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A Game of Thrones: The Board Game - Digital Edition: Superior to Physical
Dire Wolf Digital's A Game of Thrones: The Board Game - Digital Edition is a well-made port of the physical board game. Players are able to represent their favorite family from the world of Westeros as they vie for control of forts and engage in battles with their enemies. A Game of Thrones: The Board Game is a complicated strategy game in the same vein as Risk or Diplomacy, but is an excellent experience in both single- and multi-player.
The art style of A Game of Thrones: The Board Game - Digital Edition is impressive, but it can be a little jarring for those that were fans of the television show and not the books. The map is rendered in much the same way as RTS games like Age of Empires, with players able to view the entire map and see each of their opponent's strongholds and lands. There are also character cards that can be used during combat that are very detailed portraits of the specific characters, who more closely resemble their descriptions from the books once again.
A typical game of A Game of Thrones: The Board Game - Digital Edition tasks players with taking control of one of six houses: Lannister, Stark, Martell, Tyrell, Greyjoy, and Baratheon. By choosing a house players will begin in that respective family's area of the map, and they will have access to that specific house's character cards. From there the simple objective is to slowly move troops to to more areas of the map and try to gain control of nearby forts. The player who has access to the most forts by the end of the game wins. While the objective seems very easy on the surface, it can actually be a very complicated process.
There are few different rounds to a single turn, and each one can shape the world in different ways. During the first round all of the players get to decide if they want to move their troops, consolidate and earn more power points, raid their enemies, set up their soldiers to support nearby allies, or defend against incoming enemies. In the next round players will take turns completing these actions, and certain actions will influence how other players react. For example, if someone uses the raid option they can stop nearby enemies from supporting or defending which will effectively nullify the opposing player's action. This forces players to think hard about what their enemies might do next so they can plan accordingly.
With the port of A Game of Thrones: The Board Game to PC there are multiple different game modes for players to participate in, and a well-made tutorial section lets players play through famous events like the Siege of Pyke as they learn how the game operates. Once the tutorial is over, players can decide to play Challenge mode or Skirmish. Challenge mode gives players specific tasks to complete as they re-enact events from the core series. One such challenge has players take control of the Lannisters as they fight against the Starks and take control of The Eyrie in an attempt to save Tyrion Lannister.
The game mode that players will probably spend most of their time with in A Game of Thrones: The Board Game - Digital Edition is Skirmish mode. This is just the standard game mode from the original board game, but there is a choice of playing against AI or other players online. The AI is an impressive opponent and reacts logically to player actions. Playing against other players is much slower, but is naturally the preferred method of play. Matchmaking works well, but the only downside is that the time limit for player actions is too long. An opposing player can sit for up to an hour without making any actions, which can be infuriating.
A Game of Thrones: The Board Game -Digital Edition is a solid port of a beloved Game of Thrones tabletop game. The game runs smoother on PC and the stress of keeping track of rules and mechanics is mostly handled by the game itself rather than the player. A few tweaks could be made to the online component to make it take up less time, but the offline game modes offer more than enough entertainment. Due to the extra game modes and the simplicity of A Game of Thrones: The Board Game - Digital Edition, it genuinely feels superior to its tabletop counterpart, making it a great addition to the burgeoning online tabletop scene.
A Game of Thrones: The Board Game - Digital Edition can be played on PC.
