Imperial Throne

I had fun playing this one, but ultimately came away with a rather poor impression of it after looking at the walkthrough. Initially, I really enjoyed exploring the possibility space, both as far as testing out commands and, on replaying, being more strategic and seeing if any of my strategizing would pay off. After five playthroughs (some of which, admittedly, were not actual attempts to do well), I thought I had a pretty good handle on what was and wasn't possible. But when I cracked open the walkthrough out of curiosity, I saw multiple possible actions that I'd never thought of.

The walkthrough starts out with a list of useful commands, which I think should have been included in the game itself; players could have a choice of whether to view them or not, but I think the player should definitely be made aware of their existence. Especially because I learned from the walkthrough that some of my attempted actions that had been rejected by the game were actually possible, I just hadn’t been using the right phrasing. Implementing more synonyms and/or including helpful failure messages that point the player toward the correct wording would help with that issue, too.

But what's a bigger deal to me is that, pre-walkthrough, I’d concluded that ending the game (Spoiler - click to show)with some level of failure was inevitable—whether the empire being completely overtaken, or its borders shrinking. And I liked that; the game seemed to be saying (Spoiler - click to show)“No matter what you do, empires are doomed to fall.” But the walkthrough presents (Spoiler - click to show)a series of commands that leads to an ending where you've not only held onto your current territory, you've expanded and conquered others'.

Given that this is the only path presented in the walkthrough, clearly the author considers it the ideal ending. With Drew Cook's essay on "The Game Formerly Known as Hidden Nazi Mode" fresh in my mind, I couldn't help feeling that my whole experience of the game had been deflated by this authorial intervention. My own interpretation went out the window, replaced by "Oh, it's just a game where (Spoiler - click to show)you win by growing your empire." The game's fantasy world is very generic/traditional, with barbaric tribes harassing your borders and women appearing only as courtesans or brides. Before, when left to interpret the game myself, I could see these as purposeful choices; now, though, they just seem lazy.