OVERALL - 4/10
A huge open-world with absolutely nothing to do in it.
STORY - 3/10
There's virtually no story to the characters, only aOVERALL - 4/10
A huge open-world with absolutely nothing to do in it.
STORY - 3/10
There's virtually no story to the characters, only a small background of each charachter at the beginning of a new game, although I only played one class. The little audio snippets with historical info upon entering cities is a nice touch, though.
GAMEPLAY - 2/10
Gameplay is very bland. Essentially it is a literal walking simulator with extra steps. You take a caravan in a first-person manner across the Silk road at around 200 A.D. to trade, wage war, whatever your quest is. The world map is divided into square-shaped fields, you can walk through them in 8 directions in a turn-based manner. The map is a mostly accurate representation of Asia approximately spanning through today's Turkey till China and Kyrgyzstan till Nepal. This is a huge map, but about half of it impassable mountains/deep water, and the rest is boring. There are some towns, cities and encampments where you can trade goods, obtain cattle and hire troops and heroes for your party. The goods change in price throughout the map, silk is for example cheap in China but expensive in Rome, making trade feel authentic, but there's no overview of past transactions to keep track if you're actually making good deals. The heroes each have different levels of skills like Trade, Rituals, Battle etc. These can level up, but there's again no way to keep track of your experience and there's no real impact of these skills on the game. There are also temples to make rituals at and gain morale. You need to rest each night, consuming food according to caravan size, and must to do an action depending on terrain - hunt, fish = gain food, keep guard = lose morale, sacrifice = gain moral etc. Length of day, as in how many tiles you can walk before dusk, depends on caravan speed. About every tenth night a storm comes, which makes you lose some of your goods/cattle. Then there are some random encounters of wolf attacks, hostile troops, and catching stray cattle. All of this however is just text, a confirmation, and then outcome, with no animations and no player interaction. Progression is non-existent, you do get quests for your main character with a deadline, but they seem to be random and not adjusted to your travel route. Failing them has no negative consequences, you just get a new one, and completing them gives no real reward. The game is vast and has an interesting concept, but it's just too empty and has too little content to be enjoyable.
CONTROLS - 7/10
Game plays in handheld, tabletop and TV modes, texts are easy to read. Pro Controller is supported, Single Joy-Con control is not possible. Some options react to touch, but you can't navigate menus, walk, and confirm choices on the touchscreen. No subtitles available for history snippets upon entering a city. Controls are explained at the beginning and are fine, however, there's no option to hold the UP button for continuous walking, you have to press it every single tile. This feature is apparently present in the PC version, though.
GRAPHICS - 7/10
Terrain feels a little like Minecraft with pixeled fields. Everything els is hand-drawn and looks good. All models in the world, like cities, wolves, troops and mountains are 2 dimensional cardboard-like models that always rotate to face you like in old FPS games.
AUDIO - 4/10
The music in the menu is fantastic, it is a shame that the whole game is completely silent afterwards. As said, there are history snippets upon entering a city, cricket chirping at nightfall, some oboe sound effects at temples, and tense music when you are nearing hostile troops - meaning 90% of the game is silent, which make it ever less appealing to play.
OTHER
I really wanted to like this game, but it just feels like a chore to play. The lack of in-game music, any kind of progression system, and even remotely rewarding quests take away all the fun.
Performance is good no crashes/lags even in handheld.
There is a full color digital manual that you can find on Google, explaining all rules and containing a map and history about the areas.… Expand
