Grailquest

                                                            RANKINGS 

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1. The Castle of Darkness - Score = 7.0   Tier = Good

Attempts to Beat: 8

Ask and ye shall receive! I had only recently been speculating that the King Arthur mythos would be prime real estate for a gamebook series, and now it appears I will get to play my wish. Whether it will ultimately provide the experience I was seeking is still up for debate, but this book was a good start. The premise for the adventure is quite unique, as we do not play as King Arthur, or Merlin, or any of his Knights, or even as someone from that time period. We in fact play as "ourselves", in an inspired opening that reveals the physical book itself is actually a spell that was written in the past by Merlin, and whoever reads it will be magically transported back in time to inhabit the body of a youngster named "Pip" (although it had me wondering what happens to the consciousness of the actual Pip. Or is the body just an empty husk until you arrive in it? Anyway....).  Naturally, Merlin is bringing you back in time to the Arthurian age because he needs your assistance. It seems that the famous Queen Guinevere has been kidnapped (or soon will be, as Merlin can use astrology to predict the future) by an evil wizard known as Ansalom. Up until now, Ansalom has been more of a nuisance than anything, blighting crops and stealing pigs, but now in a move that reminded me of the bad guy's plan in the 1995 King Arthur movie "First Knight", has decided to kidnap the Queen, presumably to force Arthur to acquiesce to his demands. Boy, Ansalom's evil deeds sure escalated fast! With an exceptionally powerful contingent of famous knights at his command, not to mention a master wizard of his own in Merlin, I thought the reason given as to why Arthur would agree to send a lone kid off on his own to rescue the Queen to make sense in a strange gamebook way. Because Arthur knows that Merlin can see the future, he trusts him when he says that sending you off on the quest alone is the proper course of action to take should the rescue of the Queen hope to be successful. (And because there needs to be a reason as to why one lone adventurer is being sent off on a quest when a whole squadron might have made far more sense). So off you set by yourself, to infiltrate Ansalom's castle, kill the evil wizard, and rescue the Queen. In that regard, the quest itself is very basic gamebook stuff, although in fairness this book was published in 1984, when perhaps the hunt-down-the-evil-wizard trope wasn't yet starting to show its age. 

As far as the game system goes, the only attribute you really need to worry about is your Life Points. These are randomly generated before you begin, but you actually get to roll the dice three times and then pick the best of the three in determining how much Life you start with. I have never been a fan of random stat generation in gamebooks, so giving you three tries to get a decent total is something I greatly welcomed, and wish I saw implemented more often in gamebooks. The combat system too is simple. Everything else being equal, both you and your opponent take turns rolling two dice, and require a 6 or higher to hit (maybe? More on this later). This "to hit" number can be modified depending on the weapon you are using, with different creatures you encounter also being given various numbers "to hit" you depending upon their lethality. How much damage you do on a successful hit is determined by how far over the "to hit" number you rolled, with higher being better. Damage can also be mitigated for both you and your opponents depending upon any armour being worn. I found this whole system, while simple as already stated, to also be enjoyable and effective. 

Or at least, I would have found the combat system effective had you not been provided with some overly powerful weapons and armour right off the hop. Seriously, you begin this adventure absolutely kitted the eff out! Merlin provides you with a talking sword, Excalibur Junior (EJ for short), that makes it incredibly easy for you to hit your opponent, and also causes extra damage to boot. In addition to the sword and some damage reducing armour, you are also given two handfuls of powerful spells to use. The Firefinger spell seemed overpowered to me, as it does 10 points of damage, but more importantly, also automatically hits, not even requiring a roll to do so. And the Fireball spell, which does a massive 75 points of damage, is clearly only meant to be used in the final battle. This latter spell requires you to roll a 6 or higher to hit with it, but as long as you do that a couple of times in a row, the final battle is over right quick. We are not done there however, as Merlin also provides you with a boatload of healing potions and salves. The sheer amount of doses contained in these potions felt like complete overkill. I guess Merlin doesn't have that much confidence in us after all!        

Additionally, the adventure introduces a few mechanics that I don't recall seeing before, so full credit is given for these ideas. However, the jury is still somewhat out for me on a couple of these, because the way they are implemented is a bit spotty. Outlining the more interesting ideas on offer here:

-First, the rules advise that once you have killed a creature, it then remains dead for any subsequent playthroughs. On the surface of it this feels like something positive, but the more I played, the more I found it made each attempt seem less meaningful. If I only need to defeat a creature once, then why not just pour everything I have into every fight? I might as well use my ridiculously powered Fireballs on the first enemy I come across (sayonara Mean Jake!), because now said enemy won't be there next time, and I can use my powerful spells all over again on the next baddie I come across, burning all combatants to a cinder one by one as I progress through the adventure. This also results in a lot of pointless page flipping to arrive back where you died (not having to fight anything on the way), and had me wondering why I wasn't just given the option to respawn where I died instead, because the effect felt much the same. 

-Second, and in probably the best idea of the whole book, there is a dream world that can be entered should you wish to attempt to recover some Life points. This is a wonderful idea, as should you decide to try this and pass an initial roll, you then roll 2 dice and consult a chart at the back of the book that determines which dream you have. This can lead to you regaining some Life points, or possibly backfire and see you lose some, or perhaps even die. The best part though is that the dreams themselves are fun and entertainingly written. You could devise a whole gamebook, or even a series, based around a premise such as this. Unfortunately, author J.H. Brennan then shoots himself in the foot by making it wholly unnecessary to visit the dream world at all, because he provides you with such a crazy amount of healing items with which to begin the quest.

- And third, we have the "Bribery" and "Friendly Reactions". As you make your way through the adventure, certain creatures you meet can actually be bribed, which allows you to bypass the ensuing fight. You need to have acquired a certain amount of gold to even make the attempt, and then need to pass a dice check to see if the creature accepts your offer. This is a great idea too, and yet another I would like to see tried in some other series as well (and considering the mercenary nature of many evil doers, especially the foot soldiers, I am wondering why I have not seen it before). You are told though that if you fail the dice check, you still lose the gold you offered, and must then fight as normal. But if I win the ensuing fight, would I not just take my gold back? The Friendly Reaction works somewhat similar, in that if given the option to try, you can attempt to make friends with the creature in question, although the dice roll required to do this makes it unlikely (though not impossible) that you will succeed. Thematically I don't think this works near as well as the Bribery, but it was still a fun inclusion that gives you another possible option for bypassing what could be a difficult fight. I will say though, that neither the Bribery or Friendly Reaction options are remotely necessary to beat this adventure, as combat in this book is heavily in your favour to begin with. Still, these options could prove strategically interesting if implemented again in future books.    

So once we have gotten up to speed on all the above rules for the book, we head off towards Ansalom's castle to complete our quest. The successful path through the adventure turns out to be quite short, likely owing to the book only containing 156 sections. This surprised me, as being a more well-known gamebook series, I thought this book would contain more. I will say though that a very nice job is done in hiding this lower section count and giving you your money's worth, as the route through the adventure requires you to locate a door that is quite well hidden (at least, I thought it was anyway). You thus make your way through the castle, having encounters with various creatures and individuals, possibly picking up some interesting and helpful items along the way, until you finally arrive at the final fight against Ansalom himself. I must add though, that for the most part I never felt like I was really navigating through a castle, as most of the adventure seems to take place in the typical underground lair common to a lot of early gamebooks. The illustration of the castle sure looked impressive, so why am I always navigating through caves and caverns? Ever heard of a window? Ah well. Thanks to your advantageous equipment and spells, combat in the adventure isn't much of a problem. That isn't to say the book is necessarily easy though, because there are many deadly traps scattered throughout that can put an end to you rather quickly (and I feel like I must have fallen victim to all of these at one time or another!) Once Ansalom is defeated and the Queen rescued, you make your way back to Camelot to a hero's welcome, and are rewarded with a very in-depth and amusing epilogue.    

That last sentence above brings me to the strength of the adventure, that being the writing, which has a witty charm that is present all throughout. And while humour plays a big part here, it never goes into the realm of sheer lunacy (no vampire apples here thankfully), and thus maintains a feeling of danger and tension that your quest could end in a grisly fashion at any moment. If I had one small quibble it would be in the amount of times that you are asked a rhetorical question while being referred to by your name. Right Pip? Got that Pip? This began to slightly annoy after awhile, but again it's a small thing, and other than this, I found the adventure to be very entertainingly written. I almost hesitate to mention another of Brennan's gamebook series, the awful "Sagas of the Demonspawn", lest my blood begin to boil anew, but even in that one the writing was at least good, so you can tell Brennan is a true author first and foremost, and a gamebook designer second (or third...or fourth...). 

And on that subject of gamebook design, there are unfortunately some negatives here that bear mentioning. Some of which include:

- The rules state that should either you or your enemy be brought down to 5 Life Points, you are not killed but knocked unconscious instead. This whole rule threw me for a loop. What happens if I get knocked unconscious but not killed? Is it still game over? I guess so, but then why even bother with the distinction? You are also asked after each fight whether you killed the enemy (turn to the next indicated section) or if the enemy killed you (turn to section 14), but an option is rarely given should either of you have been knocked out instead. It is as if Brennan put this in the rules, but then never gave it a second thought shortly after the adventure began.  

-  There is also at least one instance where the rules state that in order to hit your enemy, you need to score HIGHER than a 6 with two dice, while on the rules card at the back of the book it states you need to roll a 6 OR HIGHER to score a hit. Doesn't sound like much of a difference, but becomes important with such a commonly rolled number, and also with how the number you roll factors into how much damage you do. Speaking of damage and Life Points, the gamebook also includes an Experience system. For each enemy you defeat or puzzle you solve, you are awarded 1 Experience Point. Should you then manage to get 20 Experience Points, you are granted a permanent ONE point increase to your initial Life score. Wow! One whole point? For a system that can see you have a starting Life Point score of anywhere from 8 to 48 (and allows you to roll for it several times anyway), this seems a rather chintzy reward indeed. You are told though that you can carry a maximum of 10 permanent Life Point bonuses from book to book, so who knows, maybe this will become useful in the future, but for this adventure there appears to be no point to it. The book also never reminds you when to add an Experience Point, which seems like it should have been something very easy to include. 

- There is additionally a very useful item that can only be obtained should you pass a "poem challenge". This occurs when a creature asks you to write out a poem for them, making it as many lines long as you like, and only requiring that each pair of lines rhymes. The book even provides you a blank page on which to write out your poem (and I wonder how many ridiculous, awful, or outright dirty poems have been written down in copies of this book over the years. "There once was a man from Nantucket....."). This is certainly yet another unique idea, the only problem is whether you pass the challenge and win the item comes down to an incredibly random condition. Also, once you know what that condition is, you will obviously only ever fail this challenge once at most. So while I appreciate the attempt, this doesn't really work too well. 

Not being much of a poet myself, and in case you were wondering what I wrote, on my initial failed attempt I decided to use something once spoken by the legendary English comedian (and a personal favourite of my dad's)....."The lad himself"....Tony Hancock:

 

"Oh wonderous moon who shines its beam,

Across the pine trees of East Cheam.

I'm very pleased to see your light,

Coming out tomorrow night?" 

It appears I had more than a few problems with the book as mentioned throughout the review, so how did this entry, albeit barely, make into the Good tier? Well, somewhat amazingly, none of these negatives really detracted from the experience, with the possible exception of the "everything remains dead" aspect, and even that one isn't a disaster by any stretch. Just about everything else were either missed opportunities, or "what was the point of even including that?" situations more than anything.   

Ranking: In a way, this gamebook reminded me of Flight From the Dark from the "Lone Wolf" series. Not in the adventure itself or the writing, which is vastly different, but in that while it is not spectacular by any means, it is a solid beginning and lays a good foundation for the rest of the series. There are more than a few intriguing ideas introduced here that unfortunately aren't put to use as well as they could have been. It also felt a bit vague and sloppy to me in some places (and Brennan once again apparently thinks it is possible to score a 1 when rolling two dice), but this is at least mostly overcome by the witty and charming writing. I hope Brennan decides to tighten the screws a bit and clean up some of the rules moving forward for once, because if he does, this could lead to a very entertaining series.

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2. The Den of Dragons - Score = 6.8   Tier = OK

Attempts to Beat: 26

On to the second adventure in the series, and this one begins almost the same as the previous book, with the setup being that Merlin has cast a spell forward in time so that whoever happens to be reading the book will be drawn back into the body of young Pip during the time of King Arthur in order to assist Merlin with some quest. (And it just occurred to me that this Pip guy is going to get rich and famous without ever actually DOING anything himself isn't he?) This time the quest is even more dangerous than the last, as an evil Brass Dragon has been terrorizing the countryside, and Merlin tasks us with travelling to the dragon's lair, which happens to be the incredibly dangerous "Dragon Cavern", in order to hunt him down and kill him. Oh, and apparently the Brass Dragon was able to cross over into our world through a gate that leads to "The Ghastly Kingdom of the Dead", and we are additionally tasked with closing that gate as well before anything else nasty can come through. There is a running gag all throughout the prologue that I quite enjoyed, which involves Merlin acting very bitter and resentful due to the fact that Arthur has docked his pension for allowing this dragon to roam unchecked. So much so that instead of providing you with equipment for the quest, you are required to buy your equipment from Merlin using your own money (with the amount of money you have being determined by random roll before you begin) because Merlin now needs to start raising cash to pay for his own retirement. Brilliant! 

Once you have bought any equipment, weapons, or armour that catches your eye from a varied list (and none of it turns out to be required, especially if you have beaten the first book and carried some things over), you are also introduced to an expanded magic system. Pip is provided the use of ten different spells, with each one costing 3 Life points to cast whether the spell is successful or not. In order for the spell to work, you need to roll a 7 or higher on two dice, and doing so then allows the chosen spell to take effect. Much like with the starting equipment and weapons list though, I found most of the spells to be unnecessary, with the exception of the Fireball and Invisibility spells, and even those are only really needed for the final fight against the Brass Dragon itself. The main reason being that your overpowered magical sword EJ returns, and along with your damage reducing armour, allows you to quickly dispatch most enemies you come across. Needing to roll a 7 or higher to succeed with a spell is not a gimme, so instead of risking having it fail, I found it far better to just stick with EJ. 

You set off in search of the Dragon Cavern by heading north. Fortunately however, Merlin has provided you a map (free of charge this time) of the route to the Cavern. Not so fortunately though, this has to be about the most useless map since The Forest of Doom. The map shows four different routes north, and you just need to pick one at random and start walking. In these opening sections, I started to get a bit concerned, as events are constantly being determined by random roll, but thankfully this becomes less prevalent after the beginning (although still present here and there). After this opening sequence you will find yourself entering the stockade enclosed cursed village of Stonemarten, and the adventure gets a lot better at this point. Exploration of the village is done by providing you with a full page map of all the various buildings contained within it, with each building having a section number written on it (and this mechanic has been a staple of some other Brennan gamebooks I have played). You can then choose to explore the buildings in any order you wish, which is something I like as it allows you to "progress rapidly to unexplored areas" as the saying goes. The village was a lot of fun to explore, with the exception of an annoying insta-death for choosing to merely step inside a particular building. With a couple of exceptions, most of the structures don't contain anything helpful, but there are several interesting encounters to be had here, including a devious trick where you think you have found the exit to the village, only to be dumped back outside at the start (I guess technically that WAS an exit). You will want to explore thoroughly too, because those couple of exceptions mentioned earlier will see you uncover some incredibly useful powerups. Once you finally determine how to exit the village in the proper direction though is what almost caused me to hurl the book against the wall, because the only way to do so is to pass a random roll. Not only that, but it's a random roll that is not in your favour, and failing it leads to instant death. Argh! I failed this one roll more times than I statistically should have, and over half my failed attempts at the adventure came right here. Now, there is an item (the Luckstone) that you could have acquired in the first book that would help with this roll, but in a bit of silliness you only get one shot at getting and keeping it no matter how many times you play that book, and I did not pick up this item on my victorious playthrough of that adventure. That would have helped greatly, and as such, the attempts needed to complete this book are obviously more indicative of a player who either didn't get it, or didn't play the first book at all. And I have to ask, but why not give the player the option of buying the Luckstone (or any other items that could have been obtained in the first book) from the opening shopping list?  

Once you finally escape Stonemarten, it is a short trip to Dragon Cavern, where you then proceed inside and make your way through tunnels and caves in search of the Brass Dragon. Mapping out the Caverns sometimes didn't make much sense, with tunnels linking up where they clearly shouldn't based on prior explorations and this can start to become a bit of an annoyance. Several of the creatures found in the Cavern can prove to be deadly due to their special attacks, which can poison you or turn you to stone on a successful hit or two. The encounters here include a Medusa and a Minotaur, which had me wondering if I was now playing a gamebook set in ancient Greece as opposed to Arthurian England, but the Minotaur particularly proved to be something of a highlight personality wise, as he wants you to obtain Merlin's assistance in having his bull's head fixed, which he believes came about because he ate too many hamburgers. There is also a strange encounter with a group of Dwarves who appear to be working on a large modern day metal machine, but I never came across anywhere where it was explained what this was. (Was there an angle here I missed?) The fight against these Dwarves involved a lot of pointless dice rolling, but at least you only have to do this once, as per the rules whatever is killed stays dead on subsequent attempts. However, the text here clearly indicates you need to kill the Dwarves, even stepping over their dead bodies afterwards, so does that mean the "knocked unconscious" rule is removed here? And I'm still not really sure what happens if I were to ever get knocked unconscious myself. Then what? I feel like this should have been better explained for each fight in the adventure. Anyway, once you make it past the Dwarves and figure out how to operate their machine by pulling levers at random (another Brennan gamebook staple), it's on to the final stretch and the confrontation with the Brass Dragon, which was a boss battle I enjoyed due to its design, if even the Dragon itself is given no personality, and is basically treated as just another beast to kill (albeit a very powerful one). Once you defeat the Dragon, you meet up again with Merlin who has his pension restored (yay!), but are reminded that you forgot to seal the gate that the Dragon came through, and I'm assuming from the title of the next book that it will be the premise of that adventure.          

With that all said, contrary to my hope from the last book that might see Brennan tighten up the rules, I think it has in fact gotten even a bit worse here. Some additional situations that I came across in addition to those mentioned above included:

- As much as I enjoyed the personality of the Minotaur himself, there is a fight against him here that had me scratching my head a bit. It is a "friendly" fistfight to see who can inflict 10 points of damage on the other first. In that case, your sword is obviously not used, and I assume using magic is out too as that would be rather unsporting of you. However, what about your armour? Does that protect you? If the Minotaur is aiming for your face, I wouldn't think so. If armour doesn't factor into it though, then the fight is essentially a 50/50 proposition as to who will win, and you absolutely need to win this in order to obtain an item essential to completing the adventure. Should you lose the fistfight, the Minotaur graciously still gives you a reward, but unfortunately not the key that you need to proceed. Interestingly, should you indeed lose the fight, you can only claim this reward the next time you die, at which point you turn to a section number provided by the Minotaur in order to claim your prize before restarting at that spot. The text mentions the contents of a casket here, which is in fact the location of the needed key, but then provides you with items that were located within the Minotaur's treasure chests, and not the casket. This whole situation then is a bit of a cluster, and I think this was flubbed by Brennan. And even if you do lose the fistfight, what happens if you leave and return to this room? The Minotaur obviously isn't dead, so can you just leave and keep returning until you eventually beat him? 

- In a similar situation of gamebook goofery, there is a room near the end where you need to break into a chest in order to obtain an orb, which is also essential for winning. You may have learned earlier that a magic sword can aid you in cutting through the spider-like webs inside the chest, but if you pick the option to use your magic sword EJ, you are then told your weapon gets stuck and is lost for good. Meanwhile, if you picked the option to use any other weapon that you may have, you successfully cut through the webs. So, these two options seem to be erroneously switched around. Oops! 

- When using the orb upon entering the final cavern, you need to make a random roll. This roll is in your favour, but failing it causes you to be sent back to the very beginning of the Caverns themselves. This seems a bit pointless, because you know exactly how to get back here, which should only take you a few moments. Although maybe it doesn't take a few moments, because the one thing that tripped me up in this situation was do the Dwarves (and any other creatures you may have killed) remain dead? The rules state that enemies remain dead on repeated playthroughs, which this isn't because you didn't actually die, you just got transported back to the start of the Caverns. It seems kind of dumb to kill them all over again in this case, and I still don't know how this was to be handled. Does anyone have Brennan's phone number?

- I have already mentioned the "everything remains dead" rule, but I don't think I have yet touched upon the additional rule that states on repeated playthroughs, all treasure is also lost. Does that mean lost on that attempt only (which would make sense), or lost for good and therefore cannot be claimed on any future attempt? And what exactly constitutes "treasure"? Gold and gems surely, but do items count as well? That could obviously be extremely problematic if an essential item was lost for good on repeated playthroughs, so I'm going to go ahead and say that is not the intended case (but who knows). 

- The final battle against the Brass Dragon was well thought out for the most part, although you are almost certainly going to have to hit it with at least one of your Fireballs. I say at least one, because the rules governing Fireball use had me reading it over and over for clarification. First off, you will need to roll a 7 or better for the spell to be successful (and by the way, if you roll under a 7 and the spell fails, do you still get to attack with your sword that round?). Once you achieve the needed 7 or higher, you now have generated two Fireballs, one in each hand. However, the rules say you can only throw it once successfully, and the other can be carried forward. Huh? Carried forward where? Do I have an active Fireball in my hand until my next encounter? Do I need to roll for it again the next time? Fortunately, thanks to the Dragon-damage enhancing procedure that EJ underwent earlier in the adventure, along with my trusty-but-not-rusty armour, I was able to beat the Dragon first try. Thank goodness too, as I was dreading having to make the roll to escape from Stonemarten who knows how many more times. 

- And while not really a rules issue, the Dreamtime mechanic makes a return in this adventure, working exactly the same as it did in the previous book. And when I say exactly, I'm not kidding. Once again I never even remotely needed to think about using Dreamtime to recover Life points, thanks to a ludicrously overpowered healing item found in the village of Stonemarten. But more than that, it was a huge downer to check out the Dreamtime entries anyway for entertainment purposes, only to find that the EXACT same dreams have been used that were found in book 1. This mechanic was one of the better ideas (in theory) from that first book, so to see it copied over verbatim when so many possibilities exist here feels incredibly lazy. Although, maybe Brennan knew no one would likely need to actually use this, so why bother putting any work into it. A real bummer. 

Despite the above, I was once again able to fiddle my way through these issues, using what I thought was the most likely interpretation I could come up with for any grey areas, and generally enjoyed myself even if it can grind things to a halt when you need to stop for several minutes and try to figure out how something is supposed to work. The writing helps greatly with this, and is very entertaining all throughout yet again. Lines such as "Bravely you step on the stairway. Bravely you slip and fall" gave me a good grin. I'm not sure for how long Brennan's writing will be able to compensate for some of the issues the books may have, but so far it is doing a fine job in that respect.    

Ranking: This is a mostly fun adventure. I thought it was better written than even the previous book, and the encounters were slightly more interesting, although the overall plot and villain were not quite as good. I might have even scored it a bit higher than the first book had it not been for some of the vague rules, along with the one frustrating required roll to escape the village. The Dreamtime mechanic was once again almost totally wasted, which is a real pity. I concluded my review of book 1 by saying that if the rules were tightened up, Brennan could really be on to something. Now, that optimism has been replaced by a nagging worry that this aspect may only get worse as the series goes on. Still, an overall good-to-decent start through two books though, and I am looking forward to seeing what design choices are brought to the table in the next adventure.

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3. The Gateway of Doom - Score = 7.2   Tier = Good

Attempts to Beat: 12

As expected, book 3 picks up where book 2 left off, with Merlin assigning Pip the task of closing the gate to the Ghastly Kingdom of the Dead. And that's pretty much the whole plot, at least to start. Where exactly is the gate located and how are we supposed to close it? Merlin has no clue. He merely suggests that you just begin walking, and when confronted with a choice of direction, choose the more unpleasant option, as the gate is likely located somewhere unpleasant. Thanks pal! Before we set off though, Merlin decides to make sure that we are completely powered up to the hilt, by providing us a second set of spells to use in addition to the first set we have had at our disposal for the previous two books. I have to be honest, I never used any of the spells during the course of playing the adventure until the very final battle, because your combination of magical sword and dragonskin armour prove so incredibly effective in combat. The adventure also introduces an encumbrance system, whereby you roll dice to determine your "Speed" attribute, and this determines how many extra items you get to take with you from a provided list at the beginning of the quest. You can choose to go over your limit and take more items, but if you do so then you are required to fight at a disadvantage. An interesting idea for sure, but again not really needed, as I only found a few of the listed items particularly helpful, so always had enough room to take what I needed. And so, armed to the teeth yet again, we head off in search of the gate. 

The adventure opens with a random roll, as Merlin teleports you out of Camelot, and the result of the roll determines where you begin, with two possible outcomes. One of these outcomes skips you ahead to a village near where the gate is located, while the other will teleport you to a small desert island populated only by a couple of gorillas. This whole sequence is very weird, with just about any wrong move resulting in instant death, and with the gorillas attempting to cajole you into playing with a spinning top they have squirreled away in their nest. O-kayyy. Once this is navigated, you will find yourself materializing in the middle of a strange game being played among some villagers. The game is some sort of combination of cricket and polo, (and perhaps served as some early inspiration for quidditch in the "made-up game" sweepstakes). At this point, I was not optimistic about the adventure, as up to now it was one of those gamebooks that had strange and random stuff going on with no real explanation for anything. It slowly starts to get better though, as from here you move on to a more conventional village setting, and get to explore a spooky church where one of the characters from the first two books, the Poetic Fiend, makes another appearance. The task he has for you this time is rather pointless, as you don't really need to do anything, but that fits this particular character I suppose. (And his poetry itself is actually greatly improved here). There is a rather jarring moment when you exit the crypts beneath the church through a tunnel, and find yourself emerging outside right in front of the gate to the Ghastly Kingdom of the Dead. (Just how long WAS that tunnel anyway?). Well that was easy, game over right? Not quite, as you still need to enter the gate in order to find out how to close it, and this is where the best part of the adventure begins.   

Upon entering the gate, you are instructed to turn to one of several maps located at the back of the book, and these maps show you the interior layout of the Kingdom (which is basically a dungeon at this point). There are 3 descending levels to the interior, and the map for each level is laid out in on a grid, with both large and small rooms accessible by corridors. From the starting point, you move along your chosen corridor in order to explore any rooms you wish. You don't just have free rein however, as the book introduces a Wandering Monster system. After moving a certain number of grid squares along a corridor, you are required to roll two dice and consult a Wandering Monster chart at the back of the book to see what monster you encounter, if any. At first this felt like a great idea, as it spiced up the travel and provided some contextually appropriate reasons as to why you might want to think twice about trying to reach that far off room. However, the whole process gets old fast once you start meeting the exact same creatures over and over, and at least for me, there seemed very little chance of losing to these creatures thanks to your powerful weapons, and any damage you took could instantly be healed anyway thanks to your plethora of medicinal options. Thankfully, and somewhat anti-climatically, there is an item you can pick up halfway through the adventure that can render the Wandering Monster encounters moot from that point forward, so maybe  Brennan realized that some players might quickly get tired of this mechanic. And while I can appreciate the work and creativity that went into the maps themselves, mapping out an adventure is one of my favorite aspects to gamebooking, and this robs you of that to a not insignificant degree. Still, if I had large size maps with a token to move along the grid squares akin to a boardgame, the immersion would have been quite impressive.   

As mentioned, the interior of the Kingdom is divided into 3 levels, and the first level I found to be far and away the highlight. The movement and Wandering Monster system is still fresh at this point, and the rooms themselves offer a very nice mix of rewards and dangers, along with several creative encounters. There was one room full of ants though where I highly recommend you bring along a certain item available to you at the beginning, otherwise the amount of dice rolling you may need to do to fight off all the ants could be insane. Most of the rest of the encounters are of the light hearted but fun variety, including a Little Old Lady Monster, a Djinn, and a "Nerd" (was this one a stab at gamebook players?). The Djinn in fact can be befriended as an ally should you have a specific item from one of the previous books, "and a powerful ally he is" as Yoda would say. Should you not need to use him, I could see him coming in very handy in a future adventure, assuming he can be carried forward. Unfortunately, there is another do-or-die roll to be made on this level, if at least slightly in your favour this time. Thankfully there is an item that can be obtained later that allows you to start at a previously visited section a certain amount of times should you die, which comes in extremely handy to avoid this roll on subsequent playthroughs (where the heck was this item last book?). You also soon learn that the gate has been opened by the evil Black Knight of Avalon, so now you at least know who you need to hunt down

Eventually you will find the stairway that leads you down into the next level, and for as much fun as Level 1 was, Level 2 is pretty lame. There is an incredibly weak and boring maze to navigate here, where upon exiting, you will find that item mentioned earlier that allows you to skip Wandering Monsters moving forward. Other than that, Level 2 contains many creatures that I am not sure exactly what they are supposed to be, nor does the level have anything particularly intriguing or noteworthy going on in it. You will probably locate the exit to the next level much quicker than you did in the previous level, and you proceed down on your way. 

Which brings us to Level 3, the final level in the Kingdom, and a bit of a mixed bag. While the level itself is quite large (the map for this level actually folds out of the book), the downside is that it contains certain rooms, that when entered, magically teleport you to a different room in the Kingdom, sometimes on one of the previous two levels! While you can find an item that can block this teleportation, until you do so this process is deeply frustrating and annoying. On the positive side though there are some fun encounters to be had here, including one where you fight a Math Teacher. (Didn't anyone else like math in school? The math teachers were often my favorites). There are also a couple of puzzles to be found here, with one in particular given by a group of Dwarves that had me putting that math knowledge to the test, as I drew out my solution to help me visualize it. I will also say that the adventure ends on a high note, with the final battle against the evil Black Knight a well thought out confrontation. The Black Knight has an array of defenders in front of him, but should you have performed certain actions earlier in the adventure, you can whittle these down considerably. Once you have defeated his guards, the Black Knight himself is a powerful opponent, and it's probably going to come down to whether you can hit him with your Fireballs or not (although if you picked up a magical Fireball Wand elsewhere in the level, he really shouldn't pose too much of a problem). Once he is defeated, Pip is triumphant, and you are sent on to the victory section, which was much shorter this time.      

The writing in the adventure is once again top-notch, although not without a couple of moments that might bring a grimace. There is one room where you meet some creatures (Golls), and are told that one of them "looks Korean". And if "he is as Korean as he looks, he probably knows karate". Huh? Brennan also appears to take a shot at the Welsh at one point, when a snake talks to you and you are told it speaks "with a Welsh accent admittedly, but you can't expect snakes to be civilized". Ouch! Shot fired! I know Brennan himself is Irish, and for myself not being from that part of the globe, perhaps there is some rivalry between the countries I am not aware of (good-natured or otherwise). I also seem to recall Brennan taking a shot at the Scots in one of the previous books. Or perhaps this is all just modern sensibilities, which I do my best in trying not to apply to 80's media.   

And finally, as if in answer to my complaint in the last review, the Dreamtime mechanic returns again, and lo and behold my wish has been granted, and a whole new set of dreams have been added! Once again should you wish to attempt to heal through sleeping, you roll the dice and consult the list to see which dream you get, and once again these are all highly entertaining. The problem though, is that also once again there is absolutely no need to do this, because the healing options you have at your disposal are crazy, especially if you are carrying over items from the previous books. Numerous healing potions and salves are given to you before you begin, and I presume I get to carry over the Snuffbox that I obtained last adventure? That item alone is worth its weight in healing gold.  

Ranking: All the entries so far have been very close in quality, but I would say this is the best one in the series to date, although not without some faults. The writing is as strong as ever, although the story and encounters were a bit stranger than others in the series up to this point. The strength of the adventure comes in exploring the 3 Levels of the Kingdom, plotting out your path through the corridors, and discovering what entertainment the next room may provide. The dice rolling can become somewhat tedious in places, and being teleported back to an earlier area of the Kingdom can get very annoying, but the final battle was well laid out, giving you an edge had you done certain things earlier in the quest, but still giving you at least a small chance at victory even if you hadn't, which I always appreciate. Overall, a fun and above-average effort. 

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4. Voyage of Terror - Score = 5.6   Tier = OK

Attempts to Beat: 49

On to book 4, and what I found to be far and away the most difficult entry in the series yet, but also the most unique. This adventure begins by making you believe it is going to be about repelling a Saxon invasion, as the prologue explains how the Saxons have invaded England, and how King Arthur has had his mighty sword Excalibur stolen. Merlin thus sets about to bring you, the reader, back in time once more to inhabit the body of Pip in order to help with both those problems. After this initial setup however, the adventure is thrown on its ear, as while casting the spell to bring you back, Merlin is conked on the head by a bucket, causing him to botch the spell. So, instead of waking up in Arthurian England in the body of Pip, you wake up in a different body of a youngster aboard a ship in ancient Greece. I have suspected that author J.H. Brennan had a fetish for this time period, as previous books contained mythic Greek creatures such as the Medusa and the Minotaur despite being set in middle-ages Britain. The setting here works very well though, and I was initially very pleased to find this is a naval adventure, as I feel that setting is rife with gamebook opportunities, and is one I have only seen rarely. This feeling was eventually tempered upon learning that the majority of the adventure takes place on land, but still, it was a fresh and optimistic beginning. 

When you wake up in the body of this new character in the bowels of a Greek sailing vessel, the first thing you need to do is take over the ship from the pirates currently in command of it. You quickly learn that the ship itself is in fact the Argo, the famous ship belonging to Jason and the Argonauts, who are languishing within cells in the lower decks of the ship when the adventure begins, having been locked up by the pirates. This opening sequence then involves you exploring the lower decks to gather weapons and equipment, freeing Jason and his crew, then finally confronting and defeating the pirates and retaking the Argo. Once this is done, the real adventure begins, as you now determine to find a way to travel forwards in time and re-enter the body of Pip in order to help against the Saxon invasion. This plot point doesn't really make a lot of sense, even for a Grailquest book. Are we really expecting to find a way to travel forward in time by travelling around ancient Greece? Wouldn't we just be better served by waiting for Merlin to realize his mistake and bring us back into Pip himself? Of course, I guess that wouldn't make for much of a gamebook, so exploring some Greek islands is what's on the docket! This adventure swings wildly between aspects I enjoyed very much, and others that pissed me off. I will break up this review by dividing it into what I liked, and what I didn't like, below.      

The Good

The Sea Chart - As is common in Brennan's gamebooks, you are provided with a map of an area contained within the adventure, with numbered sections for various mini-areas, and can then explore them in any order you choose. In this case, after retaking the Argo from the pirates, you are provided a map of the sea that your ship is currently sailing, and can choose from among many different islands to visit. From the standpoint of sailing a ship on the high seas, this works wonderfully, and helps to immerse the player in their role of sea captain, along with greatly helping from a game perspective by allowing you to determine for yourself the most desired order in which to visit the locations, and carefully plan out your optimal route. Without allowing the player to determine their own path through the islands, and because of events that will be described in the "bad" section following, I believe the book would be nigh impossible otherwise.

Item hunt - This is a tried and true item hunt, and this aspect is handled very well. It won't take you long to discover that you need to collect 10 tiny golden keys in order to progress through a locked door on one of the islands to be able to proceed to the endgame. These keys are scattered among the various islands, with some being very easy to collect and others made quite difficult. It doesn't really make a lot of sense as to how all the keys ended up where they did, and some of them are found in strange places, but this probably had to be done in order to have you fully explore all the islands. It's not just the keys though, as there are helpful items scattered throughout as well, such as a one-use-only knife that can insta-kill any enemy, or a scroll that can turn them into an almost helpless pig.  Those last couple of items you are going to need badly too, as they make possible the defeat of some of the more crazily overpowered foes you can come across that need to be defeated in order to obtain some of the keys.

Rule changes - A couple of the rules have been updated for this adventure that for the most part improve the game. First, because of the nature of how the story begins, you are not actually in the body of Pip, and therefore do not have access to all the items you may have collected from the previous books. You do not have access to your magical sword EJ, nor your dragonskin jacket, which contributes to making the majority of the combats this time more challenging and exciting. Similarly, you do not begin the game with the oodles of healing items like you have done in previous books, which makes the seeking out of helpful items and improved weapons and armour all the more necessary. Second, the rule from the previous books that state anything killed on a playthrough remains dead in future attempts is modified here. Now, anything killed comes back on subsequent attempts, but only with half the Life points it had originally. I think this is a good compromise from the previous rule, which in my opinion made replaying much of the adventures a bit pointless, as everything you encountered up until the area you made it to the last time was already dead. Unfortunately, the way it worked previously was sorely needed when it came to one of the combats in the book (the mass battle to retake the Argo), but I will discuss that later below.    

Dreamtime - Ok, so yes the dreams featured in this book's Dreamtime section are the same as found in book 3, but due to the lack of healing options in this adventure as opposed to the previous entries, there is actually a reason for trying to heal through sleeping this time, and I found myself attempting to do so on many occasions. One of the great missteps of the prior books was how one of the best ideas of the series was not even needed, so to see it done right for a change was quite refreshing. I even found myself having to think carefully about whether I should chance trying to sleep or not based upon how many Life points I had remaining, and what part of the adventure I was going to attempt to accomplish next, so there was a nice layer of strategy added as well. Hopefully the usefulness of this mechanic will be retained in the remaining books.   

The Bad

The battle to retake the Argo - This is a big one, and in truth almost single-handedly sunk the book for me. After freeing Jason and his Argonauts who were imprisoned below decks, you need to defeat a force of 10 pirates on the deck of the ship in a mass battle in order to retake it. Your forces include yourself, Jason, two named members of Jason's crew in Hercules (no, apparently not THAT Hercules) and Achilles (yes, apparently THAT Achilles?), along with 10 unnamed Argonauts. There are no instructions given on how this battle is to work, and I can only assume you need to select 10 opponents from your side to fight the 10 pirates in one-on-one battles. As you can imagine, this takes a long time to run through, which by itself isn't necessarily a problem. No, the problem comes in that every time you die later in the adventure (which will be a lot), you will need to go through this again upon restarting. Cripes! Even taking into consideration that once you have defeated the pirates once, they return in later attempts with half their original Life points, the amount of time I spent on this battle is crazy. And to top it all off, it isn't even that well designed, because the ONLY member of your side that needs to survive is Jason. If your own character should die in the fight, you are instructed to keep playing it out, and if your side should eventually win with Jason still alive, he will resurrect you to full Life points to continue from there. So in other words, just use everyone else except Jason here and it seems very tough (though not impossible) to lose. This battle alone is most responsible for the adventure not getting a higher score from me.  

Game clarity - I feel like interpreting the game rules and systems has been a problem throughout the series, and may even be getting worse. The above mentioned mass battle is one example, but other situations exist as well. Right near the start, you are given the chance to pick the lock on a door to a room which contains some powerful weapons and armour. Should you fail this random roll (and these are another problem), you are told to move on and explore another area. The book says nothing about not being able to come back here though, so doing so would seem to be fair game. However if that is the case, then what is even the point in making you roll? You could just keep coming back and rolling until you got the required number. You can often find yourself fighting more than one opponent, with no real guidance in most cases on if the opponents are fought one at a time or all at once. There is also one island you can visit where Jason will accompany you, and in at least one case you can be attacked and he will join you in the fight. Other times though he is not mentioned, so do we assume he just stands off to the side while you battle the opponents solo? You have combat stats for Jason, so that hardly sounds right. In another situation I found myself in, I used something called the Wallbanger Ritual, which is a spell that can be found and used once per adventure at the cost of half your Life points and paralyzes a group of enemies for 6 combat rounds (although I admittedly did not wear a peaked cap and eat a bowl of porridge as the instructions in casting the spell said, so does that mean I cheated?). I had decided to use this spell on a group of Harpies, who I was told required an 8 or better to hit because of their high maneuverability. But if they are paralyzed, wouldn't that lower (or completely remove) their ability to maneuver? There are also at least a couple of rolls in the book where you are told what to do should you roll higher or lower than a given value, but mentions nothing if you rolled exactly that value. So as usual, there are a few situations that arise where you will need to either try and guess what the intention was, or maybe just choose the definition most favourable to you if so inclined (and with how tough this gamebook is, I wouldn't blame you for doing the latter).  

Cross-eyed Navigation - So this is a new mechanic introduced just for this book. Whenever you wish to sail to a new island, you first must roll two dice. Should you score higher than a 4, you can proceed to your chosen destination. Should you roll a 4 or lower however, your ship has gone off course and you must consult the Cross-eyed Navigation chart at the back of the book. Should you find yourself here, you now need to throw one die, and the result on the chart will give you an encounter that you need to pass before you can continue sailing on to your desired destination. Several of the encounters you can find yourself having require you to pass a random roll or be killed instantly (what fun!), but for me perhaps the most dreaded location was the one that sees you having to fight the dreaded Pondoozlewazzle Bird. This creature can only hit you on a roll of 12 on its turn, but if it does then it kills you instantly. The real reason for my dread though is that the bird has 100 Life points, and thus feels like a combat straight out of the "Demonspawn" series. Much like the battle to retake the Argo, this fight can take an incredible amount of rolls to complete, so I hope you are not prone to tennis elbow. There is actually a section you can reach on one of the islands that has you construct your own boat using actual paper cutouts contained within the book, and doing so allows you to bypass the Cross-eyed Navigation mechanic altogether from that point onwards. While this is a nice little addition that added flavour to the experience, it suggested to me that Brennan knew this navigation business might quickly become tiresome. Unlike the Dreamtime mechanic, this whole navigation bit just felt like a frustrating and unnecessary addition.  

Random rolls - Ugh! If the random roll required to beat The Den of Dragons annoyed me, this book took that concept and ran with it. There are a few situations in the Cross-eyed Navigation sections that require a roll that can easily lead to instant death as mentioned above, but there are several more of these scattered throughout the adventure proper as well. One of the islands requires you to roll one die as soon as you land on it, and a roll of 5 or 6 means instant death. Gimme a break! Another island can see you needing to roll two dice, and should you score between a 5 and 9 (which you obviously will many times), it's another instant death. This one can at least eventually be avoided, but it might take you several frustrating attempts before you figure out how to do this. Perhaps the most annoying one though, occurs when you encounter the witch, Hecate. She holds one of the golden keys, but just as importantly, she holds a scroll you are most likely going to need to be able to beat the adventure. Problem is, you need to pass a 50/50 roll right at the start of the combat or she will turn you into a pig, and if this happens, it's effectively game over. This roll against Hecate was another of my biggest frustrations with the book.  

The Ugly

The Demondim Isle key - Brother! So after finally persevering and making it onto the beach of Demondim Isle, it won't take too long to discover the key hidden here, as it is in the possession of our old friend from previous books, the Poetic Fiend. After passing another of his tests that requires almost nothing of the player, the Fiend gifts you the key (along with a fantastically powerful one-hit kill item), at which point you are told that you will retain this key even should you die later.  Hang on a sec! Is this just for this one key, or is the retaining of the keys upon character death something this is supposed to be happening with ALL the keys? If it is the latter, this is a massive omission. The rules state that you lose any treasure from that playthrough upon death, unless told otherwise. For this key you ARE told otherwise, but for none of the other keys are you told this. So why just this one key? I was over 30 attempts in before I finally managed to acquire the Demondim Isle key and learned this important piece of information, and if this was indeed meant to be the case for all the keys, then all I have to say is......

For this reason, I am not totally sure if I actually beat this book or not. My tally of 49 attempts to beat the adventure was eventually done using the assumption that all keys are retained upon death, not just the Demondim Isle key. And if this is not the case (ie. all the other keys need to be collected again each time), then I believe I would have eventually had to declare the book broken, as the dice rolls required to pick all these up on one run seems highly unlikely. I will finally add that the endgame was a bit of a letdown, as after inserting all the keys in the appropriate door, you have one final battle against a mummy (who is a bit out of place, but not as much as Long John Silver, who shows up at one point earlier in the quest) before Merlin sends you back into the body of Pip, and where you automatically repel the Saxons and win the adventure.   

Ranking: I gotta admit, this was one of the rare books I have played that I had no idea what score I was going to give it even after completing. Normally once I finish a book, I know immediately within .5 or so either way what I intend to give it, and take a bit more time to let the experience sink in before finalizing the score. Here though, my experience varied wildly. After my initial playthroughs, I thought this book was on its way to possibly being the best of the series. The story and setting was unique, it had some nice design elements, and the writing was great and humourous as always. At this point I was still willing to forgive having to replay the mass battle, not knowing just how many attempts yet that the adventure was going to take. With more and more playthroughs however, I started to think I was going to have to eventually declare it effectively broken, as the dice rolls required to gather all the keys seemed more and more onerous. Then I found the one key that told me I could keep it even upon death (and perhaps the other keys too?), and I had no idea what to think. This score therefore I feel accurately reflects my total experience with it in regards to the fun I had overall, with some great ideas and nice exploration balanced out by frustrating rolls and endless combats. The adventure has a nice Seas of Blood feel to it (mixed in with some extra Masks of Mayhem dice rolling for good measure). Now if you will excuse me, I think I need to go stick my dice rolling arm in a bucket of ice.

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5. Kingdom of Horror - Score = 5.7   Tier = OK

Attempts to Beat: 19

After taking a bit of a break, I return to the Grailquest series with no small amount of poignancy, as merely one day after starting in on book 5, I learned of the passing of series author J.H. Brennan at the age of 83. I had earlier been surprised to learn he was actually that old, and after performing some rudimentary math, realized that this would have put him in his mid-40's during the time this series was written, which was also the time of the initial gamebook boom in general. I had always been of the impression that the 80's gamebook craze was a younger man's game as far as authorship goes, and while mid-40's certainly isn't old, I have to believe this still made him one of the elder statesman of those early gamebook days. While I have often been highly critical of the design of many of his gamebooks, I have been very pleased with his entertaining writing, and several of his initial ideas for his adventures. In fact, I haven't played a "bad" or "broken" book of his since "Sagas of the Demonspawn" (thankfully, Dracula's Castle had one half that saved it), although I still have 3 more books to go in this series, along with a couple of gamebooks of his from the 90's, so hopefully I haven't jinxed it. Regardless of all that and how I may feel about any of his books both read and unread, his positive influence on gamebook fandom for just the Grailquest series alone can't be denied, and you will often see the series brought up by others who have fond memories of it from their youth. Rest in peace Mr Brennan, and thank you for your overall contribution to the world of gamebooks.   

I still intend to give an honest opinion of the books left to play in the series, and moving on to the adventure itself, Kingdom of Horror picks up where the previous book left off, with the magical sword Excalibur still missing. I guess Arthur's sole reason for being King is not due to what he has done for Britain, but apparently comes down to the single fact that he held this sword, as without it, the kingdom has rebelled against him, and is now holding Camelot under siege. That being the case, Merlin once again brings you back in time to inhabit the body of Pip so that you can track down Excalibur and save the country from internal ruin. You know, it's starting to get more than a bit creepy in how the Pip character is handled. In this case, his empty husk of a body is held within a wicker hamper within Merlin's house, and when you transport back into it, you then break free of the hamper and emerge ready to rumble. Hang on, I thought in his "off days" Pip lived on a farm? Now, he appears to be an empty shell that lies around until Merlin decides to animate him with a time traveller. (And I am somewhat surprised there haven't been any jokes about Merlin using him as a doorstop when not in use). You then arrive in Merlin's house, with his house shaped like a 6-sided die this time, and more on this later, to find it empty and Merlin missing. After stepping outside and quickly rescuing him from a group of revolting peasants (errr, maybe that should read "peasants in revolt"), Merlin goes on to tell you that he has determined that Excalibur was stolen by someone within the Kingdom of Horror, otherwise known as the "Fairy Kingdom", and brought back there. This magical kingdom can only be accessed by a hidden portal somewhere in the area, and so off you set to locate this portal, enter the Kingdom of Horror, retrieve Excalibur, and return it to King Arthur to save his rule. 

I always find reviews easier to write when the book is clearly broken down into defined areas, which this one definitely is. Examining each of the 3 acts of the adventure below:

Act 1 - Finding the Kingdom of Horror - There isn't all that much to the first act of the adventure, which has Pip travelling randomly around the countryside, gathering a couple of items that he will need in order to be able to open the portal once he finds it. It is fairly simplistic because the area is quite small, so you will come across an item, and then most likely find it asked for a couple of sections later in order to proceed. It doesn't take long to locate the portal, and after finding it and providing the asked for items, you then only have to defeat the Ghastly Guardian Ghoul in order to move on to the next act. The Ghoul itself in most cases would be a difficult opponent, but due to several helpful magical items you will likely have gathered up to this point, he doesn't turn out to be too much trouble. Upon defeat, the Ghoul transforms and provides you with another item, The Sphere of Warning, which works something akin to Bilbo's (and later Frodo's) sword "Sting", in that it glows a different colour when danger is near. I'm not really sure what the point of this was though, while as the Sphere is mentioned a few times narratively after this, I don't recall times when you were actually allowed to act on its warning, and it seems to have been forgotten about almost completely by the time you reach the final act. Nevertheless, once this encounter is over you find yourself materializing in act 2.  

Act 2 - The Kingdom of Horror countryside - The largest area of the adventure, yet not the most interesting. You begin here in the middle of the countryside, and just need to pick one of the eight compass directions and start walking. Merlin had provided you a map of the Kingdom when you set out, which you can view at the back of the book. Problem is, having no doubt flicked to the back of the book several times by this point, you will most likely have noticed there is a second more detailed map of one of the locations on Merlin's map called Scroghollow City, so it's pretty obvious this is where you will need to go. Fortunately, there are some large benefits to exploring the area before proceeding to the signposted location, as you can find yourself acquiring a store of honeycubes, which provide healing  equivalent to 36(!) Life Point potions! Jeesh, how is that for balancing? There is another item hidden in this area that can help to cut in half the Life Points of the creature in the final fight of the adventure, but you might not even need it with all the other helpful items you may find yourself carrying. Once you deem yourself ready to head to Scroghollow City, you will need to construct a raft in order to enter it (and more on this infuriating turn of events later), as the City is completely walled in, with the only entrance being via an un-swimmable river. Once you make it in (and a do-or-die roll is involved here too, although at least it is in your favour), you are ready for the homestretch of the adventure.  

Act 3 - Scroghollow City - I found this to surprisingly be the easiest area of the book, but also the most interesting. Travel throughout the City is handled by the usual Brennan mechanic of providing a map with each building labeled with a section number, and you can then choose to explore any building you want by going to that section. You quickly learn that the City itself is a dwarven one, with two ruling brothers currently fighting over control of it, one of them holding sway in the poorer northern half of the City, and the other in the richer southern half. You will need to speak to both of the ruling brothers should you wish to find Excalibur, and in order to do so you will need to find 8 tokens scattered around the City (4 copper tokens and 4 pewter tokens, each set allowing you to speak with one of the brothers). The City really isn't all that large, but you are likely going to need to explore every nook and cranny of it in order to find all the tokens, and this was easily the best part of the whole adventure. Once you have them all, you will learn where Excalibur is, and all that remains is to solve a riddle.....(oh no, it's another truth-lie riddle! Am I still playing Proteus?), and then a final battle against the Berkwaddle, which is a large crocodile-like creature guarding the sword. The Berkwaddle has some impressive stats and would often be a death sentence in most cases, but here you will likely have at least a few magical items that will make the fight much, much, easier. Once it is defeated, you reclaim Excalibur, return to Camelot, and give the sword back to King Arthur, thus quelling the rebellion against him and saving the day.       

Overall, while I did not find the quest itself anything to write home about,  I did find each act of the adventure to slowly improve as it went along, with the last being the best. That said, the book is not without the usual design problems, and one of them is a doozy. I have held off on going into detail on them until now, in order to fully explore them below.

Merlin's House - Good grief. So, very early on in the adventure right after you rescue Merlin, he tells you that you can magically teleport back to his house at any time in order to pick up some supplies. His house in this book is conveniently shaped like a six-sided die, and when you wish to go back to his house, you roll one die then consult a chart at the back of the book to see what room of the house you transport to (and I suppose there are no doors between rooms, as you can only take things from the room you land in). The die results and where they lead is laid out below:

1 - Under the House - Instant death!
2 - Equipment room - take any 2 items from Equipment list
3 - Magic room - take any 1 item from Magic item list
4 - Bedroom - sleep and recover 2D6 Life Points
5 - Empty room - Nothing
6 - Roof - lose half of your Life Points

As you can see, travelling back to the House is a somewhat dangerous proposition, as you have a 1 in 6 chance of being killed instantly. Landing on the roof and losing half your Life Points I didn't find to be too much of a problem due to the previously mentioned 36 Life Point potions you can find in the wilderness, but the possible roll of a 1 and instant failure casts a pall over the whole mechanic. Now here is the real problem. In order to build the raft that allows you to proceed into Scroghollow City, (which is the only way to get in), you need 4 pieces of equipment from the Equipment room. Not only that, there is a message decoder you will need, this one from the Magic room, in order to decode secret messages found throughout the adventure, a couple of which contain hidden required section numbers in order to proceed. And while not technically essential, you will likely need the fake beard and moustache, also from the Equipment room, that will allow you to explore the City unhindered, or I don't see how you will have much of a chance otherwise. I suppose you may be able to crack the secret code in the adventure on your own, but you are going to realistically need to visit Merlin's House 3 or 4 times to get all the stuff you need, which means rolling three 2's and also likely one 3 before you ever roll a 1. Not good! Almost all of my failed attempts at the book came from rolling a 1 while teleporting to Merlin's House, with the only "good" news being that once you know what you need to do, you can attempt to make these rolls very early on and save yourself the time of playing too far into the adventure before falling victim to this roll. I am incredibly relieved that the Scroghollow City area of the book proved to be as easy for me as it did, otherwise I can't imagine having to make the Merlin's House rolls successfully over and over.      

Magical Items - After all I've just said about Merlin's House, this isn't so much of a problem as it is an observation about some of the ambiguity and/or overpowered-ness of some of the magical items available in the Magic room. The rules state that you need to actually select the magic item you wish to take from the list BEFORE turning to the section at the back of the book that explains what the item does, but because you will likely have taken so many attempts to get the raft equipment, you will probably know what just about all of them do before you make it into the City. The Fireballs are a particularly powerful item, as they do 75 points of damage each (and two of them are available) should you successfully roll a 6 when casting them. I was able to use two Fireballs to defeat the Berkwaddle on my first try at him (rolling above 7 each time when casting them, as a 7 is required to hit in this combat only). However, even if I hadn't had the Fireballs, or had missed with them, there is another completely overpowered item in the form of the Egyptian Death Mask. The description for this item reads "if you place this item over your face, your body functions instantly cease and you will appear stone dead to any monster, enemy, or friend. This allows you to avoid a great deal of potential hassle since it means you can move on as if you had won the fight. Roll one die to find out how often you can use the item before its power runs out. Each usage costs you one Life Point". Wow! I'll say that allows you to avoid a great deal of hassle! You could then have as many as 6 auto-wins throughout the quest. Can you use this in the final fight against the Berkwaddle then for an auto-win? That doesn't seem to make much narrative sense, but there is nothing in the rules preventing it either, so I suppose it would be fair game. Thanks to the pain in the ass that is Merlin's House, had my Fireballs failed, I sure as hell would have used it! 

Section 14 - So in the previous books in the series, when Pip dies and we get sent to the dreaded section 14, we are told that when we start again any enemies killed stay dead on subsequent playthroughs (or come back with only half Life Points as in book 4). This time however, the section states that "any enemies you have successfully killed last time round can no longer harm you". Hang on a sec, so enemies only stay dead if they were killed the "last time" I played but not if they were killed two attempts or more ago? That is a very odd change in the wording, and I wonder if that was intentional or just a misread when typing out the rules regarding enemy respawning. As it was, I ended up beating up on those peasants at the start of the book every other time I played, reading the rules as is.  

Odds and ends - A few more things to mention that don't rate their own paragraph. There is a completely useless roll to be made near the start of the adventure, when you are tasked with helping Merlin repair the door to his house, and are told it takes a 10 or higher roll on two dice to succeed in the repair, and to keep rolling until you make it. What the heck is the point of that? The Dreamtime section returns again, although once again we do not have a new set of dreams, as they are the same ones from the previous book. Although also once again, the Dreamtime is back to being almost totally irrelevant in this book thanks to the 36 healing potions along with the relative ease of combat in the adventure. I also have to say that while I found the odd humourous moment here and there, this book did not seem to have the same level of humour as found in the previous books, although that is obviously totally subjective. There is additionally a page at the back of the book containing a drawing of the wooden door with secret code scrawled on it that leads to the final room which contains the Berkwaddle. The idea being that you need to cut out the drawing and rearrange the pieces of the door so that the numbers revealed in the code make sense and give you the next section number to go to. I didn't find it necessary however to cut out the drawing, as merely solving the code made it fairly easy to determine what order the numbers were meant to go in, revealing the proper section number. Still, this was a nice little addition that while maybe not required, provided at least a small amount of added immersion (although the thought of people cutting up their books always makes me wince).   

Ranking: I hate to say it, but the Merlin's House mechanic almost ruins the book, and may actually do so for some players. Remove the instant-failure for rolling a 1 there, and this would have scored higher. I feel fortunate that the adventure took me only 19 attempts, as it easily could have been far more, and had it come to that, this would probably be at the bottom of the rankings. As it stands, while close, I give it the slightest of edges over Voyage of Terror in the rankings, but I didn't find all that much here that stood out (in a good way) as opposed to some of the earlier entries.  The Scroghollow City sequence of the adventure helps to save it, and there is enough positives here to at least give it a look, just prepare for some possible frustrations. 

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6. Realm of Chaos - Score = 0.0   Tier = BROKEN

Attempts before conceding defeat: 40

Well, it looks like I jinxed it after all. After commenting in the previous review that I had not encountered either a "bad" or "broken" gamebook from Brennan in awhile, I then no sooner run into a roadblock with this entry. Right off the top though I have to give Realm of Chaos credit for one thing, in that it jumps right into the quest faster than any gamebook I can recall. No mincing of words or rules explanations needed here, as you are told right on the first page that if you are already familiar with the series you can turn right to section 2 and begin the adventure, or continue on with section 1 to learn the rules. While that is appreciated on the one hand, I also realize that these series tend to switch up the rules here and there, and even a seemingly minor change or omission can make a big difference to playability, so I therefore decided to go through that very first section. And I am ever glad I did, because it is only in this first section that you are told that Merlin has found your trusty Dragonskin Jacket, and you are therefore equipped with this extremely important item again. Any readers of the series who decided to skip past section 1 and proceed to section 2, as suggested on the very first page, could and would very likely miss this key piece of information. Not only that, but this section does not even bother to tell you how many points of damage the Dragonskin Jacket protects you from. Now, this information is given on the reference sheet at the back of the book, but this reference also states that you need to have played book 1, The Castle of Darkness in order to have the Jacket, which seems to contradict section 2, so it is unclear if any new player would be hung out to dry over this or not, and I found this to be very sloppy design. But oh, the sloppiness would not end there as I will get to later in the review. 

For now however, the plot this time is a very simple one. Merlin has yet again drawn you backwards in time into the body of Pip, this time to assist with a curse that has befallen Camelot, with a fog continuously hanging over the area causing "blight, pestilence, gloom, and corruption". Not only that, but King Arthur and his Knights have all disappeared, and a fungoid rot now covers Castle Camelot, preventing anyone from getting inside. Not long after the start of the curse, a stone fell from the sky into Glastonbury Village with writing on it indicating that a wizard known as Kran is responsible for the situation, likely in retaliation for some previous incident. Merlin then allows you to take 6 items from a list of equipment he has (and one of these items will prove to be essential) to aid you in the quest. Then, not knowing who Kran is, and with the curse centered over Glastonbury, that is where you set off towards in an attempt to locate this Kran and put an end to the curse. 

Upon arriving in Glastonbury, you are directed to the usual keyed map of the village, with each area or building having a section number to turn to so that you can investigate in any order you please. And I have to say, just how small is this place? I was under the impression that Glastonbury supported Camelot and was a hub for the surrounding countryside, but the map and exploration options make it seem like those "two houses and a gas station" towns that you drive past on the highway. Not only is there not much to explore here, but where did everybody go? I understand the Knights all disappeared, but did the townspeople as well? Apparently not, as you do meet a few individuals here and there, but there is a surprising lack of interesting things happening here considering the usual colourfulness of the series. In order to move on to the next area, you will need to locate the cave entrance that leads to tunnels that run underneath Castle Camelot, and this can be accomplished rather quickly thanks to several of the buildings in the village having nothing going on in them. 

Welcome to Whiterun, the capital of the vast province of Skyrim. City population? 32.

  

So once you locate the entrance to the tunnels, you then need to proceed through them and find a way into the dungeons of Castle Camelot in an attempt to enter the Castle from below, and hopefully find out what is going on inside. These tunnels are some of the most boring you will ever find, with nothing going on in them, and with each path ending in either a dead end or a pit trap where you must roll to see if you can keep from falling in, and if you fall in you take some Life Point damage. After exhausting every single path here and not finding how to enter into the Castle, I put a lesson I learned from a previous gamebook adventure, Dungeon of Justice from the "Warlock Magazine" series, to good use. This lesson is that when in doubt and with no other options, you need to try actually FAILING a skill check or random test should any exist, even though this feels incredibly stupid. And wouldn't you know it, one of the pit traps actually contains a secret passage that leads into the Castle dungeons that can only be reached should you fail the random roll and fall down it. This kind of design is infuriating. After all, once you know there is a trap there, what sane person would go back and TRY to fall foul of it? Perhaps even requiring numerous attempts to do so? Bah! 

After you get that figured out and enter the dungeons below the Castle, you then need to make your way through them to find a way up into the Castle itself. This is probably the best part of the adventure to be honest, although that isn't saying very much. The passageways are not that difficult to navigate, and there are at least some interesting things going on for a change, including a torture chamber, a block of jail cells containing some humourous encounters the series is known for, and a strange room that comes complete with its own map at the back of the book, and which contains cartoony cats, rabbits, pumpkins and money bags. This appears to be an attempt to emulate certain video games of the time and is a good idea, only I think it would have worked much better had there been some sort of grid system allowing your avatar to move across the room towards the money bag (perhaps like some kind of gamebook "Frogger"). Once you have that room conquered, you then proceed up into the Castle proper, and after a rough start to the gamebook, I felt like this dungeon area at least had it trending back in the right direction. Oh how wrong I was. 

From here you emerge in the Castle Throne Room, and once again are instructed to use a keyed map of the Castle at the back of the book in order to explore the various rooms available. One difference however is that you cannot just pick any room you like, but must proceed through the rooms logically (ie. you can only go through doors available in the room you are currently in). I'm not sure why the adventure even bothers with this restriction though, as the vast majority of the rooms have absolutely nothing going on within them at all, which is a recurring trend of this adventure. Really, the lack of anything to do in this Castle sequence is shockingly poor. There is a valuable item hidden in the Castle that you will need for a later encounter, but this is so easily found, requiring nothing of the player other than merely investigating all available section numbers, that calling it "hidden" is vastly overstating it. This whole area is a colossal waste of something that was full of opportunities, however at least it was over incredibly quickly thanks to its empty nature. The same cannot be said about what was to come next.   

After exiting the Castle, you proceed up the Tor overlooking Glastonbury, where you need to fight against the Wyrm that guards the entrance portal (and this fight contains a strange moment where the Wyrm attacks you by surprise and bites you, but no Life Point loss is indicated, and you are then asked whether the shock of the attack killed you, and if so then you should turn to section 14. Huh? Was there supposed to be a Life point deduction here?) You then enter the Astral Plane, which is where you learned earlier that your quarry is hiding out, and is where the curse has originated from. And my goodness! Up until this point, while not terribly egregious (with the possible exception of the required failed pit trap roll), I was finding the adventure overall to be functional but quite dull. But then we arrive at the Astral Plane and the book gets flipped on its head, as the story and encounters become more interesting, but the design is flat out atrocious. The Astral Plane is made up of 24 "spheres", which are small self-contained areas each having some sort of encounter or situation that must be overcome before moving on. The spheres are interconnected and laid out in a certain way, with a map of them provided at the back of the book. Seven of the spheres have letters on them, and can be arrived at directly by rolling the dice. And herein lies the problem with the whole thing. Which sphere you go to next is determined almost completely randomly! When you arrive in the Astral Plane, you are told to roll two dice, then go to the appropriate sphere from a chart. Once the encounter within that sphere is dealt with, you roll again and the dice decide where you go next. Now, I say almost randomly because should you roll a 6,9, or 12, you become a Pathwalker, and for two turns you can travel to an interconnected sphere on the map from the one you now happen to be in. This means you have almost no control over where you go, and with a couple of the spheres containing essential items to winning, you can know exactly what to do but could spend hours just not being able to get to the required spheres! 

To make matters even worse (which doesn't seem possible), the instructions state that should you visit a sphere you have already been to (which is going to happen MANY times), whatever you did there before has made no difference, and the sphere remains unchanged. This blatantly overrules the instructions located at the back of the book, which repeat the usual series rule about enemies remaining dead on repeat playthroughs. As that appears to be copy and pasted from prior books, I have to believe that the spheres resetting is the appropriate situation. Criminy! I fought that freaking Hoopberk bird so many times it became beyond ridiculous. This enemy is located in the sphere that you are directed to go to should you roll a 7, and imagine that, a 7 being a frequently rolled number. What are the odds?? Should enemies have stayed dead on subsequent playthroughs, the adventure would have been an exercise in tedium, as you would just keep rolling over and over until you got the numbers you needed in order to collect the two essential items hidden in a couple of the spheres and then make your way to the final sphere, but at least it would have been far more doable. 

The book itself even seems to acknowledge the problem here, as upon death and being sent to the usual section 14, you are told that you do not need to restart from the very beginning of the adventure, but can restart at the beginning of whatever sequence you were on when your character bit the dust. The book gives a couple of examples of what constitutes a "sequence" (Glastonbury, the Castle), which seems to imply that means it is the areas with the keyed maps at the back of the book, in which case the Astral Plane would also fall into this category. Thank goodness for that at least, as I cannot even fathom having to restart the whole book over just to make it back to the incredible randomness regarding character movement within the Astral Plane. And if that had been the case, I don't think I would have even made as many attempts as I did at this adventure. Even with the advantage of restarting at the Astral Plane once making it there for the first time however, this does not really make the adventure any easier. Many of the spheres contain quite deadly opponents, usually some kind of strange beast, and restarting will mean you will not have any of the healing potions you would have picked up in prior areas of the book. This leaves sleeping as your main method of healing, and while I appreciate that the Dreamtime mechanic now has a reason for being there for a change, and the dreams themselves have been updated for the first time since book 3, should you need to enter it when trying to heal is a dangerous proposition indeed, and will many times result in the actual loss of Life Points, if not outright death, as opposed to Life Point restoration, so it remains to be seen how much this will really help you. (And dream #4, while not deadly, is particularly annoying, as you need to keep rolling until you get double 6 and can then escape with no Life Point gain). After many tries at the Astral Plane sequence, and only once ever coming even remotely close to gathering what I needed and making it to the end game, I eventually had to give up the ghost, as there was no way in my mind that it should take this long to advance through this area. 

Overall, It must be said that this book feels very sloppy. In addition to what I felt were some poorly worded and vague rules descriptions, I came across a couple of section reference errors to boot, which really stuck out like a sore thumb. You are also told at one point that you will need something called The Universal Key in order to locate an essential item, but then this Key is not required to do so. (Perhaps the character who gave you this information was just mistaken, but it sure feels like an authorial oversight instead). The Astral Plane itself has a few errors, such as where the heck is sphere H? It is listed on the chart as the sphere to go to when you roll an 11, but it is shown nowhere on the map of the Plane as are the other coded spheres. Also, what the heck are you supposed to do, if when you first arrive at the Astral Plane, you roll a 6,9, or 12 and become a Pathwalker? Where are you supposed to begin? The adventure also contains a few items that can be "built" by the reader, one of which is the Portable Hole, which requires you to cut pieces out of the section it appears in and then assemble the pieces in such a way that the next section number to turn to will be revealed. The problem here is that this item is not at the back, but within the book itself, so should you cut out the pieces it would destroy the text on the opposite page! The instructions for the other items are at the back of the book, and these items include the Spook Basher, which can be constructed by cutting up pieces of cardboard, and the Prehistoric Creep Machine, which can be built with an actual cotton reel, candle, knitting needle, elastic band, matchstick, and pencil! Previously I have said that I appreciated the immersion factor in some of these constructible items at the back of the books, but in this case, I never was able to locate the Spook Basher in the book (are you just supposed to build it before you begin?), and who the heck is going to go to all that trouble to actually make the Prehistoric Creep Machine? (Kudos to anyone who actually did. That is what I call going above and beyond to get your money's worth out of the gamebook!). 

On that note, were there actually any positives to the adventure? The writing as usual was very entertaining, which is saying something here seeing as how thin and boring the plot was, especially compared to previous entries in the series. There is a running joke that every time someone mentions the name of a creature called The Phantom Grunweazel, an unseen mystical orchestra plays "Dum-da-dum-dum!" (Although even this is missed at least once, as where was the orchestra on section 189?) The adventure also contains what might be the most gruesome illustration I have seen in any gamebook so far, with a graphic depiction of Pip's head exploding in incredibly gory detail.  

Ranking. Messy as all get out, and at the bottom of the rankings. The book itself may even have hinted at what was to come very early on, as right in section 2 you are told to "troll off to 10 for the next bit of nonsense". I have to admit to being somewhat crestfallen when reading that. While I realize that these adventures are written from a humourous perspective, using the word "nonsense" did not exactly inspire a lot of confidence. As alluded to earlier, when you have eventually worked out what you need to do in order to make it to the end game of an adventure, but still can't get there after many, many attempts due to the required dice rolls, that is a textbook broken gamebook for me right there. The adventure itself was no great shakes up until arriving at The Astral Plane, with not much of note occurring, but from that point onwards, this Astral Plane sequence is one of the worst and most frustrating I have come across. While I do believe this can be beaten, it would likely become tedious as hell to do so. I would love to hear from anyone who managed to beat this playing by the rules (assuming you can even figure the rules out!), and if they had any particular strategy that I may have overlooked, or if it was just down to waiting to get very lucky with the dice rolls while moving through the Astral Plane. I do hope this entry was not an indication of an increased lack of attention and due diligence for the final two adventures in the series. I guess time will tell. 

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7. Tomb of Nightmares - Score = 0.0   Tier = BROKEN

Attempts before "letting it go": 50

I'll get my general feelings about this adventure over with quick. This book stinks. I'm tempted to just end the review right there, as I don't feel like I should waste any more time over this one. However, writing the reviews for the "broken" or "bad" adventures often proves cathartic, so I will continue. The plot for this entry sees Merlin bringing the reader back in time once more into the body of Pip, this time to help him collect on a debt of 50 gold pieces (plus interest) owed to him by a fellow wizard known as "Grott the Hoddle". I immediately found myself wondering if this name is supposed to parody something, as it seems quite specific. It reminded me a bit of the rock band "Mott the Hoople", but other than that I couldn't come up with anything, so was left wondering if there was some actual meaning to this name that I am not aware of. Nevertheless, I have to admit to being encouraged by how the quest begins, as it was a very nice change of pace to not be out to save the kingdom from ruin yet again, and instead are sent off on a more low-key debt-collection adventure. Merlin goes on to tell us that Grott the Hoddle "lives" in a nearby tomb (we quickly learn that he is actually an un-dead wizard), and we thus need to enter the tomb, track him down, and get Merlin's money back. Unfortunately, any encouragement I had about the quest ends right here, as it quickly descended into an exercise in frustration, randomness, and tedium. 

One "important new rule" we are made aware of for this adventure revolves around Secret Doors. We are told that "This is a particularly tricky GrailQuest. In the Tomb, you are going to have to map carefully if you want to survive. But even careful mapping will not be enough." Boy is he not kidding. So how the Secret Doors mechanic works is that every time you enter a new section of the adventure, you can opt to search for a secret door by rolling one die. Should you roll a 4-6 you are allowed to check the Secret Door Table at the back of the book to see if you have located any doors that may be present in that section. Should you roll a 1-3 you are not even allowed to check, and must proceed as if you found none. You can return to any section to search again should you wish, but you can immediately see the problem here, as you will no doubt have already suspected that there are going to be secret doors that are essential to find should you wish to complete the quest, and whether you can find them or not is totally left up to randomness. The Secret Door Table itself is a bit of a joke, as it lists all 224 sections of the book, but only half a dozen or so of them actually contain a door, which combined with the random nature of how you successfully find one, had me calling into question the whole existence of this process. This mechanic was something seen in a previous adventure, Dracula's Castle from the "Horror Classics" series. It worked incredibly poorly there, and does no better here.

Instead of being given a list of Equipment to choose from before you set off, Merlin simply gives you everything on his list this time, although I'm not sure why he even bothered, as I never came across anywhere to use even half this stuff. (And why the heck do the Food Rations not restore some much needed Life Points?). It won't take you very long to locate Grott's Tomb, however getting inside it is another matter. You are given 4 different options of doors you can take to try and enter the Tomb proper, and the ultimate means by which you finally do so I found to be incredibly counter-intuitive. Once you do make it inside, which annoyingly took me far longer than it should have, you enter the medium-sized complex and begin your search for Grott himself. This is where the exercise in tedium begins, as I (correctly) guessed that you will need to successfully use the Secret Doors mechanic in order to gather several items that you will need should you hope to have any chance at victory, along with finding the correct route to the lower level where Grott is located. Much like the previous adventure, randomness plays an ugly roll role yet again here, as you will oftentimes find yourself suffering Life Point damage equal to several dice rolls, along with in some cases having the dice randomly determine what events happen next. There are a lot of tough enemies to overcome here, and even though there are whole sections of the Tomb that are basically red herring areas, even along the required path you are going to bleed out Life points quite quickly. 

At least somewhat thankfully your Spellbook returns for this adventure, allowing you to cast an array of different combat spells, along with a few spells that would appear to be totally useless. I have to ask though, what kind of spellcaster doesn't have some sort of Healing spell? That was sorely needed indeed. Unlike some of the previous books, enemies killed here do NOT stay dead on repeated playthroughs, but return albeit with only half of their starting Life points. This helps somewhat, but not nearly enough, as most enemies are still going to get some hits in on you regardless, and a lot of the damage you suffer will be from traps, some of which deal out rather large amounts of pain and suffering. The "enemies remain dead" would have been appreciated here more than any other book so far, if only for not having to repeat the combat against the group of giant Lizards over and over. At one point, you need to fight 4 of these guys at once, and the amount of dice rolling needed to run through this fight alone can become mind numbing. It turns out there is a very specific order you need to do things in this adventure, which I would have greatly enjoyed figuring out, had it not been for the inclusion of so much randomness and drawn out combats on each playthrough. I eventually had to call it quits, as the amount of damage I was taking on each attempt was just too much to overcome with the scant means of healing available, save for the Dreamtime mechanic which I will get to below. Who knows, the rules in this series can be a bit vague at times, so maybe someone was able to come up with some sort of strategy that I couldn't, but I never was even able to make it to the final fight against Grott, and oftentimes would find myself dying before I could even enter the lower level. 

With all the above said, there are still a few more aspects of the adventure that deserve special mention below:

Section 14 - So, many of the entries in the series have a slightly different take on what happens when Pip dies and you are sent to the dreaded Section 14, with this adventure being no different. I was very surprised to find that on this quest should you be sent here, you are given the option of either starting again from the beginning, or by returning to the section that you just left. You would think this would aid in making the adventure far easier, but that is hardly the case. The main reason being that there is a key essential for victory that is located way back at the start of the adventure before you even enter the Tomb! You of course do not retain any items you collected upon character death, so in most cases will need to start over again anyway. Not only that, but how does returning to the section you just left help you if you happened to come from a section that was sending you directly to section 14 (an insta-death section)? The answer of course is that it doesn't. The only time this might be of use is if you lost a combat, and it would then allow you to return and try the fight again, but even this would only help marginally by allowing you to perhaps scout out a bit more of the Tomb knowing that you can't win, because there are other essential or near-essential items in addition to the key that you will now no longer have as well. There is some serious high level trolling of the player going on here. 

The Deathometer - Speaking of character death, this adventure adds something called The Deathometer, which is less of a mechanic and more of just a scoring system. This "feature" (mentioned on the cover of the book), involves the inclusion of a grid at the back of the book, whereby you are meant to mark off one of the boxes each time Pip dies, and then when you finally beat the adventure (ha!), you are given a score based upon how many times you died and can then compare this score with your friends. (And if you lent this book out to any friends to play, they probably won't remain friends for long you sadistic bastard!). That said, it is incredibly disheartening and depressing to see just how many boxes you are given to mark off here. Are we really expected to take anywhere up to 252 tries to beat this thing? Mercy! 

You gotta be shitting me......

Section 23 - Anyone who has played this adventure knows exactly what I am talking about here. There is a certain room within the Tomb (found at section 23), that you will find yourself being sent back to so many times because you made one wrong move, that not only will you find it immensely infuriating, but you will be seeing this number in your dreams as the root of all evil. This adventure sees you trudging through the same corridors over and over again to such an extent that it might be the worst at this aspect that I can recall playing. I am not talking about revisiting corridors on separate playthroughs either, which is to be expected, but by having your character to-ing and fro-ing so much over even one attempt, that I was finding myself being sorely tempted to enter one of the sections I knew to be instant-deaths just for some blessed relief. There are many examples of this throughout the adventure, but Section 23 is far and away the most glaring one.   

I'll never look at this movie the same way again.

Dreamtime - While the Dreamtime sections have been updated once again, for the first time in the series I don't feel like this is for the better. You are very likely going to need to use it to heal at some point, which would be a good thing, except that much like the previous book, the danger of sleeping is quite high, with several of the dreams being nasty affairs with negative consequences if not outright game over. The dreams themselves did not seem to be as well written as in the prior books either, and the whole Dreamtime section at the back of the book felt much shorter.    

To cap it all off, the writing did not even feel as entertaining to me as the prior entries, and while I admittedly came across the odd bit of humour here and there, I may have been influenced by what a dire experience playing through the adventure was, so may not have been in much of a mood to find anything about it amusing. After conceding defeat and reading ahead to the "Pip Triumphant" victory section in order to prepare myself for the next book, I will confess to being at least moderately impressed by a twist in the story contained there. I just wish I could have reached this victory section by the proper means.  

Ranking: Terrible. To borrow a phrase from the book itself, "this one pongs to high heaven". This is right up there with some of the most tedious, frustrating, and overall worst gamebook experiences I have had so far. Maybe the best description I can give it is "anti-fun". These last two books have made me question how I have this blog set up, at least in terms of the counter I have at the top of the page indicating how many adventures I have been able to beat, because spending 4 weeks on the last two entries alone with nothing to show for it on the counter, I can't help but feel a bit gypped, and maybe I should change it to "total books reviewed" instead. This is what an awful gamebook experience does to me. It makes me question all I thought I knew. Even if I had managed to beat Tomb of Nightmares, and I think enough attempts would eventually see me luck through it, it would still score very, very low and would easily be near the bottom of the Bad tier. I am very relieved to be done with this one, and with only one more adventure in the series to go, I must confess that I find myself dreading the final book based upon these last two entries, as it feels like Brennan just stopped caring by this point.

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8. Legion of the Dead - Score = 5.3   Tier = OK

Attempts to Beat: 5

Yay! After almost a solid month of gamebook playing without a victory to show for it, I am finally back in the win column! That isn't really saying much with this particular entry, as it surprisingly proved itself to be very much on the easy side, but I will take what I can get at this point. In an interesting plot twist to begin the final book of the series, we are called back in time to inhabit the body of Pip not by Merlin, but by Merlin's apprentice, a young girl named Cody. It seems that Merlin is now dead, having fallen out of an apple tree. That isn't the worst of it though, as not only is he deceased, but he is now leading the dreaded "Legion of the Dead", which is an army of zombies, mummies, vampires and the like, who even now is terrorizing Scotland and preparing to make its way south to invade Avalon and to destroy Camelot itself. It's not exactly explained why Merlin is leading the Legion of the Dead, unless we are supposed to assume that anyone who dies immediately turns to evil, but nevertheless after getting to choose 6 items from a quite varied list before we head out, we find ourselves immediately transported to the Scottish countryside, where we are expected to locate and destroy the Legion single-handedly. 

This will likely be my shortest review of the series, because from here on out, the adventure is pretty basic. There are several different areas you progress through, with most of them containing an item you will need to locate should you wish to move on and be able to defeat Merlin at the end of the quest. These areas include the opening Scottish countryside, a cursed castle, a Scottish village, and finally the underground lair where the Legion is currently marshalling their forces. None of the areas are particularly difficult or even tricky, and I may have been able to defeat this adventure in a couple of less attempts than it took me, except I was determined to explore as much of it as possible, which led to one or two foolish deaths. 

The Brennan staple of keyed maps in his gamebooks, which was oddly absent from the previous adventure, is made up for in spades here, as we get a whopping five of them in this book, although two of them are quite small, and one can even be avoided completely. A couple of these keyed map areas contain essential items, however it is surprising how easy it is to actually find what you need. The cursed castle is especially guilty of this, as it provides a fairly detailed layout, but then a large chunk of the sections have nothing going on in them, and the one magical item you will need for the final fight against Merlin is so easy to obtain that I thought for sure there must be something else essential hidden somewhere in the castle that I would need to find (hint: there isn't). 

The Scottish village is another map you will need to visit to grab an essential item. To have the fate of the kingdom hinge upon you having the item in question, a doughnut of all things, from this village is something that would have made Ian Livingstone proud. It is far more allowable in a comedy series such as this one of course, but even so, you initially have a 50-50 choice of doughnut, and need to pick the correct flavour should you wish to be victorious. This would have been annoying (and of course I picked wrong on my first try at it), except that it is so easy to get back to this spot that it barely wound up even registering as a speed bump. You need the correct flavour of doughnut to be able to bribe the Loch Ness Monster (and you just knew he was going to make an appearance in a Scotland-set adventure) into providing you with a password needed in the final area.     

I wonder if Brennan realized just how difficult the previous two entries in the series were, because just about everything here appears to be geared to make this adventure as easy as possible. There is a whopping amount of healing that can easily be found here in a certain location, and this healing can be carried with you. However, unlike in previous books that normally had healing potions restore a 2D6 roll of Life Points, this time whenever you take one it restores you back to maximum Life. Unfortunately, this once again renders the Dreamtime sections moot, as I am not sure why you would ever consider the need to sleep in order to restore Life points, and this is really a shame as they are once again extremely humourous and well written, and I would highly suggest reading through them just for fun. 

Your powerful spellbook returns here too, although combat is not really the focus of this adventure at all, so you likely will not need to use your spells either, making this mechanic somewhat pointless here as well. I thought for sure the spellbook would be required in the final fight against Merlin, but as it turns out, this encounter is a colossal letdown, with there being no fight at all. This final underground lair is the most linear thing you will ever see, and you either arrive at the final chamber where Merlin is gathering his forces, having the correct magical item with you in which case you automatically win, or you arrive without it and......do you lose? Nope! You are just instantly teleported to the location where the needed item can be found so that you can get it this time and head on back! I don't recall seeing a final encounter be that forgiving before. And as if all that wasn't enough, the section 14 for this adventure once again allows you to restart either right from the beginning, or at the section you died at, and while this may not help in the instant-death cases, it might at times keep you from having to replay certain sections. Conversely though, and this is a strange one, you are only allowed to roll for your Life points 3 times on your FIRST try at the adventure, and every other attempt after that you only roll once. Why change this now? Not only that, this rule is awkwardly buried in the section of the rules that you are sent to should you have not played other Grailquest books before, so long-time series readers could completely miss this.     

Once Merlin is defeated by using the magical item, he is freed from the curse that had apparently turned him evil, and the two of you return together to Camelot triumphant. It's not explained why Merlin is alive again, but more than that, I found this final victory section to be somewhat lacking considering it is the last one in the series. And while overall this book returns to providing the level of humour seen in some of the earlier entries, and which I felt was generally missing from the previous book, it felt to me like Brennan may have been trying too hard at times. That said, this adventure contains two different jokes which may be both the most risque and also the most groan-worthy jokes I think I have seen in a gamebook yet. The risque joke occurs when Pip enters a clerical room inside the castle, and it is described how "bustling officials in black tights carrying black rods (the officials, not the tights) scurry hither and yon."  This might just be my dirty mind at work and not have been intended, but when you talk about tights carrying rods, well......! The groan-worthy joke happens when Pip encounters a mummy, and asks it "why do mummies wear so many bandages?" The answer....."in my case, I cut myself shaving". Heavens! I wasn't initially sure if this was even supposed to be a joke, but it comes complete with following rim-shot so I suppose it is. Additionally, I was starting to get a bit annoyed at how often someone will repeat something that another individual has just said ("The Legion of the Dead?" " The Legion of the Dead") Some of the other jokes also feel like they are starting to get recycled (and Brennan seems to have a fascination with vampires and talking inanimate objects), and it is probably for the best that the series ended here, as I fear it may have become quite stale had it gone on any further. 

On a personal note, this is likely one of the more expensive gamebooks I own, if the online prices for it are any indication. I got lucky on this one, as it was one of the two Grailquest books I owned as a youngster (The Gateway of Doom being the other), and even though I never played either of them back then, they both fortunately survived in my possession to this day.   

Ranking: A fairly innocuous gamebook experience, but gratefully accepted after the two books that preceded it. Looking at the required path through the adventure, it's tough not to think that this book was rushed, which is surprising as it comes in at 237 sections, which is hefty for this series. Many of the sections however lead nowhere and have nothing much of interest or consequence going on within them, and you might say this book is top-of-the-mark when it comes to "filler". Even so, it was a decent enough entry and much better than Realm of Chaos or Tomb of Nightmares, although that isn't exactly high praise. I rank it much higher than those two, but those are the only two in the series I would say this is better than, and I have it settling in at sixth out of the eight books in the final rankings.   

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To conclude this page with some overall thoughts on the series, while perhaps not up there with Fighting Fantasy or Lone Wolf in terms of gamebook popularity (if online message board comments are any indication), it would seem to fall into that next tier which would likely include Way of the Tiger, Grailquest, and Fabled Lands, if perhaps even a couple of others. I think the reason for its standing is twofold, in that it came relatively early in the gamebook boom, and also that there really is nothing else quite like it, with its mix of humour and original gameplay ideas. With the exception of Brennan's own Horror Classics, which was only two books long and in many ways an extension of Grailquest, are there any other humourous gamebook series out there? Individual books maybe, but a full series? To say it carves out its own niche would be an understatement. 

It is more than a little unfortunate then that so many original and inspired gameplay ideas are introduced, including some nice flavorful maps and constructible items found at the back of a lot of the books, only to see them oftentimes ruined due to lack of care and apparent playtesting. It's almost as if Brennan would come up with an idea, but either not have the time, or could not be bothered, with the effort to make sure that everything about it worked properly. As others have noted, some of the rules can be vague or left unexplained, which only contributes to frustration levels. The rule that states if your Life Points ever drop to 5 or below means you are then rendered unconscious was a particular bugbear for me, because what does this actually mean? If you are knocked unconscious but not killed, do you awaken later and just proceed? Is it the same as Pip dying? If it's the latter (and I felt I had no choice but to interpret it as such), then what is even the point? All it effectively does is lower everyone's Life points by 5. 

And while overall I felt the series was a worthwhile playthrough, I would have thought better of it had it ended after book 5, because book 6, and especially book 7, are atrocious, and unfortunately tainted my feelings on the series to a certain degree, as they came so close to the end. Book 8, while nothing to write home about, helped to cleanse the palate a little bit so to speak, I only wish the "Merlin turning evil" idea had been committed to 100 percent, with a final proper boss battle involving magic, and that saw Merlin remaining evil throughout (perhaps with the issue regarding his pension pushing him over the edge).  As it stands, the ending I found to be very abrupt, as was seen in another King Arthur parody, that of course being the movie "Monty Python and the Holy Grail".    

I was half expecting the police to show up and arrest everyone to conclude the series. 

And on the subject of that, is it not odd that the title of this series is Grailquest, yet at no time is the holy grail actually sought? I thought for sure this was being saved until the final book, so I have to admit to being let down by that development. To conclude on a positive note though, if nothing else this series definitely wins for being the most colourful looking on my bookshelf!