Fighting Fantasy - Books 41-45

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41. Master of Chaos - Score = 7.3    Tier = Good

Attempts to Beat: 13

I am ready to continue my reviews/playthroughs of the Fighting Fantasy series, and as always, there are going to be spoilers here, as I don't feel like I could review the adventures in as much detail as I would like otherwise, so fair warning if you haven't played these yet and plan to do so anytime soon. I've also decided to go from reviewing 10 Fighting Fantasy books at a time down to 5. I wish I had done this at the start, as it would have allowed me to mix them in more often, and helped to get some of the review pages from being so ridiculously long, but oh well, hindsight and all that. 

Kicking off the 1990's, I come to this adventure from series stalwart Keith Martin, aka Carl Sargent, of whose previous books I have very much enjoyed. That said, this particular entry does not get off to a good start to say the least. The introduction here? Oof! It opens with your player character, a famous warrior, being hired by a group of wizards to recover a magical staff of theirs, the Staff of Rulership, which has recently been stolen by an apparently resurrected evil mage who died long ago. Sigh. So, go and kill an evil wizard then? Really? As rote as that concept is, I could have begrudgingly gone along with it (and a well designed adventure could still rescue it), but the introduction then just gets silly. The evil wizard, known as Shanzikuul, and about who precious little information is given, is currently holed up in the ruins of Kabesh, which are located outside the city of Ashkyos on the lawless continent of Khul. So what is the good wizards' plan to get us there? Glad you asked! They suggest allowing ourselves to be captured by a group of local slavers in the area, who would then transport us to Khul aboard their ship. This would of course mean we would have to give up all our weapons and items, only leaving with the clothes on our back and the 2 measly gold pieces that the wizards so generously have hidden in the heels of our boots. (Wouldn't the slavers have taken our boots too?) This also means we would have to allow ourselves to be knocked out, dragged aboard the ship, and subjected to who knows what terrible abuses on the journey. Great plan guys! What kind of crappy wizards are these? Do they not have some kind of magic that can get us to Khul instead? No large bird or anything that can fly us there? They don't even have access to ONE lousy ship? Jeesh! So after accepting the quest like a total idiot, we visit the docks and allow ourselves to be knocked out and press-ganged into becoming a galley-slave. As far as introductions to the adventures go, this has to be up there with some of the worst. At this point I started to develop a pit in my stomach, wondering if perhaps the Fighting Fantasy books were not quite as good as I remembered them being (it has been awhile since I have played one after all).  

The adventure uses the typical Fighting Fantasy system, but also throws in some Skill selection, as you are given a list of 6 different Skills to choose from, of which you can select 3 to begin. These Skills, which include: Acute Hearing, Animal Wisdom, Blindsight, Climbing, Move Silently, and Tracking, were a more than welcome addition, and I had a good time experimenting with each and learning where they all might come in handy, as they all appear to have a chance to be useful. Ultimately after several playthroughs, I settled upon Blindsight, Move Silently, and Tracking as my Skills of choice, but I would be interested to know if other players found a more useful combination.  

Breaking down the areas of the book as you travel along:

The voyage to Ashkyos

Ugh. If I was feeling rather worried by the introduction to the adventure, nothing contained in this sequence helped to allay those fears. This is the opening sequence whereby you have been abducted (willingly) to serve as a slave aboard the ship, which is commanded by the evil Captain Shagrot. You do indeed serve as a galley-slave, chained to the oars beneath the boat where you suffer daily beatings by the Second Mate. (They fell right into our trap boys!) The journey is one big stamina drain, as you continually lose Stamina points due to malnourishment, beatings, and overwork. It's boring as hell and it isn't even all that well designed, as I found myself getting rather angry at one point when I was asked if I wanted to stick up for a fellow slave who was being beaten, and who the adventure makes clear has become my friend, only to find doing so leads to yet even more Stamina point loss. As such, every time I played the book after this, I was left feeling like a coward, with not much of a choice to be made but to stand by in silence and watch my "friend" take a vicious beating. There is one combat that can be had here, against a Tentacle (not even a whole sea monster, just a tentacle), but you don't even need to do that if you don't feel like it (although in that case you might want to make sure you have a decent starting Stamina score along with the Move Silently skill). As a saving grace, at least this trip is relatively brief before you reach Ashkyos, and the author manages to work in the expression "treacly grog" into the mix. Don't know if I have heard grog described that way before, and I often found myself saying it out loud every time I came to it. 

Exploring Ashkyos

Phew! Thank goodness the adventure starts to trend in the right direction starting here, and my spirits for the rest of the book began to rise. Once you enter the city of Ashkyos, the adventure takes a page out of more open-world style gamebooks by allowing you to visit the various districts of the city in any order you like. You have the shops, the warehouses, the markets, the docks, the old quarter, and the entertainment district all open to you from the start. The goal here is to steal or earn as much gold as you can, so that you can buy the necessary equipment and provisions you will need to complete your quest. Most importantly you will need to buy a sword, some armour, and some food in the shops district, but you can also buy other helpful items such as a lantern or some potions if you have the gold and wish to purchase them. I gotta ask though, if I have no problem in stealing gold, why would I not cut out the middle man and try to steal the equipment I need directly? 

In any case, this was the best area of the adventure, and I had a lot of fun exploring the districts and figuring out how I could maximize my gold intake. Each of the districts, save for the shops, had some kind of mini-adventure or colorful characters to encounter, including a shady-yet-somehow-good-hearted thief named Vesper, and a talking mongoose named Jesper. (Vesper and Jesper? Did the author do that on purpose?) There is also some business with a fascinating Dark Elf that can be encountered in here as well, although he can be easily missed (and more on this later), and you can even run into your old pal Captain Shagrot from the opening sequence again. 

There was very little dice rolling that is required to be done here, with most of the area coming down to experimenting with which Skills to choose at the beginning and which options to take in how to deal with everyone you meet. This made it feel like one of those books that is a big puzzle to be solved rather than an exercise in dice rolling (both types of which I enjoy mind you). That said, there was still some room for improvement. For example, the book introduces a Notoriety stat, whereby you start at 0, and every time your character does something to call attention to themselves, you must add a point or two to this number. Should this Notoriety stat ever reach 8 points, you are then forced to leave Ashkyos immediately, whether you are ready or not. I think this aspect really fell flat though, and not even once did I ever find myself reaching the 8 points which would have forced me to leave early. 

There was also something else that came up that had me scratching my head on how to handle it. This occurs when you meet the Vesper character, and you are soon told that he leads you back to his home in the Old Quarter. Should you try to visit the Old Quarter later though, you will be asked if you have been here before, and if so, you are locked out of returning there. Did this trip with Vesper count then, or did the author mean that you only officially visited the Old Quarter when choosing it from the hub section? By the letter of the law, I guess you WERE there before, I was just left wondering if that was the author's intention. I would eventually discover that I could safely ignore a couple of the districts completely with no undue effects, but it took me quite a few playthroughs to discover this, at which point I had explored them all rather thoroughly, and greatly enjoyed doing so. Well done! 

Travelling to Rahasta

Rahasta is the name of the village that lies closest to the ruins of Kabesh, which is your ultimate destination, so once you have bought all the supplies you think you will need in Ashkyos, it's off to Rahasta you go. There are a couple of different routes you can take to get there, and thankfully unlike an Ian Livingstone book, choosing one over the other doesn't automatically lock you out of winning the adventure. You can choose to go overland by either foot or on camel, or you can book passage on a riverboat. The river option is over far too quickly to be honest. I mean, I would expect it to be the faster travel option obviously, but it's over ridiculously fast. Was I merely travelling across a river as opposed to along it? The overland route fares better, although not by much. It is a lot longer yes so you will get more play value out of it, but that is not necessarily a good thing, as the encounters are rather dry (snake, orc, troll, etc.). The real problem with the overland route though is that you will find yourself told an ungodly amount of times that you need to eat 2 provisions or suffer a Stamina penalty. You are told this so many times in fact that I started to wonder if the author was taking the piss. There is a Manticore to be found along this route that provides a useful item for the endgame of the adventure, but I ultimately decided the item in question wasn't worth it, and found myself eventually settling on the river option in my later playthroughs. While overall this travel sequence was not as bad as the one that opened the book, it was still a large letdown after the previous exploration of Ashkyos had set the adventure back on track. The village of Rahasta itself is suitably horrifying, with its inhabitants having been mutated due to their proximity to the ruins you are heading towards. There isn't all that much to do in the village itself unfortunately, and even less so should you have a particular travelling companion with you (and you probably will in most playthroughs). 

Exploring the ruins of Kabesh

Ahhhhhh that's better. Back to the good stuff. Not as good as the Ashkyos sections mind you, but quite enjoyable nonetheless. This area mimics what was done in that prior Ashkyos sequence by providing you a hub section listing all the various areas of the ruins that you can explore in any order you like. There is the Senate House, the Ruined Houses of the living quarter, the Old Temple, the Mausoleum, the Warehouses, and the Coliseum. Your goal here of course is to locate the Staff of Rulership which is presumably held by the resurrected mage Shanzikuul, who is holed up somewhere in the ruins. Exploring all the areas is fun and pays dividends, as there are several items scattered about that are very helpful as you get closer to the endgame. Unlike Ashkyos, combat ramps up here, and you will likely find yourself having to battle a handful of baddies in order to get those aforementioned items. Once you have collected everything you think you might need, you are ready to head down into the "Chaos Pits"  (which are hinted at as being well hidden within the ruins, but I didn't think the entrance to them was hard to find at all!) for the final confrontation with Shanzikuul. 

Up until this point in the adventure, I thought one of the bigger weaknesses of the whole book was with its villain. We didn't really learn much about him in the introduction, and he is barely mentioned throughout the whole quest, so that I began to wonder if perhaps Shanzikuul was just a red herring. Thankfully he is at last given some characterization here when you finally locate him, and overall I thought the fight against him played out better than I was expecting. It may have been a case of too little too late, but it was nice to finally have an actual idea of who or what I was up against. Defeating him though really seems to come down to picking a particular option right before the fight begins, which will probably make this fight a cakewalk for an already high Skilled player. The adventure isn't quite over though even after Shanzikuul is defeated, as you are first given a choice on what you want to do in the immediate aftermath of his defeat, with one of those options being to "run like the wind", which gave me a good chuckle. Who is going to pick that? After this choice, you then have one last confrontation with a Dark Elf who has also been seeking to obtain the Staff of Rulership. Now this is where things could get head-scratching once again, as it is entirely possible you would never have met this Dark Elf before in the adventure, but the book carries on like you have regardless. Now if you play the book enough times there is a good chance you would have come across him at some point, but if for some reason you hadn't, this final encounter would make absolutely no sense. Anyway, once he is taken care of, and in another example of the return journey in an adventure being totally glossed over, you are magically transported back to the group of wizards who gave you the quest in the first place, where they shower you with glory and valuable treasures.    

I found the challenge level of the adventure to be just about right, with it perhaps leaning a bit to the easy side considering it's a Fighting Fantasy book after all. The writing I thought was solid, but nothing special, which is surprising after the great atmosphere from Martin's previous book, Vault of the Vampire. Although let's face it, a haunted house setting is always going to have a leg up in that area. One of the weaker parts of the adventure I thought were the enemy encounters, as thinking back on it, nothing really stands out. Martin tries with some of the creatures found in the ruins, such as the Zoalinth, but to me it just ended up feeling like he pressed a button on the "Enemy Monster Randomizer" machine. Martin also throws quite a few design mechanics at the wall here, with some such as the open ended exploration, and a mechanic that appears later in the book whereby the player is given a time limit in which they have to choose from a list of actions to perform, with each action taking up a different amount of time, and these design ideas stuck to the wall rather well. Others however, such as the Notoriety score and the annoying Provisions system, fell to the floor with a splat. I also noticed that Martin sure seems to like the word "baleful" when describing a look someone gives you. The book also has one of the more odder final lines in section 400 that I can recall........"It's going to be a long night, and you've deserved it a hundred times over!" Is it just me, or does that sound like a bad thing!

Now THAT'S what I call a Baleful look! 

Ranking: This was a rather noticeable comedown from the last Fighting Fantasy book I played, that being the phenomenal Dead of Night, and also from the last Keith Martin book I played, the fantastic Vault of the Vampire. Those comparisons might be unfair though, as Master of Chaos is a solid book in its own right, even if it doesn't reach the lofty heights of those Hall of Famers. I really enjoyed the puzzle design aspect of this adventure quite a bit, with lots of areas to explore and Skills to experiment with. The introduction was.....pretty bad, and the overall plot isn't anything to write home about at this stage of the series (a less generic villain would have been appreciated here), but the mini-adventures and characters inside Ashkyos, (and to a lesser degree, inside the ruins of Kabesh), fared much better and were the highlight of the book. I put this near the bottom of my "Good" tier alongside such entries as Beneath Nightmare Castle and Stealer of Souls, and this was a solid if unspectacular return for me to my favorite gamebook series.

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42. Black Vein Prophecy - Score = ?    Tier = ?

Attempts to Beat: ?

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42. Black Vein Prophecy - Score = 7.0    Tier = Good

Attempts to Beat: 57

Well, that certainly was a marathon. Every so often a gamebook comes along that throws a wrench in my schedule, not because it is bad necessarily (sometimes quite the opposite), but because it takes so damn long to beat! "Fighting Fantasy" had seemingly moved on from that though, with the last handful of books feeling downright charitable considering what came before them, and I had to go all the way back to Sky Lord to find one that took me as long to play through as did Black Vein Prophecy. Thank goodness for me though, this adventure is MUCH better than Sky Lord (hallelujah!), although not without some major faults of its own. My hopes were high for this one too, as it was written by Paul Mason and Steve Williams, the same authors responsible for the fantastic Slaves of the Abyss. I try my best to avoid knowing too much about the gamebooks before I go into them, however there are still those that, I suppose due to a certainly level of infamy, I cannot help but be made aware of certain aspects of them before I even open them up (Crypt of the Sorcerer and Blood of the Zombies spring to mind). That was also the case with Black Vein Prophecy, as I had long ago learned of an early Luck test that HAD to be failed in order to beat the book. Ugh. So with that disheartening piece of information already known to me, I dove into the adventure.

And boy you really do dive right into this one. In fact you don't even start off with any rules, as they are contained at the back of the book should you need them and are only for those unfamiliar with the "Fighting Fantasy" ruleset. This is a bit dangerous isn't it? I mean, the rules often have subtle differences from book to book, which is why I always go over them in each, so how would I know exactly what rules I should be using? There is no introduction here either, and you immediately go to section 1 where you find your character awakening inside what is apparently his own tomb, with no memory of who or what he is. Now right away, it's tough not to draw Creature of Havoc parallels to this setup, as not only do we have the amnesia angle right at the start, but your character also appears not to be a hero, but one of the bad guys to boot, with your underground burial complex having been sealed by apparently magical means (and that dead tomb-robber you discover got in there pretty easily then didn't he?). However, I quickly found the Creature of Havoc comparison to be a bit unfair, as other than that initial opening, it quickly diverged into its own thing after that. One of the big differences is that you discover as you make your way out of the burial complex is that you are (or were), a magic user, and can later learn (or re-learn) spells as you progress through the adventure. This opening sequence of making your way up to the outside world, while not too difficult, is quite atmospheric and leaves you with many unanswered questions that will only be solved later as you uncover more about yourself. The rolling up of your initial stats also occurs within the adventure itself as you make your way outside, although there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason to it. A big problem though is that you will likely have to go through this sequence so many times that you will be sick of it all by the end! I think I could recite these opening sections by heart at this point. It is also during this opening sequence where that infamous Luck test occurs, but I will save that discussion for later.

Once you manage to escape the underground burial complex, then you begin a strange and mystifying adventure as you travel around the land attempting to.....well, for the longest time I had absolutely no idea what I was attempting to do. Thanks to the amnesia angle, there is no initial goal given here, and you end up wandering from place to place, meeting various colorful characters along the way as you slowly piece together what the overall situation is in the area you are exploring. Heck for the longest time I didn't even know what area of Titan this book was supposed to be taking place in. You initially find yourself emerging into a ruined city, which apparently fell to some sort of massive magical attack, which might possibly explain how you ended up buried in a tomb, and you now must find a way to exit this city. That isn't as easy as it might sound though, because the gates to this coastal city are sealed by some sort of magical barrier, which is yet another hint that someone in the outside world saw you as a threat, and maybe even expected your resurrection. In an absolutely incredible moment, you escape the city by loading yourself into one of the seaward-facing catapults located on the ramparts, and then you fire yourself over the walls and into the sea! I'm not sure if this moment is totally badass, or totally ridiculous (probably a bit of both), but talk about making an exit! And by the way, wouldn't you have suffered some massive injuries when you slammed into the water? Anyway, thankfully you are rescued by a fellow adventurer out on the water, Velkos, and the two of you form an uneasy bond and set off exploring together. 

While the adventure had been fairly linear up to this point, you now begin to have several different courses of action open to you. You can stick with Velkos if you like, or choose to set off on your own for example. You still have no idea what you are supposed to be doing, and I have to admit that I found this aimless wandering to be somewhat boring and frustrating at first, but as I slowly started to unravel the mystery of who I was, everything started to become much more interesting. Some of the characters you meet react to you with fear, which would suggest you are not only someone of renown but possibly an evil person at that. You can also find yourself having certain encounters that trigger some sort of memory within you, which allows you to remember a magical spell that you once knew, which you then have the option of using at various points in the adventure, and discovering these spells is key to beating the gamebook. One thing I wondered about though, is that whenever you learn a spell, you are given a codeword associated with it. For example when you learn the Mutation spell you are told to note down the word "Biantai", then later you might be asked if you know this word and wish to use it. Why bother with the codewords though? Why not just ask if you know the Mutation spell and wish to use it? Perhaps this was just for immersion purposes, or perhaps I am missing something altogether. 

So you explore the region, slowly piecing things together, and learn that a war is taking place between the current ruler of the area (a snot-nosed spoiled brat of a king), and an invading force led by a powerful sorcerer who you oftentimes find yourself being mistaken for (hmmm, interesting that). I thought it was a stroke of genius making the king almost out to be a bad guy, as for awhile I wasn't totally sure whose side I was supposed to be on. In addition to the spells you need to locate, you will also need to gather some allies to aid you in the final battle if you hope to stand a chance, the two prominent ones being a local rebel named Merzei, and an eccentric old wizard named Credas who lives underground (don't they always?). Merzei wants to overthrow the king, but realizes that the sorcerer is the bigger threat, and wants you to help him raise a peasant army which he would use to depose the king once the sorcerer is taken care of first. Credas is the more interesting and shadowy character, and he initially tasks you with locating an idol deep inside a southern jungle that he claims he will need in order to assist you in the battle to come. This begins a nice mini-quest into the jungle where you find yourself hunted by some sort of frog-like creatures in your search for the idol, only to find that when you eventually return to Credas with it, all is not as it appears to be. Additionally, there is a powerful creature trapped inside a magical brooch which you can discover, and while not essential to beating the quest, he can come in quite handy indeed. I will say that all of the above seemingly has to be done in an exact order, with just about any wrong move meaning you now can't win the game, but for me this just contributes to the puzzle-like experience of a gamebook I enjoy so much. Combat is also very much de-emphasized in this adventure, with very few actually required to win the game, and even the ones that are required you should not have much trouble with. A good thing too, because the instructions for this particular book instruct you to add only 4 points to your initial Skill roll as opposed to the usual 6. Thankfully, this lowered score seems to have been taken into consideration when providing the Skill scores of the enemies you need to beat as well. 

Once you have gathered all the spells, items, and allies that you need, you move on to the final battle against the evil sorcerer's forces. Providing you obtained everything, this battle against his army is actually very easy, with the difficulty having come in just getting everything in the first place, which can be rather convoluted. Now just before this final battle, Credas would have given you an info-dump as to who you really are and who the sorcerer is you are facing, although you may have put some of this together for yourself already. Once the sorcerer's forces are defeated, you of course must face off against him in a one-on-one magic battle, with the two of you hurling spells at one another. A cool idea for sure, and a great visual, but I have to say I did not like the way this fight plays out. At the start, you are given the option among your spells as to which one you want to cast. Only one of the spells is the "correct" one to choose though. Pick the wrong one and it's game over, which seems incredibly unfair. Not only that, you have to do this several times in a row! The whole thing just felt like random guessing to me. I mean sure, you could argue that there is a reason why the correct order of spells worked the way they did, but I feel I could come up with a different order of the spells that would be just as valid, and so I just had to hope I was thinking the same way the authors did. I think taking Stamina damage for choosing "wrong" would have been the far better way to go here, but these authors do love their instant deaths. 

What did thankfully help to wipe the bad taste of that magic battle out of my mouth was what happens after it, as time travel is all of a sudden added to the mix! Even though you won the previous battle, one of the surviving creatures of the enemy side is about to kill you when you find yourself transported back to your childhood self inside the castle you grew up in. This sequence reveals more about your past and the abusive home you lived through, and in order for your future self to survive, you need to find a way to send a warning to yourself through a magical portal, all while trying to prevent becoming the victim of a ritual led by your father and his high priest. While not a long sequence, this is really great stuff, although whenever time travel is introduced in a gamebook, even if only moderately so, I am instantly hooked. This helps the adventure to go out on a high note in my opinion, and future you of course survives the creature's attack and becomes the new ruler of the region, with the previous king having died in the battle.

Now though, I come to the two main problems I had with the adventure, and unfortunately, they were both rather large ones. First, the amount of instant-deaths in the book is insane! There are many places where any wrong move, even if it seems a perfectly reasonable course of action to take, is met with an abrupt "automatic game over" section. This has to be up there in terms of books with the most insta-deaths right? The second main problem I had is, you guessed it, that $@#^$ blasted opening Luck test! I remember back when I played Dungeon of Justice from my "Warlock Magazine" playthroughs, and how completely incensed I was upon discovering that there was a Skill check in that adventure that had to be failed in order to win. I was "saved" from that feeling somewhat while playing Black Vein Prophecy because I had already known about the mandatory failed Luck test for some time, where you need to fail it in order to get an item that you cannot win without, otherwise I probably would have been just as enraged. The "good" news in this case (if you can call it that), is that this Luck test occurs so early in the adventure that I suppose if you pass it (or should I say in actuality"fail" it? Shit I don't know), you could just close up the book or start again right away without much effort having gone into it. The bad news is that because it occurs so early, you will have your maximum Luck score and thus are far less likely to "succeed". You know, this COULD have been a brilliant bit of design (depending on how it was implemented) had it occurred much later in the book, whereupon when the player realizes they need to fail this test, they could then purposefully use up their Luck points in one of the preceding combats to ensure passing this test, which would have made for a great "A-ha!" moment. As it was, I decided to track on which of my playthroughs I did indeed manage to "fail" this opening Luck test, and was quite discouraged when it took me until my 14th attempt at the book before that happened even once! My "failure rate" got a bit better than that as I continued my playthroughs, but it was still usually between 8-10 attempts before I would get another "failure". This is compounded when you bring in my first problem with the adventure, the plethora of instant deaths, because any wrong move near the end of the adventure ends in auto-failure, which means I needed to go back and wait another 8-10 attempts before getting another crack at it. Arggghh! There were many times playing the book where I was having Masks of Mayhem flashbacks, as that was another book with loads of instant deaths and one infuriating dice roll that needed to be dealt with in order to win. This has to be up there as one of the single worst ideas in Fighting Fantasy. If I was one of the authors, I would go to my grave insisting it was an editing error, and the sections for pass and fail were switched around. No way would I admit to this! Was this Luck test meant to be an anti-cheating mechanism? It seems to me that whenever this is attempted by gamebook authors, it ends up hurting the fair minded players the most. Players who want to cheat are going to find some way to do it regardless, and besides, they have bought the book, they are playing solo so are not cheating anyone (other than perhaps themselves), so why did the authors even care if they cheated? Stop gatekeeping guys! #endrant.

Ranking: To me this book felt like the bastard love child of Slaves of the Abyss and Masks of Mayhem, with the wonderful story and puzzle solving of the former combined with some of the enraging design decisions of the latter. That said, the positives outweighed the negatives for me, and I could not in good conscience keep this out of the Good tier, and I have it just sneaking into that level. I badly wanted to like this more than I did, as there is some real genius at work here at times, but that compulsory failed Luck test and the avalanche of insta-deaths are killers, and brought the score down considerably. Still, Paul Mason and Steve Williams have made it known to me that they are gamebook authors to be reckoned with, and I look forward to their next mind-bending, puzzle heavy approach to a gamebook. Just please guys, no more required failed tests!