The King's Dilemma

The King’s Dilemma is one of those games that makes me have an amazing time at the table even when I do not think it is a particularly good game. It became a proper obsession for my group: we play it with five, have logged plenty of games, and the conversations it produces are so ruthless that, if they were recorded, we would probably need a crisis-management team. Its story and legacy element are its biggest strengths; I genuinely want to see what happens to the kingdom and where all these decisions lead.

At its core, the game has us face the king’s dilemmas and vote on the direction the kingdom will take. That is where all the fun comes from: alliances, pressure, negotiation, and relentless trash talk about who supposedly cares for the common good and who is merely looking after their own side. The legacy system gives those choices weight and keeps the curiosity alive from session to session.

In practice, though, the flow of a game does not always convince me. The end-game scoring rests on a kind of pseudo-deduction, where I do not feel I have a clear handle on what is happening, while several games have developed in such a way that they end after only one or two votes. That cuts off the ongoing events and the big commotion I expect from a table of five. In half the games, I barely feel as though I am playing at all, or that I have any real control over the kingdom’s course.

Even so, I cannot deny that it will remain memorable as an experience. The storyline is still good and engaging, although it is now clear that it contains quite a bit of filler too. Some games are brilliant fun; others feel like a Korean MMORPG: lots of time, little substance, and the sense that you are simply waiting for something to move forward.

If it had a sturdier ending and scoring that rewarded something more substantial than uncertain guesses, it could have been one of the truly great games for me. As it stands, it is a very good, often hilarious legacy ride, but not something I can take especially seriously as a design. We will finish it, but I feel no urgency either to replay it or to automatically move on to Queen’s Dilemma. Perhaps they have looked more carefully at how a game closes there—and, honestly, perhaps four players would make this one more focused.

Updated session

After roughly 12 to 13 games, my initial fascination has noticeably worn down. The table still produces laughter, tension, and wonderfully awful behaviour, and the story still pulls me toward the end. But the abrupt endings, the filler, and the sense of limited control over the mechanisms have made the experience more meh than it appeared in the early sessions.