Game of Thrones: Kingsroad has left early access and has been available for free download on Steam since May 21, 2025. However, if you look at player reviews, you might want to skip it.
Why is the download not worth it? It’s free! That’s true, of course. And Game of Thrones, despite the lackluster final season, is still a franchise with draw and many fans that deserves a worthy video game adaptation.
With Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, however, developer Netmarble catapults you back to a time when disastrous movie and series adaptations were more the rule than the exception. Although the action-adventure RPG does have its gameplay strengths, the fun really stops when it comes to monetization – and that also applies to the final release version.
Because Game of Thrones: Kingsroad has an online co-op and offers free-to-play access, it wants money from you in various forms. For progress in the story or access to bosses. For battle passes. For fast travel, and much more. Of course, there are also countless currencies in the game, so that in the end no one knows what’s going on.
One of the trailers for Game of Thrones – Kingsroad:
“Maybe the most aggressively and unethically monetized game I have ever seen”
How does the community rate the final launch version? The paid early access version had already faced a lot of criticism from players. With the final launch, this has not improved. The reviews currently stand at 63 percent positive, with a total of 1,236 ratings.
- Hyde criticizes on Steam: “Maybe the most aggressively and unethically monetized game I have ever seen. There are microtransactions upon microtransactions, hidden behind endless fake currencies to rake in money for everything.”
- Romez complains on Steam: “Korean pay-to-win mobile game, ported to PC with Unreal Engine marketplace asset slop. Right and left click spam simulator with 3 abilities. Console auto-target combat system. Avoid it like the plague.”
- DethCometh also criticizes the gameplay on Steam: “The story just doesn’t engage you. The combat is generic and outdated. The movement feels awkward and clunky.”
- Slug criticizes the online co-op on Steam: “What a great multiplayer game. You can only do co-op in dungeons…”
From many of the positive reviews, however, one can read that fans of Game of Thrones can somewhat accept the payment model and that they are just happy to have found an open-world game that takes them to Westeros. However, this praise is often accompanied by remarks like “It’s not as bad as feared” – for instance here on Steam.
Our recommendation: Skip the download. Instead, invest a few euros and get games at a low price that are actually good. There are more than enough of them. Specific tips can be found in this article by colleague Benedict Grothaus: Here are 9 games on Steam that are just as good as AAA games, but cost less
