Have You Played... Game Of Thrones: The RPG?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

No, not that Game Of Thrones game. The other one. The one no-one talked about. The RPG one. The one that was, confusing, based mostly on the books but had some TV people making plastic-faced cameos in it. The one a whole mess of people said was rubbish, but, aha! It was not, I tell you, it was not.

Game Of Thrones suffered from dreadful acting and a stumbling start, which understandably put a great many people off it, but it grew into itself. Even one of the initially disinstered-sounding lead actors seems to suddenly clock that, actually, he might be doing something half-decent and becomes far more enthusiastic later on. (Remember that this was during GOT: the show's earliest days, so this was not yet at the point where any actor would do terrible things in order to land a role in something with 'Thrones' in the title). There are also fascinatingly novel approaches to RPG combat, plus a stealth section involving a psychic dog which... yeah, makes more sense when you're there.

It's nonetheless a wobbly mountain of a game, and enjoying it requires the player to take a fair few annoyances and repetition issues on the chin. It is worth it, not least because this is that rarest of things: a truly complete Game Of Thrones tale, and one rife with satisfyingly dark consequences to earlier actions.

Such a shame it lacked, particularly, the dialogue quality that we've come to expect from our glossiest RPGs - Game Of Thrones is unfairly forgotten, for all its flaws.