Review: Six Ages 2 Carries on King of Dragon Pass’ Legacy

Back in 2018, Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind brought the concepts and gameplay of King of Dragon Pass to a wider audience. It offered us scenarios where our choices actually mattered, with supernatural and otherworldly elements peppered throughout. It took us back to adventure game roots, so to speak. Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out acts as yet another complex gamebook. However, this time with a world about to meet its end, it makes for much more harrowing circumstances.

The world is ending. Following the a war between gods, chaos is slowly seeking to take over and infect everything. Spirits might not listen. Ancestors might abandon you. Gods are either sleeping or dead. Your Orlanthi clan needs to survive an uncertain age, one where forces of all sorts will attack your city, allies will turn on you swiftly if you don’t keep in touch, there are different sorts of political factions within your own tribe, and it feels like magic gets increasingly scarce.

Going into Six Ages 2, the game offers some rudimentary insight into how to play. You can go through an introductory segment, which introduces concepts to you. Tips can be toggled on or off, allowing some assistance as you go through the scenarios. When you begin your run, you can choose the difficulty level and get some concept of how long it will be. You aren’t just tossed in, in the event you’ve never played King of Dragon Pass or the original game before Six Ages 2.

However, at the same time, this is a surprisingly massive experience. While you are managing the clan by looking at menus and reading tons of menus, it will take at least two or three playthroughs until you’ll find yourself really handling the Rituals’ stories “well” enough to say, tame a raging river, successfully handle diplomatic relations, or even figure out how many allies you need to lure in a major foe so you can beat him so badly he’ll never bother any of you again. For example, I didn’t even touch any activities in the War tab like raiding for my first two runs, because ensuring trade, peaceful relations with people around the clan, and food supplies were sound.

So say when a year is about to begin, you choose priorities for the year. Do you invest in fields, pastures, and wilds that can help feed your people, crafts that encourage trade, harmony that quells disquiet, exploring to see more of the world, health to keep people alive, rituals to build magic and ties with gods, spirits, and ancestors, foster diplomacy, or prepare for war. You can then pick a certain number of ventures each year for increased focus. Some will always be available, like investing into herds or foraging. Others may come up sporadically, such as an option to repair the walls surrounding the city. The Magic tab is devoted to seeing which shrines you prepared to honor gods and get certain constant blessings, if you perform rituals for certain pressing issues, or if you call upon spirits for assistance. Relations has you send people to other clans for alliances and goodwill. Wealth sees the establishment of trade routes. War involves fighting others, for example. You can also rearrange the Circle, the seven advisors who help guide your society.

Put simply, it is a lot! It can be overwhelming the first run or two, even though A Sharp very clearly organized all of the information. You’ll start learning to check the tribe’s well being and health after each season’s events, so you know exactly how many goods and herds should be offered as gifts or sacrifices during certain circumstances. Not to mention the nature of it all, knowing that this is a dying world about to potentially make way for something new, adds an extra level of pressure surrounding decisions.

But like King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, Six Ages 2 often feels like a game where there’s no right or wrong answer. This is exemplified by the voices you can add to your council to offer insight from different factions and viewpoints when the decisions come up. In one of my runs, two times letting foreigners in meant they were actually trolls who wanted to kill and ravage people once inside the city walls. After two instances of that, one which led to the death of a valuable member of the circle, I turned away a third, suspicious group. Except that group turned out to be genuine travelers seeking asylum. Them going to another faction made us look bad and them look good and better.

As with past games, there are a massive number of these scenarios. I did see a few repeat during the five runs I went through. However, each time the choices I made varied when ones did return. For example, one member of the circle named Reda had an option to go into the area “beyond” in two games. I also saw people call for Sereden to be promoted to a position on the council in multiple runs, Hanth had the option to lure more game to our forests with a possibly controversial blessing, and Kerenna often had a chance to become a hero. Still, on the occasions these did happen, it was a great opportunity to do something different or see how it would play out for my new clan.

Especially since the scenarios you can face are so varied. Sometimes, they are dire. You can end up in what might feel like a no-win situation, depending on the people you’re interacting with and the side you might need to take. Some are incredibly funny, perhaps because of the advisors’ commentary. Learning the plural of the monster “walktapus” is “walktapi” from an Iverlantho comment delighted me. Also, I found Kerenna’s assertion that “we hate goats” really funny even though a number of chaos-afflicted animals were ruining our pastures and harassing our sheep. Especially since, as with Six Ages, Six Ages 2 features some fantastic art accompanying its instances.

However, I found that Six Ages 2 didn’t really feel all that different from Six Ages. The UI is basically the same. Battle still involve pulling from selections like Advance, Charge, Maneuver, Parley, Reserve One in Seven Fighters, and so on. This means if you didn’t enjoy the original game or King of Dragon Pass, it won’t suddenly transform into something entirely different. It’s billed as a new adventure in the same world with more to do, and it does that very well.

Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out is a game designed to make you root for your new community and do what you feel is necessary to protect them. This means making tough choices, being vigilant when monitoring your current status, and immersing yourself in the situation. The right thing to do could end up having grave repercussions in one situation. In another, you may need to weigh your options and choose the one that will make the least people made and save the most lives. It can be quite engrossing as you put hours into new adventures.

Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out is available for PCs and iOS devices.

---

Join The Conversation