An Unexpectedly Green Journey

This is a huge Choice of Games game with a lot of branching.

To me this feels like pure TTRPG. You are an orc, and there are 4 or more stages of your life. (This game branches a ton, so I'll share what happened in my experience and mention others' later).

I started as a baby, and decided to have pure violence throughout my life. By attacking and assaulting other babies, I became a proud young orc.

As a young orc, I gained a 'hub' and the option to do different things like train to be a warrior or a shaman. My hub gained in options as I became a young adult and then a mature adult.

Hub options include getting tattoos, buying magic items, training, meeting with camp visitors, or, the most expansive, going adventuring, which results in a lot of D&D style quests. And D&D/Pathfinder was the big feel for me here, with halflings, elves, dark elves, humans, orcs, goblins, a lich, zombies, a one-eyed orc god. The only unusual thing was a mind-controlling cyclops or two.

There were also war simulators, where you have cavalry, land units, and skirmishers.

I chose violence and power almost the whole game, helping me win tons of battles and kill a lot of monsters. Then, I became king.

Suddenly I can't kill everything personally! I can kill a lot of things, but now I have to negotiate. Do I regret not being nice to the orc god before I became king? Maybe.

It's kind of like Spore, going from cell stage to individual to tribal to society.

There are a lot of chances to help others, which sometimes gives you amazing benefits and sometimes bites you in the butt (I'm looking at you, goblin entrepreneurs).

The difficulty was tuned well for me. There were many save points, and I felt powerful, but at times I had to make sacrifices.

I was worried I'd not have enough time to try all the activities, but ended up circling around and doing a lot over and over again. I didn't experience everything the game has to offer, though, as others have mentioned becoming a demon, and doing different shaman activities, or a quick ending to the game focused on gluttony.

There was no romance, which I didn't really miss (although a few NPCs you meet would make pretty good ROs.).

The writing went beyond basic or perfunctory to be interesting and fun. My life felt epic, and while there wasn't one huge plot arc, each scene was well written and there were many narrative payoffs. The character art was well done, cohesive and fit with the style of the game.

My final ending was pretty great. All in all, this is a good 'meat and potatoes' game for people who like classic fantasy RPGs, gamebooks, or power fantasies.