Imperial Throne by Alex Crossley
Flavor: opaquely implemented secondary-world grand strategy game
Playtime: 1 hour, 11 minutes
Hurm. Hurm. Perhaps the game that has most wracked me with confusion with a mixture of interesting parts and parts that weren’t working for me (thus far!).
The start of this game was rough. You’re dead in the water, no momentum. Besides the general sense from the summary that it’s an empire-management game, there are few immediate “hooks” of what to do next. (In a video game, presumably there would be a nifty UI with a map and a bunch of options, which, by the way, would be fantastic here although presumably difficult to implement.) Some of this information is available in the game if you ask, but the process gets a bit tedious, and not all of it seems to be available. (As far as I can tell, for example, there’s no way to get a list of other neighboring countries other than waiting until they get namedropped in random events, which, diegetically, I find hard to swallow.)
And I think my skids may already have been greased in comparison to others—I saw earlier reviews mentioning that there was no list of commands, but the updated version I played did list some commands under “verbs” and “help,” and fairly clearly spelled out that you could “ask Kurash about deployments” to learn where your troops and generals currently were.
Another thing that would have smoothed the game was some indication of how long it was going to be—is there a victory condition? Are we on a timer?
My initial information gathering went OK, although to set up the C plot for this review, I encountered a bug where my advisor wouldn’t respond to any questions about the province Luracan.
Once you have a basic understanding, it’s off to the “guess the command” races. (Official game position: “Try to do anything that a ruler might do and some of those things should work.”). I actually went and skimmed a few other reviews early on because I felt a bit at sea, and thanks to their oblique spoilers (thanks, others!) I decided to try every possible idea that I thought of. I encountered success, I don’t know, maybe 10% of the time? (Example: verbs / help tells you there is a “build” command. The only things I found it possible to build all game were a temple and a bridge [the latter of which I declined to do—what if my enemy captures the bridge? What then? I’m too risk averse for this.)
As @alyshkalia mentioned in eir review, the game is certainly not criticizing or complicating the timeworn “let’s go conquer an empire” narrative. I could probably live with that—although it would be great to see at least the scope of actions expanded a bit. I read this post which touches, around the middle, on what kingship historically looked like. The basic breakdown is (1) chief general, (2) chief judge, and (3) chief priest, but with a focus on performing these functions publicly and with appropriate grandiosity. Like many of these games, Imperial Throne definitely covers chief general, but I would have loved more spice from the others. (Religion comes up frequently in the events, but I didn’t feel much power to shape things, and my attempts to sacrifice various things to the gods were rejected. Sorry, gods, I tried to propitiate you.)
And yet . . . reader, I was very engaged by this game. Perhaps, like a gacha game, the withholding of satisfaction most of the time actually made it more engaging. But there were definite dopamine hits when I finally convinced the game to execute one of my enemies plans (“marry princess,” “promote this guy to general”), even though every success had probably ten utter failures (as far as I know, one cannot commission propaganda, ban scurrilous plays [ETA that apparently with better commands, one can ban scurrilous plays! aim for the stars, friends], assassinate foreign leaders, hire spies, sell religious indulgences, replace priests with more loyal prients, etc.). And by the time General Callius betrayed me, leading an army of rebels to the capital, it felt like a real knife to the back. How dare he!! And when my loyal troops valiantly pushed back the rebels, it felt good! Well, until I encountered some kind of Luracan bug at the end that seemed to thwart my powerful counteroffensive . . . Luracan, graveyard of empires. Although I did at least “revitalize” the empire, if not deal with the traitors as thoroughly as they deserved.)
Anyhow, if I were speaking to the author, I would love 10,000 more synonyms and 10,000 more acceptable actions. To the players . . . know thyself, but if you like this type of game and you kind of like being tormented, then this one’s for you.
I’m going to go ahead and provide a list here of some basic nouns so that, if others, want, they can at least ask the game about them.
Several useful noun lists
| starting provinces | starting generals (not necessarily matched to starting provinces) | other political entities that exist in the game (in no particular order) |
|---|---|---|
| Kohlus | Maretus | Namaran |
| Kalyra | Fedwyn | Plutari |
| Hayala | Zaren | Majeen |
| Coletta | Rilayn | Samira |
| Ravera | Callius | Aberion |
| Thurvira | Coriman | |
| Luracan | Amaratus | |
| Orphiel | ||
| Sontalin | ||
| Uthanus |
Raising revenue was a odd minigame, where, if you name something the game accepts to tax, it seems to give you money and have no bad repercussions, but the game will not recognize most things. While attempting to be somewhat progressive, I found 7 things I was allowed to tax, and tried 50 other things, so it very much felt I was earning money by typing.
Selected quote: