Game looks great

[Lemmy]

aaaw...My first character died before i could get married
I had to choose an heir, and now i'm playing as a my 2 child she had the highest skills of those 3, i kept all my possesions and my grades.
Now i'm trying to get into a public office again..those jobs really pay well
And i'm courting the richest man available..which will still take a few years.
The different profesions are quite interesting really..so far i've been a smith, pastor, and guardsman. The smith profession is the simplest of those, it's just gathering raw materials and making good to sell at the market.
Pastor is interesting, because you can get random cash, from people buying Indulgence, and action points. Then the pastor also has a church, where at the first lvl you can make talent scroll/books , which you can read one of per day, and it will increase your skill in a random area, and poems. So what you can do is just take one scroll/day from your stock and improve your skill, the rest you can sell for cash, you gain skills twice as fast as normal then.
The guardsman is...ehm..i'm still figuring that out, you can hire guards, then you can send these guards out to do several things, they can patrol an area, patrol around a specific building, scout certain thief-related buildings, and raid thief-related bulidings, i haven't succeeded in raiding yet, somehow my guardsmen can't find the entrance .
You earn cash by patrolling, but the cash you get is a bit random, i have only got cash for it once. I haven't succeeded in raiding yet..i hope that brings a steady income, because now my Guardhouse is only costing me money.

[General Ludd]

The first game I played was with Jack, a thief. He did quite well and made a good living out of it, and got married to a duchess (her fortune was almost 200,000 ducats - probably the richest woman in the town at the time) and had three children. When he started to get older he opened up a tavern and handed over the thief's hideout to a hired master - who did an amazing job of mis-management, geting Jack into trouble with the town guard and even kidnapping his own wife! (fortunetely the ransom came out of her own estate, though ) At the age of 43, he'd upgraded his tavern to an Inn and was about to close down the thieves hideout so he could live his last years in peace, but he died the morning he was going to do that.

Out of the three kids he had, the old was already in his mid 20s, the middlechild was 17, and the youngest only 10. I went on playing as the middlechild, Monty. When Jack's wife died her fortune went to the youngest (I forget his name... I think Edward) who hadn't gotten the chance to go to university or anything - he bought a palace and lived off of the fortune doing nothing else, he never got a job or a political office or anything. Lucky bastard.


When Monty took over the estate, he gave the Inn to a hired master and took full control of the thief's hideout. He agressively pursued money, doing lots of kidnaping, break-ins, ect.. and got quite rich. He eventually saved up enough to buy a palace, but there was no room left in the town, and he had a very difficult time finding people who would sell their property for a reasonable price. (He offered as much as 140,000 ducats to his brother Edward for the palace he lived in - the stupid bastard wouldn't sell, though ) He eventually had to settle for buying a villa from a rival dynasty at three times the face value, and later upgraded it to a palace - coincedentally, it was right next door to his brother's palace. He then began a career in politics, and worked his way up the ladder very quickly, buying all the finest jewelry to impress people with, and bribing anyone who still didn't like him. Towards the end of his life he had become the first Count in Madrid, and was easily the richest person in the city, at the age of 46 he became Sovereign, and died the same day. Must be a family curse!


I haven't played much further in this Dynasty yet, but I continued playing as his son Kent (the oldest of three) and he is pursuing the career of a robber(which is different then that of a thief), but is not having much luck - all of his attempts at raiding a robber's hideout have failed, and most of the thieves where as old as his father and are dying off now, which means he has to spend alot of time and money hiring new ones and training them.

[FrustratedPoet]

This sounds like an amazing game. They should also put "Like The Sims, only not crap" on the box.

[General Ludd]

I think it could get a bit old after a while, though... but roleplaying it makes it much more enjoyable, and you can always set your own goals and limits. (ie. play as an honest merchant, who'd never dream of doing anything underhanded or ilegal) I guess that it's one of those games that is as fun as you make it.

There is also a multiplayer player option, but unfortunetly only on LAN - I imagine it would be great fun, though.

[Lemmy]

It is amazing, but do have some interface issues though..

You can't for example select a person, and then decide if you want to blackmail, accuse, spy, whatever him, you have to go to different places, which is annoying, since i usually first pick a target, and then decide what to do.

Because of the different professions, each with their own building, you also have different building layouts, and the options of each building, are spread throughout the building. For example to hire more staff, you need to click on the "Staff registry", which looks like a book, and always is somewhere in the building, whenever i'm in a new buildings, i have to search for these things.

The stability is great though, it never crashed with me, but i can't seem to alt-tab back into the game with a working mouse.

Even with these little annoyances, it still is a great and very original game, i can't wait to try out other professions in other games, i definitely want to try the Thief, Trader and Moneylender sometime, and start out as Preacher, that seems to be the best option to improve skills fast, and gain money with relative little effort, unlike the Thief.

[Lemmy]

The graphics also aren't as good as they seem, the person models/textures are ugly, the buildings look nice, but i've never seen an ugly building in a game, so that can't be hard.

[Standup]

Just bought it today - already being discounted in Game which is sometimes a bad sign. Sometimes though it just means i completely out of step with people half my age. And isn't the music in these shops a bit loud ?

Time to read the manual - nearly always the most tedious part.

[Sarxis]

A-vault just released a review. Looks like they like it:

http://www.avault.com/reviews/review_temp.asp?game=eur1400