to forget what makes the game so charming, forgoing the exploration and discovery of an intriguing world whose rules
kiiiinda make sense when you think about it, in favor of repeated "go to this battlefield and fight dozens of battles until we decide you can continue". By the end, the game got tedious enough that I found myself skimming a lot of the text, and a uniquely-flavored adventure kinda devolved into a mid MMORPG with no graphics.
There is a lot to like though, and I don't regret coming back to finish this. The host of additional content available on repeat runs - coupled with the relatively small time investment required per day - means that I could see myself coming back to give it another go.