When George R.R. Martin first imagined the brutal, complex world of Westeros in the 1990s, he likely didn’t foresee it evolving into a sprawling franchise of graphic novels, TV shows, merchandise, and video games. And he almost certainly didn’t expect it to be reborn as a mobile-first action RPG focused more on monetization than meaningful storytelling. Yet in 2025, we have Game of Thrones: Kingsroad—a visually captivating open-world game that, while striking in motion, prioritizes menus, currencies, and timers over the immersive fantasy it’s based on. As you wade deeper into its expansive campaign, what begins as a journey through the Seven Kingdoms slowly morphs into a lesson in resource juggling and paywalls, rather than a fulfilling RPG experience.
Set during the events of HBO’s Game of Thrones Season 4, Kingsroad casts you as a northern-born bastard of House Tyre, a minor family clawing for relevance. With your father gravely ill and your inheritance tangled in Westeros’ infamous succession laws, your only hope lies in earning influence through diplomacy, scheming, and the occasional sword fight. The story has you traveling across the realm, resolving land disputes, locating deserters, and battling hostile factions like the Boltons and White Walkers—all while trying to curry favor with the great houses. It’s a promising setup, and the war-torn continent of Westeros still makes for an engaging backdrop. But while the world may be rich with political drama and mythical threats, Kingsroad often feels more like a grind-heavy management sim than a character-driven adventure.
Before setting foot on the cobbled streets and winding roads of Westeros, you’ll need to choose a combat archetype: the heavy-hitting Sellsword, the disciplined Knight, or the agile Assassin. As a fan of both Brienne of Tarth and Dungeons & Dragons’ Barbarian class, I naturally gravitated toward the axe-swinging Sellsword, whose crushing blows are great for staggering groups of enemies in one sweep. Can’t decide? No problem. Kingsroad lets you switch between classes at any time, and all three share a single inventory, meaning your main character’s hard-earned loot can give your alternate builds a nice head start. Still, I was disappointed to discover that once you lock in a class, you can’t delete that character or rename them—a frustrating limitation, especially after I created a particularly unfortunate-looking Knight during some aesthetic experimentation.
Once you’ve picked your playstyle, Kingsroad offers a reasonably robust character creator, complete with facial sliders and color options. It’s not on the level of Dragon’s Dogma 2—though that’s a high benchmark—but it gets the job done. I was able to give my heroes a distinct look that felt like mine: brooding, eyeliner-smudged, and sporting just the right amount of dramatic facial scarring.
You will examine a strikingly accurate map of Westeros.
Kingsroad quickly gets you up to speed with a tight, well-paced tutorial that takes you beyond the Wall and back again. It’s here that fans of the show will first encounter familiar faces, as Jon Snow and Samwell Tarly step in to offer both exposition and a handy recap of Season 4’s events. Their digital likenesses may not win any awards, but the writing is solid, and their dialogue does a nice job grounding you in your humble origins within this brutal world.
Before long, however, Kingsroad steps back and lets you loose. You’re free to roam the countryside, choosing between main quests, side missions, and various points of interest scattered across the map. At first, I relished the chance to freely explore this (mostly) faithful rendition of Westeros—riding through snow-covered highlands, uncovering mysterious stone ruins in the distance, and losing myself in the sense of adventure. But that early thrill of fantasy freedom quickly faded as the game’s more calculated design began to surface, revealing the scaffolding of Netmarble’s monetization-focused world.
For every delicate snowflake drifting through Castle Black or butterfly fluttering in Winterfell, there are countless low-poly fruit trees, rubbery grass tufts, and janky floating weapons that chip away at Kingsroad’s visual polish. I genuinely admire the ambition behind its open-world scale, but the inconsistent art direction keeps it from feeling believable or immersive. The cracks in the façade become hard to ignore, and what once looked like a grand Westerosi adventure began to feel like a collection of missed opportunities.
That roughness bleeds into traversal, too—whether you’re on foot or horseback, movement often feels more like ice skating than riding or walking. In the frozen North, this slippery sensation almost works atmospherically, but it becomes a genuine headache when exploring sun-soaked regions like Highgarden. The issue gets worse during light platforming segments scattered across the cluttered map, where even the slightest misstep can send you tumbling down an unclimbable cliff—or worse, into a hostile encampment with no clean way out. Cutscenes don’t fare much better. My hero frequently delivered lines with an unsettling, unblinking stare that drained all emotion from otherwise tragic moments. It’s hard to feel invested in grief when your character looks like they’re trying to vaporize the grieving with laser eyes.
Uncanny valley clones of themselves are the surface of memorable characters.
When it comes to Westeros’ citizens, many of them look and move like unsettling marionettes, with eyes and heads bobbing around awkwardly during conversations—an effect that seriously undercuts the atmosphere. It’s disappointing, especially since much of the dialogue does a solid job of reinforcing the bleak, morally bankrupt world teetering on the edge of winter. I genuinely felt bad chuckling when an elderly woman tearfully thanked me for rescuing her daughter from becoming a meal for Ramsay Bolton’s dogs. But the real offenders are the major characters lifted from the show. Familiar faces like Nymeria Sand and Varys appear as uncanny valley doppelgängers, haunting in all the wrong ways. And Cersei? Let’s just say her glossy, “yassified” look will be haunting my dreams for many nights to come.
Outside of exploration, most of your time in Kingsroad is divided between managing your homestead’s layered resource systems and undertaking lengthy, multi-phase quests and battles across the map. There’s no shortage of diversions: dungeon runs, bandit outposts, overrun villages, and towering mythical beasts all offer generous rewards for painting the land red. Balancing time between these core pillars is essential to keeping pace in Kingsroad’s grind-centric progression loop. Unfortunately, uneven design and glaring imbalances make maintaining that rhythm feel more like a chore than a challenge.
Combat in Kingsroad starts out promising, but quickly reveals itself as a frustrating mixed bag. Attacks feel satisfyingly weighty, and the flashy, particle-heavy animations add a welcome bit of flair—but that visual polish can’t hide the growing sense of repetition. While you’re given a fair variety of tools—light and heavy attacks, specials, a dodge, and a parry system—inconsistent hitboxes often undercut any attempt at real strategy. Occasionally, you’ll need to take a smarter approach—sneaking through enemy lines or picking off outliers—but those moments are rare. The fact that Kingsroad plays virtually the same at 60 hours as it did at 20 says more than it should.
Character customization through traits and skill trees initially gives the illusion of depth. Early unlocks like parrying or crafting arrows suggest meaningful progression, but dig deeper, and most of the upgrades devolve into forgettable stat bumps—incremental boosts to defense or damage that barely move the needle. As the shine of your once-satisfying combos fades, you’ll find yourself grinding through the same handful of enemies with little variation. The blueprint for a solid combat system is there, but like much of Kingsroad, it’s a façade that lacks the substance to truly support it.
Verdict
Game of Thrones: Kingsroad makes an effort to honor its original work by incorporating opulent architecture and suitably gloomy side missions into its magnificently rendered geography of Westeros. Sadly, this action-RPG’s passable combat isn’t deep enough to make overcoming those obstacles much fun on its own, and behind every intriguing or well-considered idea lies a frustrating pay wall, ugly NPC animation, or grindy roadblock that stops any momentum you’ve worked up. You pay or you die when you play Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, even though there is a lot to do in this complex depiction of the TV show’s setting.
