YMMV / King of Dragon Pass

• Awesome Music:
  • The game has an epic soundtrack with cues for everything from raids to increasing or decreasing your hunters. Of particular note is the tune heard when you send out Traders that can remind one of "Follow the Yellow Brick Road".
  • The Storm and Earth season music are wonderful to listen to and really immerse you in the fantasy world.
• Breather Level: “Ernalda Feeds the Tribe” and “The Making Of the Storm Tribe” are still tough, but are still widely regarded as the easiest heroquests in the game and if you do fail them the consequences usually aren't too bad.
• Catharsis Factor: For those who hate the Unrepentant Agitator, a loud obnoxious woman who lowers your clan’s happiness, Laser-Guided Karma is in play if you lose the game after having her event happen at least once: the Unrepentant Agitator will smugly join your archenemy clan, but on the way to their tula she continues her whining and annoys them so much they abandon her! It is then heavily implied she gets lost and dies alone and afraid in the wilderness of Dragon Pass... Never has losing been so cathartic.
• Cult Classic: Has gathered a small but passionate fanbase with the re-releases thanks to the Genre-Busting gameplay, unique art style, and storytelling.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The original PC version became a minor hit in Finland (at least compared to the rest of the world) thanks to a 94/100 review by the country's biggest gaming magazine. This kept up even over a decade later: according to the developer, over 10% of the iOS port's sales were from Finland, making it the game's third biggest market after the United States and the UK.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • When recruiting new weaponthanes, the game doesn't check to see if you have weaponthanes off on missions, and it always allows you to recruit at least as many weaponthanes as you have out-of-commission (sick or wounded). This can be exploited to allow you to have far more weaponthanes than a clan is reasonably expected to have, which can make you a power player in Dragon Pass very quickly.
  • In the 1999 version, the Troll: Dire Warning event doesn't cause the Troll: Clan Destruction event to appear, meaning you can endlessly antagonize the trolls without consequence as long as you don't mind them raiding you, particularly helpful if you have them as your ancestral enemy. You can also send explorers to piss off the Crag Spider, resulting in a guaranteed Total Party Kill; useful if you want to get rid of old or unwanted nobles... Do not try this trick in the 2015 version. Cragspider will destroy you for pissing her off too much.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: The biggest flaw of the game is that there is a LOT of randomness and chance involved. The game will usually provide you with enough resources and good luck to overcome a series of unfortunate event turnouts, but nevertheless you are at the mercy of RNG that has a habit of giving you events you can’t always properly deal with or possibly even instantly kill one of your clan members. The bright side is you can save and load your game at anytimem, and even the games instruction manual encourages you to do it if the RNG is giving you grief.
  • The remaster does make the randomness more fair and forgiving, though in exchange due to autosaving being the only way to game saves you can no longer Save Scum.
• Memetic Mutation: One of the Orlanthi worshippers you can have your ring bears a striking resemblance to William Riker. This has spawned ton of Star Trek related jokes and many a let’s player and streamer will call the noble Riker regardless of his actual name.
• Nightmare Fuel: Some of the Chaos creatures are legitimately terrifying, from grotesque mutant animals to demons that defy explanation. A particular shout-out to one of the chaos beasts Elmal fights, a towering shadowy abomination covered in mouths filled with sharp fangs that sings a song which makes people bleed. Oh yeah, this particular Chaos creature is named the Eater of Skin.
• Polished Port: Zig-zagged with the 2015 PC remaster. While it is updated with various bug fixes, high-resolution modes and new events of the iOS version, some PC fans were less impressed that gameplay was overall simplified from the original^note such the removal of controls in patrol assignments, crafting, hunting, and planting ratios, the UI still being based around the iOS scroll/touch inputs, and the lack of a manual save function.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • The game can be vague on how certain decisions in events impact your clan. Sometimes it is obvious like it mentioning your people being offended or cheered up, but other times something will anger or please your clan and the game never says anything. It is sometimes even more vague on how your decisions impact other clans and characters, someone could be ready to go to war with you or be up for an alliance you wouldn't have a clue until an event related to such things triggers. One really nice thing the remake does is after you do something the game tells you know exactly what your decision did, giving you a number on what you spent, how your clan mood changed, and how the thoughts of others has changed.
  • The remake also has one though: the fact the only way to save is autosaving. This keeps you from having multiple files at once and makes dealing with the game’s more brutal moments of RNG much harder, though the latter isn’t quite as bad due to the RNG in general being tweaked to be more fair.
• Tear Jerker: One possible event involves foreign refugees accidentally blundering into your sacred buildings, ruining the clan's fertility rites. Questioning the refugees reveals they are just like your clan used to be, homeless and fleeing from a tyrant. You must either kill, enslave, or drive them off your lands. Their 'crime' was so distasteful that there are literally no other options.
  • Any ending where you must disperse your clan (from losing all your cattle, a Curb-Stomp Battle from the Trolls, Dwarves, Telmori, Beastmen, or Uroxi) is absolutely this, as the tale of your clan comes to a sad end.
  As the last clan members left the tula, one of our more poetic carls gazed back at the empty steads, ruined fortifications, and weed-encroached fields. Before turning away for the last time, he uttered our final words: "We will not be remembered as a great clan. Or even an adequate clan. If the sagas mention us at all, they will recall our terrible mistakes. We acted when we should have listened, failed to act when we should have done great deeds, and made enemies where we should have made friends. Our people dispersed, our ring disgraced, our tula abandoned. Thus ends our sorry tale, the tale of clan <X>.
  • Of course, the sting is lessened somewhat if you ever had the Unrepentant Agitator, as you briefly hear of her much more deserved misfortune.
• That One Level: All the heroquests are this to some extent, but some stand out.
  • “Elmal Guards the Stead” is the most notorious of the bunch for its sheer mercilessness. The first half is a long chain of combat events against Chaos foes, with each success requiring your quester to be healed before fighting the next enemy (possibly by sacrificing clan magic or treasures). The second half has foes trying to tempt your quester away from the stead, which requires some good non-combat stats, knowing exactly what choices to make, and a bit of luck to succeed. Failing the heroquest at any point leads to the quester's death at best; at worst you have a dead quester, a heap of dead horses and incoming Chaos incursions.
  • “Lhankor Mhy Finds the Truth” and “Issaries the Concillator” are both a tad infamous due to being the only heroquests to require more than one participant, if you don't have the qualified people the quest can go wrong even if your main hero is perfect. You can ask the gods themselves to take part, but this also has a chance of not working.
  • "Orlanth and Aroka" is mostly not tough, but then it spikes in difficulty when you need to fight the trolls. It requires a lot more combat ability than it lets on and there is a small chance even a Renowned fighter will get their butt kicked. The final fight with the dragon Aroka is only a bit harder, though if you do fail the questor is almost assuredly going to die and drought will either be plaguing your clan or an already existing drought will get worse.
  • "Uralda's Blessing" is extremely deadly due to having a section where the quester's survival depends on her Combat skill—something Uralda worshippers are hardly known for.
• Vindicated by Cable: The game was a flop on release, only managing to sell 8000 copies before quickly sinking into obscurity. A decade later, the Updated Re-release on iOS and the Let's Play concept led to a new wave of fans discovering the game, and the game's re-release on PC digital storefronts ensured its Cult Classic status.

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