Ok, lets start with what this is not. It's not a game about religion, philosophy, occultism, history, or metaphysics. Then what is this gameOk, lets start with what this is not. It's not a game about religion, philosophy, occultism, history, or metaphysics. Then what is this game about? Random numbers. That is what this game is about. A random event generator that does nothing to engage or pull you in, save by attempt to be mysterious when instead being oblique and lost.
Lets start with the complete lack of documentation or a tutorial. It just expects you to read and understand everything with no form guidance save tool tips that pop up when hovering over something. And as anyone knows, that information is very limited in both context and depth, and therefore accomplishes little. This probably leaves the casual gamer mystified and the more dedicated gamer interested for a few games, but then annoyed at the later mistakes that show the whole to be incompetently done and shoddily constructed. In other words it tries to use it's lack of assistance to the gamer as a screen that suggest mysticism and occultism but is actually just laziness.
Next is the interface. As pointed out by another the interface itself is sluggish and poorly rendered. This was probably another bad attempt at suggesting age and to get it a historical feel. Instead, as before, it show a lack of vision and effort to bring together a wonderful concept to full fruition. It has very little to informed you about, yet that which is does inform you about is usually small text in unforgiving colors and fonts that leave much to be desired in crispness and readability. If you don't have a very large screen, or very good eyes, don't even bother.
Next game format and play-ability. Here is where the game truly fails. If you don't have the patience and interest to actually play through a couple of games to find out what causes what, you will be lost and never engaged. Interest will wain and you will simply uninstall and never return. If you do actually have an interest in the subject matter and perhaps some curiosity as to what the designers seemed to be trying to do, you will do the same; merely later. This game has little to hold you down to it as it nearly wipes the board clean after a few turns and mixes the board up to give new starting positions, characters to work with, and relative strengths to start with. In other words, all you work for is thrown into the trash every so often so that the designer's inability to balance the game play is never noticed. Then it runs a whole bunch of random turns and lets you try to build something again. Just to see if you will chase the carrot again. So you truly get nothing out of this game. You don't build a cult, you don't change history, you don't do anything other then issue a couple of orders, maybe get a quick buff in the form of a "miracle" then hit the end turn button and see the counter click down another notch until all your work is recycled into a mess again. This is not helped by the fact that you are really not in control of anything important. Your "disciples" disappear with alarming frequency, if your opponents don't assassinate them, they "fall in love, and vanish to start a family". Therefore you can't build your agents up to anything decent, else they just vanish until you only have two again, then it stops; for no reason. You can't build your followings up in any cities, as anytime you gain something good, a random even comes along to take it away, or again, remove the disciple that is turning it into something decent.
And finally there is pricing. Who wants to pay $30 for a game that they will sit down with, once, maybe twice and then uninstall, never to return? If that is you? Then this is your game. If not. Go play something else. Anything else. Even other bad games might still have a chance at being fun for a day or two. This one won't.… Expand
