Game of Thrones: Kingsroad Review

Game of Thrones: Kingsroad 

    Game of Thrones Kingsroad is a free open world action adventure RPG. The game is on mobile and pc, however it has no console release in sight. When GOT Kingsroad was originally announced during the 2024 game awards and it received heavy backlash online immediately after its announcement due to it being a mobile game. Long awaited Game of Thrones fans were outraged that one of the biggest shows in the world would have its first genuine game be a mobile game. As a game of thrones fan myself, i am here to tell you if downloading the game on Pc is even worth your time. I will give it a final rating 1-10 and  here is my honest review.

The Story

    The story of Game of Thrones Kingsroad is not anything special. You start off making your own character, a bastard of house Tyre. You take on the role as the last member of house Tyre trying to form alliances in order to stop the wilding threat, however that's the least of our protagonists worries knowing that he must take on the biggest threat Westeros has ever seen. You travel through the Seven Kingdoms interacting with beloved characters from the show such as Jon Snow, Roose and Ramsay Bolton, Cersei Lannister, Samwell Tarly and more. One of the main goals of our protagonists is to rebuild house Tyre and bring its name to glory through forged and broken alliances. The game also has some okay-ish side quests that feel more like a job than a fun side adventure. I helped hide a passive and non confrontational wildling from soldiers of house Umber just for me not to be able to interact with the wildling woman at all after, which made it feel pointless and unrewarding. 

The Combat

    The combat of the game extends off of your choosing of three different roles, Knight, Assassin, and Sellsword. Each class has its own play style and equipment. The fighting mechanics consists of a dodge that will be on cooldown if used to much in a short span of time, a block, and light and heavy attacks. The combat at times can be satisfying however a lot of the time it feels like i am not facing a serious challenge what so ever. 

 

   You can stealth your way through almost any situation regardless of the class you choose, nonetheless stealthing through everything feels much more like an exhausting chore rather than a being to be feared from the shadows. The majority of the time i spent in combat within this game it felt so much better to simply approach every situation head on and face hordes of enemies at a one time to actually feel something when in combat. Not many times during fights did i every see myself needing to parry or block the enemies as they attacked me with their repeated animations. The animations and bosses you a sent to fight have absolutely no variety in them what so ever, not a single boss, bandit, wildling, knight, or beast could simply not impose a challenge to me. It doesn't help the fact that a lot of enemies have  repeated animations and very predictable and slow move-sets. Overall very mediocre gameplay that's heavily held back by the fact it is also a mobile game. 

Voice Acting and Animations 

    Some of the voice acting in the game is good, however a lot of the voices aren't very good and don't really match up with the looks of a lot of the characters. A massive portion of the animations are reused and honestly look somewhat ugly. The combat animations consisting of light and heavy attacks can be very fluid but are easily interrupted by enemies or sometimes glitches. The basic walking animation just doesn't look very good to be completely honest, the running animations can be smooth sometimes but is not anything to write home about. 

    The Horse riding animations are very weird to look at especially when you are turning a curve. One thing to note about the horse riding in this game is that it has an automated ride to your destination point so you don't have to spam a button the entire time, however sometimes the automation does not work making this feature useless. The finishers in combat are disappointing to say the very least, it goes into a very brutal execution just for their to be a small splat of blood and no actual gore making it not very immersive. 

Graphics and FPS

   

 I played this game on the highest graphical setting with 120 FPS. The graphics are decent, sometimes i could even say that this game looks good just to look somewhere else and see everything struggle  to render in and then start to look like a potato. The game is heavily held back by the fact that it is a mobile games disguised as a pc game. 

    The FPS was set to a max of 120 which it would run well until i had to move my character and camera a lot then it would drop to 105 then around to 80. The FPS drops weren't always happening but when they did happen it was somewhat noticeable. The game is in a constant back and forth of this game looks somewhat good to right back to this game looks bad, almost as if its a tug of war. A lot of textures you would see when roaming the world would not really load in until you got close enough for it to render. For the most part the graphics were just barely passable for me not to care about them when playing the game. 

Final Thoughts and Rating

    My final thoughts on the game would be that the game overall is below average. Between the FPS drops, mediocre graphics, bad combat, and sometimes passable voice acting make this a more than optimal experience. I did not encounter very many bugs or glitches when playing the game on the day of its release which was good, however what wasn't good was the terrible micro transactions the game wants you to purchase for almost no reason. Out of all the things i've mentioned that make this game hurt to play it, the thing that hurts me the most is that for a series like Game of Thrones this is what the fans got. We deserved a triple a game that is not riddled with micro transactions. 

    It is borderline shameful that they though this was acceptable to try and deliver to their very loyal fans. Its disrespectful that they settled for a below bare minimum game when they could've made one of the best games of all time set within one of the best fantasies of all time. With everything mentioned before it draws me to my final rating, giving Game of Thrones: Kingsroad a expected but disappointing rating of  4.1/10. I will be completely honest that i might dump a few more hours into this game to simply see all castles and landmarks before putting down the game for good.