1997

Birthright: Gorgon's Alliance
Published: 1997
Publisher: Sierra

In 1997, we learned that Sierra had also been awarded an AD&D license. While Interplay had the rights to make games in the Forgotten Realms setting, Sierra had the rights to the Birthright world, another AD&D setting for TSR. In Birthright, players played kings and queens of medieval kingdoms. The world's original gods had died in wars eons earlier and passed their bloodline onto the worthy mortals of the world. Players of this setting had special powers, their birthright, by virtue of their divine bloodline.

Birthright: Gorgon's Alliance, pitted the player against the Gorgon, a villain from the Birthright setting. However, instead of suiting up in armor to confront the Gorgon in single-combat, you had to manage your kingdom and defeat the Gorgon's armies, rather than the Gorgon himself. This was the second AD&D strategy game, although it also had a first-person adventuring component whereby players could assume some RPG-style adventuring for a short while to gain magic items or weapons.

This game was an utter disaster. It was slow and boring and full of bugs. The strategy portion was unwieldy and much too complicated. Moreover, it just wasn't fun. The adventuring portions of the game were riddled with bugs and were unimaginative, unoriginal rehashes of old dungeon romps. The marriage of the two types of gameplay was a failure. Birthright would be Sierra's first, and last, AD&D game.

Read GameSpot's review of Birthright: Gorgon's Alliance

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