RANKINGS
1. Crypt of the Vampire - Score = 7.5 Tier = Good
Attempts to beat: 5
A solid adventure with great atmosphere! I wasn't sure what to expect upon beginning Dave Morris' first ever gamebook and felt the opening, while atmospheric, was lacking a bit in design ideas. The stats used here: Agility, PSI, and Vigour, are a pretty blatant borrowing of the very well known Skill, Luck and Stamina stats from Fighting Fantasy (and I have to wonder if a lawsuit was considered at any point). As simple as the base FF stats are, the game system employed here is even MORE simple. I was hardly ever called upon to test the Agility or PSI scores leaving Vigour (ie Stamina) as the only stat that was put to any real sort of use. There is also no prologue to speak of and while I usually greatly enjoy those in gamebooks I was surprised to find I was actually ok with this decision as there is something to be said for diving right in.
The atmosphere is excellent right from the get go as the description of the dark mansion being approached with night descending and an icy rain falling as the cry of wolves gets closer and closer in the distance forcing you to take your chances in the manor is really great stuff. I don't really feel the same can be said of the opening encounters though. In the first several areas of the book we encounter a vampire (if that's what the soldier was supposed to be, having the bite marks on his neck), skeleton, and witch. This was kind of a parade of Halloween tropes and I was half expecting a headless horseman throwing jack-o-lanterns to turn up next. Once we leave the witch's room however, the encounters increase greatly in quality and overall creepiness.
Some of the highlights of these encounters include:
- the evil chapel which I found significantly blood curdling for some reason. Even more so because it was empty, making you wonder where its caretaker was.
- the chess game room which was very well played out, resulting in a useful item of your choice should you win the match. I really would have liked to have seen the chess game itself expanded here so you had to battle through more pieces than just the Queen (You need to capture the King to win in chess after all). Some kind of game where you had to beat several chess pieces, maybe even randomly generated to keep each game different, would have been fantastic.
- the skeleton quartet which I thought was incredibly eerie. I found myself wondering if this group was there of their own accord out of a sense of duty to the evil Lord of the Manor or if they were cursed themselves and had no choice but to keep playing the same tune for all eternity. Yikes! What a fate! I really wanted to learn more about these guys.
- the Wight encounter in particular is brilliantly written by Morris and actually gave me shivers up my spine as this eons old evil force ascended towards me. It gave me a bit of the same feeling as the approach of the Balrog rising from the pit of Khazad-dum from Fellowship of the Ring.
It was these above encounters that really made the book a very pleasurable experience for me. There were some missteps I felt though. The Cossack for example seemed pretty out of place. What the heck was he doing right smack in the middle of the crypt? Speaking of out of place, the meeting with Brother Hark also seemed a bit strange. He serves as the Yaztromo of the book in a way. He assigns you your task, gives you the backstory on what you are up against, gives you a couple of helpful items, then sends you on your way alone even though your odds of victory would no doubt be much higher if he accompanied you. He is also protected in his little room from the evils of the house apparently but how does he get any supplies? Not only that, but he gives you a choice of only one of a crucifix or potion of iron will because he says he needs to save one for the next adventurer! Pretty poor logic there Brother Dick Move. Thanks for the vote of confidence!
The final battle against the evil vampire Lord Tenebron also could have been much better. The first time I made it to him I only had 3 vigour points left so wasn't very confident about my chances. I was surprised to see there was an escape option (sorry, FLEE option, jeesh) here though. A flee option in a boss fight? What? So knowing I wasn't going to beat him anyway and with my curiosity piqued I decided to flee and see what happened. To my incredible surprise, doing this is an auto-win! So, you don't even need to fight him. You will need a crucifix (and there are a couple of places at least in the book to acquire one) but other than that just boot it when you first see him and it's game over. Thanks to the crucifix you don't even need to suffer the FLEE penalty. This is a bit anti-climactic as I was hoping for something a little more epic against a vampire lord. Although the final description of his demise is pretty good as is the final victory paragraph as you emerge from the crypt.
That all being said, I still very much enjoyed my time with this book even though it wasn't particularly difficult. It's becoming apparent how much I enjoy the gamebooks with a straight up horror-setting. Dave Morris uses this setting to full effect too and there is some really good immersive writing to be found here. Well done!
Ranking: The first book in the Golden Dragon series so obviously it slots in at #1 so far. Expansion of the chess game and a better final battle with Lord Tenebron could have really dialed the score up more here. Still very good though!
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2. The Temple of Flame - Score = 9.2 Tier = Great!
Attempts to beat: 46 (wow!)
Well....that sure escalated fast! I dont think I've ever come across a gamebook series, nor am I ever likely to, where the difficulty level ramped up so much between the first and second books. This book is VERY HARD, but thankfully not impossible. It's a good thing it doesn't reach the impossible level either because this book is a classic, which wouldn't have been the case if you can't beat it.
I need to start off by saying that this is an incredibly beautifully written book. Dave Morris and Oliver Johnson do a fantastic job of painting a picture of every locale, creature, and situation you come across. This was present in Crypt of the Vampire too but is even better here. The story itself too is also very well done. The prologue sets out in detail your need for revenge against Damontir the Mad (although I have to wonder why such an honorable knight as yourself was questing with him in the first place?). This book also introduces in the first section what I believe is the best gamebook companion I have had to date in the lovable and also actually helpful Minki. Yes, I think he is even a better companion than Throm from Deathtrap Dungeon. Sacrilege I know. The fate of Minki too was a twist I was not expecting and totally caught me off guard. Curse you Damontir!
Once again there are several top-notch encounters within the book, the highlights which for me were:
- the Revenant who chases you should you pilfer his grave near the beginning of the book. He can come after you in a couple of different places and you learn pretty quick to leave his grave alone
- Sulsa Doom, a famous duel-bladed warrior re-animated by Damontir after his death to serve his bidding. I loved the line "It can't be Doom! you say, knowing that it is". This is another character whose backstory I would like to learn a lot more about.
- the Red Dragon, the introduction of which is a great building of atmosphere. Although I have to admit the defeating of him is pretty easy which is odd as you'd think a dragon would be one of the tougher enemies you could encounter
- speaking of the building of atmosphere, I mentioned in my Crypt of the Vampire review that the Wight encounter in that book gave me the same feeling as the approach of the Balrog in The Lord of the Rings. Well, little did I know what was coming in this book as the Malgash encounter seems to be a straight out rip off of the Balrog. Right even down to sword and flaming whip! That being said, wow what an introduction this thing gets! I never came close to beating it but thankfully it isn't required for winning the adventure
- the Fire Elemental is yet another incredibly well written and unique encounter as it takes over a huge suit of armour whilst guarding the incredibly helpful ring of healing
- the Phoenix, a very cool encounter described in great detail which will rise if you defeat it (as phoenixes tend to do) unless you possess the necessary item
There are many other encounters that while not quite as good as these are still top notch. The one-eyed creature guarding the chalice, the spectral warriors, the witchdoctor, the skullghasts, the golem, the wraiths, the mummies, the similacrum, Damontir himself of course, the list is almost endless. Both quality and quantity in spades!
I think what I may have enjoyed most about the book though was that there are a few ways you can take to reach your final destination. Each of which have their own perils and you have to think carefully about which way you want to try. Do you go for the cloak which allows you to take the route required to get the conch shell trumpet which in turn allows you to bypass the tricky rolls required to get past the wraiths on the spiral staircase? Do you risk going for the ring of healing which means a very tough encounter against the Fire Elemental where the odds are against you? Many times I had to stop and think carefully about what my odds would seemingly be for each of the routes based upon the vigour I had remaining at each decision point and this is really excellent.
To this point you are probably thinking this might be one of the best gamebooks ever. And it very well could have, should have been. However, it does have a couple of issues and unfortunately these issues are really quite glaring:
1) The Nightmare Guard located on the balcony overlooking the hall with the screens. Ok....the more I played the book the more this fight became incredibly infuriating. The reason being that every time this guy hits you, he then gets a 1 in 6 chance of one-shot killing you outright. This doesn't sound so bad at first, but he was hitting me on average about 2 times an encounter. This meant that more than one third of all my attempts (37% actually) ended right here with him one-shotting me. That's incredibly aggravating. Especially once you've worked out your route and now know you have to just start over without learning anything new just to reach him again. To my knowledge there is no way around this guy and of course he is probably the one encounter in the book FLEEing from results in instant death. The one time I want to use that option!
2) The means by which you enter the area to get the conch shell trumpet. Having almost no success passing down the stairway with the wraiths, I knew I had to find the conch shell trumpet which is hinted at that you need to bypass said wraiths. Man, did I ever search high and low for this thing, spending many attempts trying things I knew were stupid (such as touching the different glyphs at the entrance) because I was simply running out of places to look. As it turns out, the only way to access the area with the trumpet (and a bunch of other cool stuff I might add) is to FLEE from the Sulsa Doom fight! Arrgghhhhhhh! I almost threw the book when I learned this. It is made clear you might very well be the greatest warrior in the world, so why would you FLEE from a fight that isn't particularly hard? This is made even more so by the fact that when you defeat Doom the book sure seems to make out that you are in fact going the correct way. The only reason I eventually found this area was because I was having a really unlucky time with the dice rolling up to this fight on an attempt and was almost out of vigour so just thought what the hell. This is a really terrible design choice Messrs Morris and Johnson.
Those two issues were enough to knock the book down from the high 9's score it should have had to the low 9's. If you wanted to knock the score down even further I couldn't fault you, they were that frustrating. Still, absolutely everything else about the book is first rate so I can forgive it somewhat I guess.
Ranking: A step up from Crypt of the Vampire in all aspects so to #1 it now goes! I can't help but wonder how good this would be if the one-shot Nightmare Guard was re-done and a more intuitive means of reaching the conch shell trumpet area was added. Still, it's a classic and highly recommended provided you can take a bit (or a lot) of frustration.
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3. The Lord of Shadow Keep - Score = 5.5 Tier = OK
Attempts to beat: 12
Well...that sure diminished fast. This book is a rather large drop off in quality from the first two in the series. From the standpoints of writing, design, creativity, you name it, this is a considerable step back. Author Oliver Johnson also seriously needs to take some kind of course in coming up with character and place names. Lalassa? Arkayn Darkrobe? Stentorian of Snout? Cmon man. That's some weak sauce right there. Additionally, the prologue doesnt really paint you in the best light. You are supposed to be some honorable paladin I take it but once the going gets tough in your kingdom you apparently decide it's every man for himself and blow town. Not a very heroic start!
What struck me the most is just how generic this adventure feels. Aside from possibly the lisping Lizard Man (and even that is a bit of a stretch), there are really no interesting encounters on offer here throughout the whole book. In fact, many of the encounters are quite silly. Cases in point:
- the skeletal rider that comes up from behind you right at the beginning (huh?)
- the trolls that come up from under the bridge who apparently were on their way to bowling night
- Charon the ferryman (ugh)
- the knight whose armour has rusted shut (this idea is actually kind of amusing but the fact that the evil innkeeper saw to all his needs for a year, especially from a bathroom standpoint, kind of strains credulity)
- the tiger-woman who can be vanquished by a locket of hair (ummm...ok)
- the zombies chilling in the guardroom (do they need rest?)
- the ghouls similarly enjoying their own dining hall
The obligatory helpful wizard makes an appearance here as well in the form of Shambol Eyehawk who gives you a staff, some acorns and some advice in the form of a riddle. Although I don't know why he just doesn't tell you to take the wood door instead of putting it in riddle form but whatever. Id also like to say, I think he gives you bad advice here. The riddle again tells you to take the wood door (and bypass the iron and gold doors when you come to this decision), however I think this is incorrect. The gold door is actually the one you want to take as this allows you to get the throwing dagger which can then be used to disable the dwarf in the library. Also, when using this dagger in the library, why does your character throw it at the rope holding up the chandelier causing it to drop on and kill the dwarf? Why not just throw it directly at the dwarf? Maybe you were just trying to incapacitate him but it didn't go as planned? Oops!
This adventure also seems very short, especially in contrast to the previous book in the series The Temple of Flame. I'm also not sure if I have come across a book yet that is so inconsistent with its difficulty level. Yes there are quite a few insta-deaths here, but once I had worked out the route to the final encounter with Darkrobe I was struck by how easy it was. There were no difficult battles at all and there were several spots to pick up vigour boosts (+6 at the inn, +6 in the cellar, +10 in the lab). As such, I felt powered up all the way to the end and was all but guaranteed of making it to the final two encounters, those being the ghost woman and Darkrobe himself. It is these two encounters however where the difficulty shoots up drastically.
The encounter with the ghost woman is particularly infuriating as it isn't a battle, but one of those fail-one-roll-and-you-instantly-lose type of deals. Ugh. This crap still? Enough already! The ensuing battle against Darkrobe should you pass this test is actually pretty good and is probably the highlight of the book, but again can be very difficult if you haven't done things in a particular way.
Ranking: No-brainer here as it drops to the bottom of the series so far. This adventure, while certainly competent and playable, is also incredibly forgettable and is probably hurt most of all by the downgrade in writing quality from the first two books in the series.
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4. The Eye of the Dragon - Score = 8.7 Tier = Great!
Attempts to beat: 26
Ok I think it's official. Dave Morris knows what he's doing! Hot on the heels of his previous excellent effort, The Temple of Flame, he does it again here. However, I don't think The Eye of the Dragon quite reaches the level of that one.
The inclusion of the spell system here is a very welcome addition and is similar to the one found in Citadel of Chaos whereby you start with a list of spells and cross them off as you use them. I'm not really sure why your character would only be able to use each spell once, but it does provide for an added layer of trial and error as you attempt to determine the best place in the adventure to employ each one. This type of experimentation is always great fun for me and once something like this is introduced I'm immediately hooked.
The prologue here is great and really makes you feel like a sorcerer/warrior/badass. You even rip off some good cocky quips to the scholars who summon you to undertake the mission of finding the eye. Although you may be talked up a little TOO much as it seems a bit contradictory later on when you have trouble dealing with such things as an annoying mynah bird for example after the initial buildup you are given.
The design of the book is for the most part really great. From what I could tell, there are actually two different routes you can take through the book and still win through with each route requiring you to obtain a different essential item(s). What I found fascinating about the two routes is how different they were in terms of play style. The routes appear to be:
1) Obtain the ship in a bottle along with some mysterious fabric. This is very much a find-the-narrow path type of quest which was reminiscent to me of such books as House of Hell and Appointment With FEAR. You need to acquire several needed items (acquiring one is usually essential to get the next etc) and you need to get them in a particular order as well so the book has you bouncing around between several different areas.
2) Obtain the golden apple. This route on the other hand is an exercise in tough battles and hoping the dice gods are with you. As far as I could tell this path requires you to defeat the Kraken in the mansion cellar (that thing can fit in a cellar?) and then a couple of different tough battles against more than one Kappa at a time. I have to say, looking at my map, if you were able to beat the adventure using this path (I used the first route) the book seems like it would be incredibly short. You would also miss out on pretty much all the best encounters in the adventure.
For many of my first 20 or so playthroughs I went back and forth between these two options until it seemed to me that the second route required the luck of the dice to be on your side a little too much. I then began focusing on just the first route as I believed that even though a lot of experimenting and exploring was needed I would eventually be able to unlock the path to victory (and prayed this route ALSO didn't have some ridiculous dice check or battle somewhere along the way, which fortunately it didn't).
The encounters here are pretty decent I suppose but are nowhere near as creative and interesting as the ones in The Temple of Flame by comparison. There were only a few that stood out for me:
- Lord Mantiss: Kudos to Dave Morris on this guy because boy did I ever come to hate this dirty bugger!
- Nuckalavee: Morris seems to have one of these in him in every book. A fearsome opponent who gets a great intro and whose appearance and demeanor make the nape of your neck shiver when you first meet them.
- The old man with the spider on his shoulder. This was suitably creepy and reminded me a bit of the Gonchong creature from The Island of the Lizard King. This was another situation that I would have liked to have learned a bit more backstory about what was really going on here.
The Hemophage could have been a very intense encounter if there had been some sort of cat and mouse game played out in the catacombs. As it is, he is VERY easily avoidable (as is Nuckalavee if I'm being fair about it though). Other than that, I ran into more Kappa than I cared to (including the final bad guy) and from a story standpoint this makes sense as the city is supposed to be crawling with them but still, they arent very interesting to begin with and hardly fired up my imagination during the battles.
As great as this book was overall, I did have a couple of issues with it. First, what is it with the seemingly counter-intuitive decisions you need to make in order to beat these books? To my knowledge, you can't win along route 1 above if you don't flee from the garden statue back INTO the mansion that you just came out of. Much like FLEEing from the Sulsa Doom fight in The Temple of Flame, this took me a long time to discover (although admittedly not nearly as long) and I only did so after trying many other foolish things. This counter-intuitiveness is unfortunately a recurring theme for Mr Morris' books so far in my view. Second, and I'm not really sure on this one, but there might be a City of Thieves style 1-in-3 random guess at the end of this book in the form of the choice of the three frequencies? I say might because it clearly states before you make the choice that "the last frequency is the correct one". Not having anything else to go on, I chose the last frequency listed in the options and was relieved to find this was the correct choice. I have no idea if that seemingly overly obvious clue was intentional or not but I'll give Mr Morris the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn't repeat the same mistake that marred the ending to City of Thieves.
I need to point out once again that Dave Morris' writing skills are top notch. In all three of his books now he is proving to really be a master at building atmosphere, suspense, and intensity.
Ranking: A really great adventure! The designs of the two books are fairly equal but the story and encounters here aren't quite on the same level as The Temple of Flame so it slots in at #2 so far on the Golden Dragon rankings.
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5. Curse of the Pharaoh - Score = 5.0 Tier = OK
Attempts to beat: 2
Ummm.....what the heck was that? I was greatly looking forward to this one because as I mentioned in my Temple of Terror review that the desert setting is one of my favorites. But boy, is this ever an underwhelming effort, favorite setting or not.
First off, I beat this book in one sitting. Always a big strike against any gamebook for me. It's not only easy but also incredibly short. Looking at my map, it's pretty sad. The prologue here, while not great, is actually pretty decent. It does a fair job of building up some intrigue and mystique as to what you have ahead of you as searching for and exploring a lost tomb is always a good hook. Especially if a curse is involved. Once you get underway though, there is just seemingly way too much time spent futzing around in the village at the beginning while looking for the trader Gabbad and avoiding a gang of assassins/muggers.
This village section also contains what I feel is the major failing of the book. In one of the first few sections, (you literally can't miss him) you come upon a shop in a bazaar which sells you pretty much everything you need to bypass most of the traps and pitfalls in the adventure. The flying carpet, potion of levitation, and snake bite gloves make what should have been some interesting and thought provoking situations and traps that come later foregone conclusions. Why this also fails is because you don't need to worry about what to buy and what you might need to find on your own later as you easily have enough gold to clean him out of everything he has. This really robs the book of a lot of its puzzle solving element.
After this you are quickly whisked across the desert (either with Gabbad or not, you don't need to find him), until you get to the entrance of the tomb. If you take the route that sees Gabbad accompany you, you will even come across a sphinx who will tell you exactly what items you need to win the adventure! For the record he tells you that you need both halves of the tablet (you start out with one half), a magical rope and a magical staff. So much for trial and error and experimenting. Once inside the tomb, prepare yourself for what must be the shortest and emptiest tomb crawl to date. You immediately come across some robbers who have the magical rope and they are easily dispatched. There's one item in the bag already. My one and only failed attempt at the book occurred soon after this when I found myself teleported to a chamber where a battle with the demon Ipo ensued. This is where you need the magical staff which I had missed out on by teleporting here. Although not to contradict the sphinx's advice, but I suppose the staff isn't absolutely essential, it's just highly unlikely you will win this fight without it.
So onto my second (and ultimately successful) attempt, I bypassed this teleporting business, basically just walked through a short series of easy/sometimes empty chambers and rooms picking up the magical staff in the process. There is even a bathroom with a healing pool in this sequence of rooms that pumps you back up to max vigour in case this wasn't too easy for you already. Next comes the Ipo battle again and having the staff against him this time makes this fight much easier. Once he is defeated that is pretty much it. Oh there is a 1 in 3 option given to you by the ghost of the pharaoh himself after this as to what reward you would like. The correct choice here was pretty obvious I thought (obviously you need the other half of the tablet and seeing as how it has a scepter on it....). Put the tablet in the coffin and you've won.
On the plus side, Oliver Johnson's writing here does seem to be a step up from his last book although it's still nowhere near the level of Dave Morris. Unfortunately, this book is marred by more than a few grammatical errors and I wonder if between these errors, and the brevity of this book (blink and this one is over) if this one wasn't rushed out to meet some deadline.
Ranking: This book is probably as close as one can get to being bad without ACTUALLY being bad. The atmosphere and setting are pretty good and help to just keep it out of the bad tier although that might depend on if you like the desert setting as much as I do. Unfortunately the design is very weak, the book is far too easy and not nearly enough of interest happens once you get going. From a gamebook standpoint, mundane would be a good word for it overall I think. This is easily the weakest of the series so far.
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6. Castle of Lost Souls - Score = 6.7 Tier = OK
Attempts to beat: 8
Pretty solid design. The story? Not so much. Here we are at the final Golden Dragon book and unfortunately the series goes out a bit on the average side. I found the story in this one to really not be very good. The prologue starts us out by having us aid a family in rescuing their recently departed father's soul that was hauled off by a demon (named Slank) after his death. Problem here is, the father had made a bargain with this demon for a life of prosperity and riches in exchange for said soul. By the family's own admission, the demon kept his end of the bargain and they now live quite lavishly. So, why exactly am I helping them? If this was really me I would have told them to get stuffed. A deal is a deal after all. If you can't pay the piper, don't call the tune. I'm sure there are some more cliches that would fit here but you get the point. Anyway, because I actually wanted to play the book I decided to help them.
The prologue also contains what must be one of the more random things I have encountered to date. The soul of the father (Luthor Faze) escapes Slank in his castle and is now holed up in the library where he determines that what is needed to defeat the demon is a crystal ball, a four leaf clover, a teardrop from his daughter, a fragment from a chivalrous knights armour, a strand of nun's hair and the ashes of a saint . What?? This list honestly made me laugh out loud when I read it. It's as if "quest items" was entered into a gamebook randomizer and this list is what was spat out.
The story really doesn't get all that better as you go through the adventure, but fortunately the design of the book is actually pretty interesting and helps to save the experience. The adventure can be broken up into three areas:
1- The village. Here you acquire the crystal ball, the four leaf clover, and the chivalrous knight's armour fragment (you start with the teardrop already). Finding all these is incredibly easy but the order and means by which you can acquire them can vary and there a few different things that can be tried with some interesting happenings going on, particularly in regard to the crystal ball.
2- The journey to the castle. This is a decent albeit short trip through hills and swamps where you (hopefully) acquire the saint's ashes and the nun's hair. These are a bit trickier to acquire, especially the nun's hair. There is an encounter with a band of robbers where you need to hit at least 3 of them with arrows. The odds in hitting them are in your favor but still, a couple of times I failed this and when that happens I believe you are screwed? You can still defeat them with your sword but this is a very tough fight. I'm not sure where else you can obtain the hair you need if you don't defeat them in one way or another. Incidentally, if you end up having to fight them with your sword they must either introduce themselves first or are wearing name tags because you somehow know their names! Maybe they are famous "Wanted Poster" style bandits who are known to all?
3- The Castle of Lost Souls itself. This section has some pretty cool encounters with Slank trying to play tricks on you as you go. We finally meet Luthor Faze here and he has barricaded himself in the library. Would that actually work? I guess demons have a hard time against doors with books stacked against them? Maybe Slank doesn't even care, as long as Faze is inside the castle somewhere, all is well from his end. Along these lines though, it was interesting that I never came across any other of the souls supposedly trapped in the castle (apparently there are many as we watch them all file out when we win). There are several ways through to the final battle with Slank and a couple of extremely useful items to be found along the way mixed in with a few red herring ones as well. I never thought I would end up fighting a bear rug in one of these books but here it is! The final battle against Slank is actually very easy provided you have picked up everything you need and visited Faze in the library. No dice rolls required even.
This book is definitely more of the find-the-true path variety as opposed to the need-good-dice-rolls type (many are both!). The former of which I much prefer. Once you've found the right path you should have no problem winning. Oh sure, there is another of those wonderful do-or-die PSI checks where failure means an instant end right near the conclusion of the book. The good news? Mr Morris has actually taken this into account here and provided a lucky charm that can be found in the village at the beginning of the adventure which provides an auto-win on any 3 rolls. I would highly recommend getting this to use for this PSI-check and if necessary for the arrow shooting against the robbers in the middle section.
Dave Morris' writing, while still pretty good, doesn't seem to be at the same level as his other books in the series. The last two books in the Golden Dragon range seem to have been rushed in my view and I wonder if there may be some story behind that in itself. If they could have combined the design of this book with the story from Curse of the Pharaoh they may have really had something.
Ranking: Overall this was a bit of a tale of two rankings. I enjoyed a lot of the design elements but the story was pretty weak and made little to no sense in several places. Thankfully, finding the right path through to victory was enjoyable enough and makes it a worthwhile adventure, if nothing to write home about. As such, its ranking is in the middle of the pack for the series.
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Hall of Famers chronologically
2 The Temple of Flame
4 The Eye of the Dragon
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3. The Lord of Shadow Keep - Score = 5.5 Tier = OK
Attempts to beat: 12
Well...that sure diminished fast. This book is a rather large drop off in quality from the first two in the series. From the standpoints of writing, design, creativity, you name it, this is a considerable step back. Author Oliver Johnson also seriously needs to take some kind of course in coming up with character and place names. Lalassa? Arkayn Darkrobe? Stentorian of Snout? Cmon man. That's some weak sauce right there. Additionally, the prologue doesnt really paint you in the best light. You are supposed to be some honorable paladin I take it but once the going gets tough in your kingdom you apparently decide it's every man for himself and blow town. Not a very heroic start!
What struck me the most is just how generic this adventure feels. Aside from possibly the lisping Lizard Man (and even that is a bit of a stretch), there are really no interesting encounters on offer here throughout the whole book. In fact, many of the encounters are quite silly. Cases in point:
- the skeletal rider that comes up from behind you right at the beginning (huh?)
- the trolls that come up from under the bridge who apparently were on their way to bowling night
- Charon the ferryman (ugh)
- the knight whose armour has rusted shut (this idea is actually kind of amusing but the fact that the evil innkeeper saw to all his needs for a year, especially from a bathroom standpoint, kind of strains credulity)
- the tiger-woman who can be vanquished by a locket of hair (ummm...ok)
- the zombies chilling in the guardroom (do they need rest?)
- the ghouls similarly enjoying their own dining hall
The obligatory helpful wizard makes an appearance here as well in the form of Shambol Eyehawk who gives you a staff, some acorns and some advice in the form of a riddle. Although I don't know why he just doesn't tell you to take the wood door instead of putting it in riddle form but whatever. Id also like to say, I think he gives you bad advice here. The riddle again tells you to take the wood door (and bypass the iron and gold doors when you come to this decision), however I think this is incorrect. The gold door is actually the one you want to take as this allows you to get the throwing dagger which can then be used to disable the dwarf in the library. Also, when using this dagger in the library, why does your character throw it at the rope holding up the chandelier causing it to drop on and kill the dwarf? Why not just throw it directly at the dwarf? Maybe you were just trying to incapacitate him but it didn't go as planned? Oops!
This adventure also seems very short, especially in contrast to the previous book in the series The Temple of Flame. I'm also not sure if I have come across a book yet that is so inconsistent with its difficulty level. Yes there are quite a few insta-deaths here, but once I had worked out the route to the final encounter with Darkrobe I was struck by how easy it was. There were no difficult battles at all and there were several spots to pick up vigour boosts (+6 at the inn, +6 in the cellar, +10 in the lab). As such, I felt powered up all the way to the end and was all but guaranteed of making it to the final two encounters, those being the ghost woman and Darkrobe himself. It is these two encounters however where the difficulty shoots up drastically.
The encounter with the ghost woman is particularly infuriating as it isn't a battle, but one of those fail-one-roll-and-you-instantly-lose type of deals. Ugh. This crap still? Enough already! The ensuing battle against Darkrobe should you pass this test is actually pretty good and is probably the highlight of the book, but again can be very difficult if you haven't done things in a particular way.
Ranking: No-brainer here as it drops to the bottom of the series so far. This adventure, while certainly competent and playable, is also incredibly forgettable and is probably hurt most of all by the downgrade in writing quality from the first two books in the series.
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4. The Eye of the Dragon - Score = 8.7 Tier = Great!
Attempts to beat: 26
Ok I think it's official. Dave Morris knows what he's doing! Hot on the heels of his previous excellent effort, The Temple of Flame, he does it again here. However, I don't think The Eye of the Dragon quite reaches the level of that one.
The inclusion of the spell system here is a very welcome addition and is similar to the one found in Citadel of Chaos whereby you start with a list of spells and cross them off as you use them. I'm not really sure why your character would only be able to use each spell once, but it does provide for an added layer of trial and error as you attempt to determine the best place in the adventure to employ each one. This type of experimentation is always great fun for me and once something like this is introduced I'm immediately hooked.
The prologue here is great and really makes you feel like a sorcerer/warrior/badass. You even rip off some good cocky quips to the scholars who summon you to undertake the mission of finding the eye. Although you may be talked up a little TOO much as it seems a bit contradictory later on when you have trouble dealing with such things as an annoying mynah bird for example after the initial buildup you are given.
The design of the book is for the most part really great. From what I could tell, there are actually two different routes you can take through the book and still win through with each route requiring you to obtain a different essential item(s). What I found fascinating about the two routes is how different they were in terms of play style. The routes appear to be:
1) Obtain the ship in a bottle along with some mysterious fabric. This is very much a find-the-narrow path type of quest which was reminiscent to me of such books as House of Hell and Appointment With FEAR. You need to acquire several needed items (acquiring one is usually essential to get the next etc) and you need to get them in a particular order as well so the book has you bouncing around between several different areas.
2) Obtain the golden apple. This route on the other hand is an exercise in tough battles and hoping the dice gods are with you. As far as I could tell this path requires you to defeat the Kraken in the mansion cellar (that thing can fit in a cellar?) and then a couple of different tough battles against more than one Kappa at a time. I have to say, looking at my map, if you were able to beat the adventure using this path (I used the first route) the book seems like it would be incredibly short. You would also miss out on pretty much all the best encounters in the adventure.
For many of my first 20 or so playthroughs I went back and forth between these two options until it seemed to me that the second route required the luck of the dice to be on your side a little too much. I then began focusing on just the first route as I believed that even though a lot of experimenting and exploring was needed I would eventually be able to unlock the path to victory (and prayed this route ALSO didn't have some ridiculous dice check or battle somewhere along the way, which fortunately it didn't).
The encounters here are pretty decent I suppose but are nowhere near as creative and interesting as the ones in The Temple of Flame by comparison. There were only a few that stood out for me:
- Lord Mantiss: Kudos to Dave Morris on this guy because boy did I ever come to hate this dirty bugger!
- Nuckalavee: Morris seems to have one of these in him in every book. A fearsome opponent who gets a great intro and whose appearance and demeanor make the nape of your neck shiver when you first meet them.
- The old man with the spider on his shoulder. This was suitably creepy and reminded me a bit of the Gonchong creature from The Island of the Lizard King. This was another situation that I would have liked to have learned a bit more backstory about what was really going on here.
The Hemophage could have been a very intense encounter if there had been some sort of cat and mouse game played out in the catacombs. As it is, he is VERY easily avoidable (as is Nuckalavee if I'm being fair about it though). Other than that, I ran into more Kappa than I cared to (including the final bad guy) and from a story standpoint this makes sense as the city is supposed to be crawling with them but still, they arent very interesting to begin with and hardly fired up my imagination during the battles.
As great as this book was overall, I did have a couple of issues with it. First, what is it with the seemingly counter-intuitive decisions you need to make in order to beat these books? To my knowledge, you can't win along route 1 above if you don't flee from the garden statue back INTO the mansion that you just came out of. Much like FLEEing from the Sulsa Doom fight in The Temple of Flame, this took me a long time to discover (although admittedly not nearly as long) and I only did so after trying many other foolish things. This counter-intuitiveness is unfortunately a recurring theme for Mr Morris' books so far in my view. Second, and I'm not really sure on this one, but there might be a City of Thieves style 1-in-3 random guess at the end of this book in the form of the choice of the three frequencies? I say might because it clearly states before you make the choice that "the last frequency is the correct one". Not having anything else to go on, I chose the last frequency listed in the options and was relieved to find this was the correct choice. I have no idea if that seemingly overly obvious clue was intentional or not but I'll give Mr Morris the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn't repeat the same mistake that marred the ending to City of Thieves.
I need to point out once again that Dave Morris' writing skills are top notch. In all three of his books now he is proving to really be a master at building atmosphere, suspense, and intensity.
Ranking: A really great adventure! The designs of the two books are fairly equal but the story and encounters here aren't quite on the same level as The Temple of Flame so it slots in at #2 so far on the Golden Dragon rankings.
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5. Curse of the Pharaoh - Score = 5.0 Tier = OK
Attempts to beat: 2
Ummm.....what the heck was that? I was greatly looking forward to this one because as I mentioned in my Temple of Terror review that the desert setting is one of my favorites. But boy, is this ever an underwhelming effort, favorite setting or not.
First off, I beat this book in one sitting. Always a big strike against any gamebook for me. It's not only easy but also incredibly short. Looking at my map, it's pretty sad. The prologue here, while not great, is actually pretty decent. It does a fair job of building up some intrigue and mystique as to what you have ahead of you as searching for and exploring a lost tomb is always a good hook. Especially if a curse is involved. Once you get underway though, there is just seemingly way too much time spent futzing around in the village at the beginning while looking for the trader Gabbad and avoiding a gang of assassins/muggers.
This village section also contains what I feel is the major failing of the book. In one of the first few sections, (you literally can't miss him) you come upon a shop in a bazaar which sells you pretty much everything you need to bypass most of the traps and pitfalls in the adventure. The flying carpet, potion of levitation, and snake bite gloves make what should have been some interesting and thought provoking situations and traps that come later foregone conclusions. Why this also fails is because you don't need to worry about what to buy and what you might need to find on your own later as you easily have enough gold to clean him out of everything he has. This really robs the book of a lot of its puzzle solving element.
After this you are quickly whisked across the desert (either with Gabbad or not, you don't need to find him), until you get to the entrance of the tomb. If you take the route that sees Gabbad accompany you, you will even come across a sphinx who will tell you exactly what items you need to win the adventure! For the record he tells you that you need both halves of the tablet (you start out with one half), a magical rope and a magical staff. So much for trial and error and experimenting. Once inside the tomb, prepare yourself for what must be the shortest and emptiest tomb crawl to date. You immediately come across some robbers who have the magical rope and they are easily dispatched. There's one item in the bag already. My one and only failed attempt at the book occurred soon after this when I found myself teleported to a chamber where a battle with the demon Ipo ensued. This is where you need the magical staff which I had missed out on by teleporting here. Although not to contradict the sphinx's advice, but I suppose the staff isn't absolutely essential, it's just highly unlikely you will win this fight without it.
So onto my second (and ultimately successful) attempt, I bypassed this teleporting business, basically just walked through a short series of easy/sometimes empty chambers and rooms picking up the magical staff in the process. There is even a bathroom with a healing pool in this sequence of rooms that pumps you back up to max vigour in case this wasn't too easy for you already. Next comes the Ipo battle again and having the staff against him this time makes this fight much easier. Once he is defeated that is pretty much it. Oh there is a 1 in 3 option given to you by the ghost of the pharaoh himself after this as to what reward you would like. The correct choice here was pretty obvious I thought (obviously you need the other half of the tablet and seeing as how it has a scepter on it....). Put the tablet in the coffin and you've won.
On the plus side, Oliver Johnson's writing here does seem to be a step up from his last book although it's still nowhere near the level of Dave Morris. Unfortunately, this book is marred by more than a few grammatical errors and I wonder if between these errors, and the brevity of this book (blink and this one is over) if this one wasn't rushed out to meet some deadline.
Ranking: This book is probably as close as one can get to being bad without ACTUALLY being bad. The atmosphere and setting are pretty good and help to just keep it out of the bad tier although that might depend on if you like the desert setting as much as I do. Unfortunately the design is very weak, the book is far too easy and not nearly enough of interest happens once you get going. From a gamebook standpoint, mundane would be a good word for it overall I think. This is easily the weakest of the series so far.
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6. Castle of Lost Souls - Score = 6.7 Tier = OK
Attempts to beat: 8
Pretty solid design. The story? Not so much. Here we are at the final Golden Dragon book and unfortunately the series goes out a bit on the average side. I found the story in this one to really not be very good. The prologue starts us out by having us aid a family in rescuing their recently departed father's soul that was hauled off by a demon (named Slank) after his death. Problem here is, the father had made a bargain with this demon for a life of prosperity and riches in exchange for said soul. By the family's own admission, the demon kept his end of the bargain and they now live quite lavishly. So, why exactly am I helping them? If this was really me I would have told them to get stuffed. A deal is a deal after all. If you can't pay the piper, don't call the tune. I'm sure there are some more cliches that would fit here but you get the point. Anyway, because I actually wanted to play the book I decided to help them.
The prologue also contains what must be one of the more random things I have encountered to date. The soul of the father (Luthor Faze) escapes Slank in his castle and is now holed up in the library where he determines that what is needed to defeat the demon is a crystal ball, a four leaf clover, a teardrop from his daughter, a fragment from a chivalrous knights armour, a strand of nun's hair and the ashes of a saint . What?? This list honestly made me laugh out loud when I read it. It's as if "quest items" was entered into a gamebook randomizer and this list is what was spat out.
The story really doesn't get all that better as you go through the adventure, but fortunately the design of the book is actually pretty interesting and helps to save the experience. The adventure can be broken up into three areas:
1- The village. Here you acquire the crystal ball, the four leaf clover, and the chivalrous knight's armour fragment (you start with the teardrop already). Finding all these is incredibly easy but the order and means by which you can acquire them can vary and there a few different things that can be tried with some interesting happenings going on, particularly in regard to the crystal ball.
2- The journey to the castle. This is a decent albeit short trip through hills and swamps where you (hopefully) acquire the saint's ashes and the nun's hair. These are a bit trickier to acquire, especially the nun's hair. There is an encounter with a band of robbers where you need to hit at least 3 of them with arrows. The odds in hitting them are in your favor but still, a couple of times I failed this and when that happens I believe you are screwed? You can still defeat them with your sword but this is a very tough fight. I'm not sure where else you can obtain the hair you need if you don't defeat them in one way or another. Incidentally, if you end up having to fight them with your sword they must either introduce themselves first or are wearing name tags because you somehow know their names! Maybe they are famous "Wanted Poster" style bandits who are known to all?
3- The Castle of Lost Souls itself. This section has some pretty cool encounters with Slank trying to play tricks on you as you go. We finally meet Luthor Faze here and he has barricaded himself in the library. Would that actually work? I guess demons have a hard time against doors with books stacked against them? Maybe Slank doesn't even care, as long as Faze is inside the castle somewhere, all is well from his end. Along these lines though, it was interesting that I never came across any other of the souls supposedly trapped in the castle (apparently there are many as we watch them all file out when we win). There are several ways through to the final battle with Slank and a couple of extremely useful items to be found along the way mixed in with a few red herring ones as well. I never thought I would end up fighting a bear rug in one of these books but here it is! The final battle against Slank is actually very easy provided you have picked up everything you need and visited Faze in the library. No dice rolls required even.
This book is definitely more of the find-the-true path variety as opposed to the need-good-dice-rolls type (many are both!). The former of which I much prefer. Once you've found the right path you should have no problem winning. Oh sure, there is another of those wonderful do-or-die PSI checks where failure means an instant end right near the conclusion of the book. The good news? Mr Morris has actually taken this into account here and provided a lucky charm that can be found in the village at the beginning of the adventure which provides an auto-win on any 3 rolls. I would highly recommend getting this to use for this PSI-check and if necessary for the arrow shooting against the robbers in the middle section.
Dave Morris' writing, while still pretty good, doesn't seem to be at the same level as his other books in the series. The last two books in the Golden Dragon range seem to have been rushed in my view and I wonder if there may be some story behind that in itself. If they could have combined the design of this book with the story from Curse of the Pharaoh they may have really had something.
Ranking: Overall this was a bit of a tale of two rankings. I enjoyed a lot of the design elements but the story was pretty weak and made little to no sense in several places. Thankfully, finding the right path through to victory was enjoyable enough and makes it a worthwhile adventure, if nothing to write home about. As such, its ranking is in the middle of the pack for the series.
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Hall of Famers chronologically
2 The Temple of Flame
4 The Eye of the Dragon
Golden Dragon lobs a couple through the door of the Hall of Fame! I have a feeling these wont be the last from Dave Morris to make it in either. He is clearly a very talented gamebook author. These two really stood head and shoulders above the rest of the series in both design and writing. Overall the series seemed to sputter out at the end, but having 2 out of the 6 be classics is still pretty darn good!
Regarding the frequencies in Eye of the Dragon, the logic I used was that the lowest would be the most stable and therefore least likely to blow up. Not sure if that was what Dave Morris was thinking but hey it worked!
ReplyDeleteHi Kieran! Your logic definitely made more sense than mine! If my thinking was correct he might as well have come out and said "pick option 3". lol.
DeleteSome of the names used suggest that you were reading the reissues rather than the 1980s editions. Some edits were made for the reissues.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part I don't know what was changed, as I only have the originals, but I do know that a fairly serious error in The Temple of Flame was fixed. When the book first came out, the PSI rolls during the Smoke Wraith encounter were on 3 dice rather than 2, so even a player with the maximum possible PSI had only a 3/8 chance of succeeding at the first roll, and under 1/10 odds of making the second one.
Castle of Lost Souls was adapted from an earlier version of the adventure that was serialised in White Dwarf magazine. The original is now available on Dave Morris' blog, and differs from the Golden Dragon variant enough that you might want to check it out even though you've had a pretty thorough go at the book.
Agreed with Ed. If memory serves, the beginning to the original version of "Curse of the Pharaoh" carried a disclaimer that said this it was an extremely hazardous adventure. Also, "Temple of Flame" just got old, failing time after time after time. 49 times you tried? Sheez, I give up after about 20 or maybe 25 if the story is engaging. That one was just way overbalanced in favour of the book, not the player.
ReplyDeleteBut the series is quite good. I loved CotV and LoSK and really appreciated the spells in EotD. CoLS wasn't too bad, either. Wish there were more, even though the PSI / Agility were kind of initially low.