The Vagabond Emperor

“I will create my own kingdom with castles and feasts!” When a game opens with a well known meme you know you are in for a fun ride. Prior to being given access to this game all I had to go by was a couple images and I already knew I would find this game interesting. It is like a Crusader Kings Lite. Which for many that have attempted to play Crusader Kings, this is a potentially good thing. Right from the start you are given the clear goal of the game. Start from absolutely nothing and rise to become the emperor. This will not be something you can accomplish in one life time. No, it will take generations. So your personal objective then is to improve your character each time and try to pass on as much wealth and power to your heir, so that they can become the all powerful emperor *queue Sith music* You will have to manage those relationships between yourself and the nobles in the world. There is seduction, wiggling of eyebrows, marriage, insults, trade, and of course combat that will take place. It is up to you how you want other characters to perceive you. Some will have natural feelings based on what traits you give your character. You could even plot to assassinate another character if you feel so inclined. The family tree will matter greatly as you progress through the generations. The idea of continuing to play past the death of your player character is a mechanic that not many games have attempted but I personally love it. It just adds more weight to everything that you do for me. Each generation you can move higher in the social hierarchy as long as your character can gain the experience, and has the funds to buy the next title. Each generation can own more land and have larger armies. Speaking of larger armies… In this game I fear there may indeed be at least one too many. Honestly I didn’t mind it as once you figure out which type of battle works best for you, you just sorta use that one most of the time. With that said, the results of battles can change drastically based on which type of battle you attempt. The arcade battle is where the fun is at. it will drop you and your followers onto the battlefield with you only controlling yourself. You run around attempting to kill the other fighters without going down yourself. There are special moves and dodging. This gives me 2D Mount and Blade arena fight vibes. I won’t pretend I am good at it but I normally will attempt an arcade battle that I would otherwise lose. In the hopes that I could pull out some sweet moves to save the day. Automatic battles are the same as the arcade battles except that you do not control your player character. You get to sit back and watch the action as if you were fighting without having to bother hitting the controls. This is normally the best way to win a fight when you have superior numbers as your troops can overwhelm enemy on the battlefield in this mode. In turn based battles it becomes all about army compositions and turn order. A well balanced army will thrive here and can win where they wouldn’t on the arcade battle field. You can just automatic results it and the game will run the numbers of a turn based battle on its own. While playing I personally felt like I would lose the most troops doing this and stuck to arcade battles, plus it was more fun. The game has a lot of limitations on how rich and powerful you can become early on. This is required to support the idea that you have to play through multiple generations in order to reach the big goal of becoming an emperor. Some of these are reasonable, Some I think could use some changes. The combination of limits though have the desired effect and nudge you towards focusing on personal development, dungeon crawling, and relationships for the early game. Leaving massive armies and owning huuuuuge tracks of land until the late game. Your title is the main limiting factor. As you move up, hopefully in each generation. You will have more inventory space. Inventory space itself is a limiting factor that I hope is adjusted. Having limited inventory of course makes sense to me. However, each follower also takes up inventory space. That, does not make sense to me. I often found myself full of just basic resources and the troops I felt I needed for the dungeon I was going through. Often having to leave behind useful tool or treasures as I went. I would end up hoping to kill off most of my followers in the final battle of a dungeon just so I could collect more treasures after the battle. I hate this. After a dungeon I was traveling back to re-coop at the nearby kingdom. Only to have a random event happen and the result was a prize of an armor upgrade. I could not accept the armor upgrade because my inventory was full. I could not drop anything in order to accept the prize and as soon as you leave a random event that item is gone for good. Overall I am honestly impressed with how many systems a solo dev was able to build within this game world. I am hopeful that this is the type of game that WigglingEyebrows can continue to improve upon after 1.0 release. Once I learned the systems I was able to work within them. Leaving me with a very enjoyable time playing this game.