Knightmare

 ______________________________________________________________ 

1. Knightmare - Score = 💀💀 1/2 - Two and a Half Skulls

Sections: 105
Attempts to Beat Slightly Difficult Quest: 4
Attempts to Beat Harder Quest: 2
Attempts to Beat Difficult Quest: 2

I thought I would take a break at the halfway point of the Lone Wolf Grand Master series in order to cheat a little bit and return to the 1980's and give the "Knightmare" series of gamebooks a go. I am not sure if you would classify this as an 80's gamebooks series, as the first book was published in 1988, or as a 90's gamebook series, as there were more books from this range published during the 90's than in the 80's. The whole series however is written by the same author, Dave Morris (with the first book also being co-authored by Tim Child), who is one of my absolute favorite gamebook authors, so my expectations for this series are already running high. This is also another series based upon a television show that I have never seen, so I will have no idea how well the books approximate the design and spirit of the show (or if the show was even any good in the first place). An interesting thing to note about these books is that they are broken up into two parts, a short novella at the front of the book, followed by an even shorter gamebook adventure at the back, presumably all relating to the novella. The novella here, despite being extremely fantasy-trope heavy, is actually written incredibly well, making me believe once again that Morris must make for a strong straight-up novelist in addition to his gamebook efforts. The story involves a young Saxon warrior called Treguard, and his quest to reclaim his family castle, which was long ago taken over by an ancient evil force. Along the way, Treguard battles mercenaries, rescues damsels in distress, and defeats dangerous dragons, so yes, nothing really new under the sun here and everything plays out as you might expect. I still enjoyed it quite a bit though, and it got me wondering if I should get back into reading fantasy novels. (An idea I quickly abandoned for now, realizing how many gamebooks I still have yet to play). 

After the novella section comes what I am here for, the gamebook adventure! The adventure itself is only 105 sections, but can sometimes feel like even less, because it is broken up into 3 different quests, labelled: "slightly difficult", "harder", and "difficult". The quests don't appear to share all that many sections as far as I can tell, so you are in essence playing 3 adventures of about 35-40 section length each. The quests are very linear, so while they didn't fly by quite as fast as I was expecting, they are still over rather quickly, and I managed to finish all 3 in one sitting. The adventure begins with your nameless character entering the dungeons of Knightmare Castle, where Treguard himself gives you the goal, which differs depending upon which of the 3 quests you decide to undertake. The slightly-difficult adventure merely requires you to make it to the end of the three-level dungeon alive, the harder adventure requires you to rescue someone who has been captured and is being held in the dungeon, and the difficult adventure requires you to defeat an evil force that has taken up residence on the dungeon's lowest level. And here I have to say, I really found no difference in difficulty between the 3 quests, and in fact failed the slightly-difficult adventure more than any of the others! (Although to be fair that might be because I was still getting the hang of things on that first quest, and made a bonehead mistake or two). 

As far as the game system goes, there is no dice rolling here, as you make your way through the dungeon choosing different courses of action, gathering items, finding one-time use spells, and occasionally solving riddles. There is however a Life Force Clock system, with 3 different statuses you can be at, either Green, Amber, or Red. You start at Green of course, and are told that each time you pass through a gate, door or portal, your status drops down a level. Should you be at level Red when you pass through a gate, door or portal, you then die and it is game over. This whole thing felt like rather a waste though and an exercise in pointless bookkeeping, because I was frequently told to restore my Life Status back to the Green level, usually for correctly choosing an option or solving a riddle. 

The other thing is that in this adventure, just about ANY wrong move leads to instant death, so that you hardly have time for your Life Status to drop to Red anyway. And although I did find a few moments where I thought you were asked to make a choice with little to no info to go on (should you run or sneak comes up a couple of times), with choosing incorrectly leading to death, these moments were thankfully not the majority of choices, and I did appreciate how some thought needed to be put into most of the decisions you make, so the options (mostly) don't feel like a complete guessing game and thus an exercise in pure trial-and-error. The riddles too were rather good, although when you answer one it does not lead to a hidden section number like in most gamebooks, but rather you are asked a riddle, then need to turn to the back of the book to find out whether you selected the correct option or not, which may see you inadvertently catching a glimpse of the answer to a riddle you have not yet encountered if your memory is good enough to remember it later. 

Very interestingly, the rules also contain something called the "Adventurer's Code", which is a list of rules meant to guide you. Some of these are to be expected, such as "avoid killing whenever possible", but others probably gave away a little too much. For example one of the rules tells you that when confronted with a choice between going left or right in the adventure, with no other information to go on you should always go right. (I suppose because you are "righteous"?) This was one of the situations that lead to my first bonehead death in the first quest, when upon coming to such a choice I immediately chose to go left, and was promptly killed. What can I say, the old gamebook-trope of "always go left" burned me here. (Is this really a thing anyway? It would be a massive undertaking, but I wonder if an analysis was done between left-and-right choices in gamebooks, if the results would turn up anything other than a close to 50/50 split between positive and negative outcomes). One of the other rules in the Adventurer's Code mentions never to pick up any weapons, as they are likely evil traps laid by the enemy. This is where my next bonehead failure occurred, as despite having read this rule earlier, I completely forgot about it and couldn't resist picking up that cool looking weapon I came across when asked to choose from a list of items. It was at this point I realized that the Adventurer's Code was no joke, and decided to pay much stricter attention to what I was doing, having previously thought this would be a much easier light-hearted romp of a quest, being as short as it was. Even so, there were still a couple of times I answered one of the riddles incorrectly or chose to employ the wrong item or spell (which again, means instant failure), so that I did not beat any of the quests on my first try. 

It may be a function of the shorter-form adventure and the smaller sections themselves, but this did not seem up to the usual standard of Dave Morris' writing, although I do not know how much was written by Morris and how much by Child. There really is not much atmosphere within the dungeon, and I found myself travelling through a series of rather bland and randomly connected tunnels and caverns. This stands in stark contrast to the novella, which WAS very well written, so maybe my thoughts on the writing of the gamebook adventure are tainted by playing it immediately after reading the story. I will say that the one exception to this in the gamebook portion were the death sections, which were often entertainingly written. I also did find the challenge level here to be just about right for these shorter adventures too. I additionally noticed that there is no book number on the spine, so I wonder if this was originally intended to be a one-off before it was expanded into a series.    

Ranking: Tough to know what to make of this one. Providing 3 separate quests packs a lot of content into a 105 section adventure, and solving the puzzles in order to pass through to the next level of the dungeon was fun enough. However, the 3 quests all seemed incredibly similar, the Life Force Clock system is a waste of time, and the near complete lack of story to the quests themselves (not talking the novella here) really hurts it. I have no idea how well it all approximates the tv show it is based on, but as a mini-gamebook it is solidly middle-of-the-road. My original intention was to read and review the novellas in each book as well as playing the games, and even though I did indeed do that with this first book, I think that moving forward I will be skipping the novellas and just playing the adventures. There could very well be some information contained within the novellas that aid in playing the adventures, but I will cross any of those bridges when I come to them. as reviewing fantasy novellas is not really why I started the blog. And although I was probably expecting more, being that this is from Dave Morris and all, the series is off to a decent, if unspectacular, start. 

______________________________________________________________ 

2. The Labyrinths of Fear - Score = 💀💀💀 1/2 - Three and a Half Skulls

Sections: 170
Attempts to Beat: 5

So, would skipping the novella portion of the book affect my experience with the adventure itself? Well as it turns out, apparently it would, although thankfully not to a great degree. I immediately turned to the back half of the book to start playing the adventure and went over the rules again, some of which have been modified. We once again have the "Green/Amber/Red" Life Force Clock system in play, however this time instead of losing a level of Life every time you pass through a door or portal, you are just flat out told by the adventure when you need to drop a Level (and sometimes even two Levels at once). I found this to be a MUCH better system, as in the previous book it was not always made clear when you should lower your Life Clock, and attention was almost never called to it, such that you could easily miss deducting a Level from yourself even though you should have. Here though it is pretty cut and dry. This book also introduces new ways to gain back Life Force Clock Levels, as you are told that if you have a food item among your possessions, and find yourself on a numbered section marked by an asterisk, you can then eat the food item to regain one Level of Life. Again, this is MUCH better, as it allows you to strategize on when to use your food of your own accord, rather than waiting for the adventure to pump you back up to Green status.  

The inventory system here allows you to carry up to 5 items, and with a fair amount of things to find, I thought this worked rather well, as at a couple of points I had to think carefully of what to keep and what to drop, consulting my map and notes on what was coming up next in order to do so. The adventure also thankfully ditches the rule from the previous book about losing your items every time you go from one level of the dungeon to the next (unless the item was magical, but would you always know that?). I'm not sure what it says that this adventure seems to be doing a better job with an inventory system than the Lone Wolf Grand Master books are currently doing as I play through them. The Spell system is just as good, as you discover them as you go along and are allowed to have up to 3 of these one-time use spells available to you at any given time. Seeking out which of the spells are more vital than others and where they can be used was a big part of the fun of the quest. 

And what exactly is the quest here? Good question! At least, that is what I was wondering when I began, as almost no introduction is given and you just find yourself heading into the dungeon at Knightmare Castle. As with the first book, Treguard gives you the "Helm of Justice" which you put on before going in, and just what is the point of this thing anyway? Apparently it is some kind of helmet that would appear to obscure your vision, but yet somehow doesn't? I assume that is it pictured on the cover of this book (the illustration of which reminds me of the Mouth of Sauron). I totally forgot to mention it in the first review, as you are told you are wearing it in the opening sections, but then as far as I know it never comes into play again, and I don't think it does in this book either. 

For some reason I pictured my character wandering around the dungeons like this. 

Once you have this crazy helmet on, you then just go into the dungeon at section 1, with no reason given as to what you are even doing here. (Just out for kicks one day?) While I greatly enjoy the idea of a gamebook starting off in a more mundane fashion, with the quest revealing itself as you go along rather than all dumped on you in a prologue, heading into a dangerous dungeon doesn't exactly fit that bill. Anyway, once you make it past level one of the dungeons, Treguard comes on over the "intercom" and informs you of your goal for this quest, thank goodness. It would seem a powerful Elf-King sorcerer, an evil one of course known as Arawn, has taken up residence in the dungeons lowest levels, and it is up to you to find and evict him by any means necessary. Considering the dearth of information I was given about Arawn himself, I got the sinking feeling that this is where reading the novella was supposed to have come in handy. This wasn't the only time in the adventure where I encountered someone or something that I clearly was supposed to know about already, but instead was left clueless as to their purpose or intentions. And while I was able to beat the adventure without any of this knowledge just by attempting to act reasonably, there is a good chance that things might have been made easier, or perhaps even made more sense, had I read the associated novella. Still, overall I enjoyed the book even without having done this. 

Making your way to the lower levels of the dungeons felt more interesting this time, as there were several good moments and encounters along the way, with yet more riddles scattered in (and no riddle look-up table at the back of the book this time either). Heck, you even have the famous wizard Merlin wandering around down here! The real high point of the adventure though is figuring out which items and spells you need to locate, and where they can be best used, and I love this kind of thing. There did too seem to be slightly more leeway here if you make a mistake, as opposed to the previous book which pretty much meant instant game over for doing so. That said, while the layout of the dungeon isn't exactly the same by any means, there were moments of deja vu from the first book, such as the encounter with the sorceress Lillith, who is still guarding the passage over that chasm. I did also find quite a few "red herring" items and spells mixed in here that only served to make the inventory and spell systems more satisfying in strategizing on what to keep. There was one item in particular, a Gold Key, that I was absolutely convinced must be necessary to beating the adventure (it's a key made of gold for crying out loud!), that I was left shaking my head in admiration at that scamp Dave Morris when I ultimately discovered that this key is not in fact required at all. (You got me Dave!).     

Once you descend far enough into the dungeons, you will finally locate Arawn himself, and I thought this encounter with him was incredibly well handled. It begins with you pursuing him through the lowest level, needing to use various items and spells you have gathered along the way to overcome obstacles that he throws in front of you as he flees. When you are able to do this successfully, you then face off against him in a riddle contest to see who will emerge victorious. In order to beat him, you need to answer two of his riddles. The first one being:

 "I saw an army forage through miles of countryside, not a blade of grass did they trample, nor spill a drop of blood.".

You have to identify to what Arawn is describing, and I have to admit this one had me stumped. Also, rather than needing to use math to turn the answer into the next section number to go to, the book trusts the reader enough to give them the answer and then ask them straight out "did you get it right or not"? The downside of this is that even if you got it wrong, you now know what the answer is moving forward, but riddles are a tricky thing to do in gamebooks, needing to make them challenging enough for the player, but also not locking them out of completing the adventure should they just not be able to solve it. Upon answering truthfully that I had not gotten the riddle correct, I turned to the indicated section fully expecting the insta-death to kick in, only to pleasantly find out that I was given a second chance! Should I have a particular Spell still at my disposal (which I thankfully did), I could use that to stave off Arawn's attack, and then move on to the final riddle. This last riddle was:

 "A thing unseen, with a wild voice, its strength can overturn ships, but it cannot pass a barred door".

I found this much easier than the first riddle, arriving at the correct answer right away, at which point I defeated Arawn and banished him from the Castle. Taking a peek at what would happen should you get this wrong, I can see that you get no second chance for this one, so you better bring your "A" game!  Oh, and while there was no Adventurer's Code provided in the book this time, I found that keeping to the right when confronted with a choice of direction, in the absence of any contradicting information or clue at least, didn't steer me wrong yet again. I wonder if this will prove true for the whole series? 

Ranking: I thought this was better than the first book in every conceivable way. The increased section count helps of course, but focusing on one adventure as opposed to three different ones was the right way to go too. I think what impressed me most was the improvements Dave Morris made to the game system. The Life Force Clock, inventory system, and spells were all a step up from the previous adventure. Figuring out what items and spells I needed, along with which could be ignored, and the order in which to gather and use everything was a lot of fun to work out, and the adventure didn't necessarily consign you to defeat for one wrong move. The writing was a step up also, and although it's still not at the level I have come to expect from Morris, I'm sure a lot of this can be attributed to the shortness of the majority of the sections. I came close to giving this 4 Skulls, but I couldn't quite do it as there is still a certain amount of randomness to the encounters, and also a feeling of "sameness" to the dungeon (this is supposed to be the same castle as last book after all). And as much as I enjoyed the design, it felt almost completely devoid of plot, but that admittedly might be on me for not reading the novella. Who knows, had I read the story itself, I might have bumped it up to those 4 Skulls after all. (Not that half a Skull in a completely arbitrary scoring system matters that much anyway). Either way, this was a well-designed adventure with just the right amount of difficulty for its length, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

______________________________________________________________ 

3. Fortress of Assassins - Score = 💀💀 1/2 - Two and a Half Skulls

Sections: 155
Attempts to Beat: 8

While once again skipping the novella and heading straight to the gamebook portion of the book, I found myself not missing the story contained in the first half of the book nearly as much this time. The intro here seems to give us slightly more of a reason for being at Knightmare Castle and choosing to head down into the dungeons (we are there to test our mettle, as it were), although admittedly not much of one. And once again it is only when we are well into the dungeon itself before Treguard informs us as to what our goal is. That goal this time is to locate and retrieve a Crystal Key that is to be found somewhere on the third dungeon level. Sounds simple enough. The rules are the same as last adventure with one new addition, as we are told we will need a 6-sided die for this adventure, although we are not initially told exactly why. In the first section of the adventure we are given the option of taking either a food item, or a choice between 1 of 3 available spells, but c'mon, who isn't going to take a spell?

Once equipped with our selection of choice, we are ready to head into the first level of the dungeon, which is probably one of the high points of the adventure because it gives you 4 different routes to take through this opening level. That said, some routes prove to be more useful than others, with one in particular being the most useful by FAR, as it provides you 2 valuable items that can come in extremely handy later without requiring you to do anything to obtain them. It is a shame then that this also happens to be the most boring of the routes, as all the others contain some rather fun encounters along the way, such as a group of dice playing Ogres for example. The adventure did take me enough attempts so that I got to try them all, so that was a bonus. Providing these 4 different paths through the first level helped greatly with replayability, and starting over after a character death becomes something almost welcomed at times as you can now go back and try something different while traversing this opening area. 

These paths eventually meet up just before you head down into the second level, and this next level can even be entered either the easy way (by going down a flight of stairs), or the hard way (by falling down a pit). This second level also has a couple of different paths that lead to the final level, and probably has some of the better encounters in the book, including a battle taking place between a vampire and a warrior nun. There is even a dirty trick that can be played on you down here, as at one point a jester can ask you a riddle that I was struggling to come up with an answer for, only to eventually find out that it didn't matter what you came up with anyway, as you are just told to move on whatever you replied. Dastardly! As with the previous book though, there is some degree of sameness that hits you once in awhile, and while Lillith the sorceress is not to be found in this quest, we do once again confront Granitas the wall monster, who poses a riddle that you need to solve in order to pass, and who has been in every book so far. I had enjoyed his riddles from the previous books, but the one he asks you here felt rather arbitrary, and the adventure even seems to agree, as there are a couple of possible answers that will allow you through. Once you have made your way through this gauntlet, you are ready to descend to the third and final level of the dungeon.  

And yeah, once you get down to this third level of the dungeon and the endgame draws near, things start to feel quite rushed, and even a bit weird. First off, you are given a choice of 3 doors to go through, except all of them lead to the exact same thing! (Say it ain't so! Did the great Dave Morris just pull a "Sutherland"?). Then comes an encounter with a hooved monster as you walk over what is essentially a metal bridge. So how do you beat this guy? By throwing salt in his face! (Assuming you picked up some salt earlier that is). He comes up behind you too, so I can just imagine my character chucking the salt blindly over his shoulder and hoping that it hits home. This seems a rather lame way of getting past what was made out to be the most dangerous enemy in the book, and it doesn't even defeat him, it just buys you enough time to rush out the door at the far end. To be fair there is a second way to get past him which involves casting a spell to disintegrate the bridge, and then using magical sandals to walk to the door, but you will probably need to die here first before figuring out you need both these items, and while this is likely the intended way of making it past this point, the whole thing with the salt was too odd not to mention. 

After you get past that encounter, now comes the time for your final test. You enter a room where you find both the Crystal Key that you are seeking, along with a rather ordinary looking Lead Key, both suspended over a pit in the middle of the room. It is made clear from the scales that they are both resting on, that whichever key you decide to take, the other key will plummet into the seemingly bottomless pit. Seems a rather easy choice then, but wait, before you step forward to take your key, an evil sorceress calling herself "Malice" appears, and shows you that she currently has an imp called "Pickle" locked inside a crystal casket which is rapidly filling with water. At this point, I got the sneaking suspicion that I was supposed to know who these two characters were, and I can only assume they played a role in the novella at the front of the book. Malice goes on to tell you that you are free to take the Crystal key that you came for, or the Lead key which will presumably free Pickle from certain death. The choice here seems obvious, especially with the concept of chivalry having been pounded into you for all these adventures. However, there was a slight niggle that had me wondering if this might be a trick question, because I did not fail to notice that the casket in which Pickle is imprisoned is also made out of crystal, so could it be the Crystal key that would in fact free him and not the Lead one? But then in an unusual move for Morris, this choice is betrayed in how the final option is worded, as instead of having a choice between Crystal or Lead, you are asked if you want to take the Crystal Key, or the "Key that will free Pickle". Well, that pretty much gives it away on which option to take then doesn't it? Even more than that, this option leads directly to section 155, which for players like myself who check how many sections an adventure contains before beginning, will then know that this is the last section of the adventure, which is usually the victory section. This could have ended up being another diabolical dirty trick to entice a player to take the wrong option, which would have had me impressed, but no, this final section is in fact the winning section after all. This all contributes to this whole final sequence, and indeed the whole third level of the dungeon, feeling rather rushed. You are then commended by Treguard for sacrificing your personal quest in order to save another life, and are told you have passed the real test and thus won the quest. 

Oh, and that 6-sided die that you were told you needed? As far as I can tell it only comes into play a couple of times in the whole adventure, and even in those cases it is just one roll used to determine if you randomly die or not. Fun times.       

Ranking: Where book 2 in the series was a clear step up from book 1 in all aspects, book 3 for me was conversely a step down in almost every area. The one thing it does have going for it is replayability, as there are quite a few different paths through to the end of the adventure that can be experimented with. The downside, if you want to call it that, to providing all these different paths through the adventure is that any one of them taken by itself feels quite short, even for a 155 section gamebook. Once I had worked it out, I was surprised to see just how short the final victory route through the adventure could be, and I could imagine someone who happened to beat this on their first or second attempt left thinking....."that's it?". Fortunately for me, this adventure took me just enough attempts at it so I felt like I got to explore most of what it had to offer, and even looking at my map I see there are still a couple of unexplored spots. However, the great inventory and spell system from the previous book was cut back here, and I never found myself wondering what to take and what I would have to leave. This is even worse when it comes to the spells, as it felt there were fewer of them to collect and experiment with this time. Additionally, the introduction of the die rolling felt rather pointless. While overall this is an "ok" adventure, I initially thought after a few playthroughs that this might be just as good as the previous book, but its faults started to appear the more I played it, with the endgame in particular feeling incredibly rushed. Even though the quest is once again rather plotless, I do give it a slight edge and the tiebreak over the first book, Knightmare, but for me there is no way this is better than, or even as good as, The Labyrinths of Fear. 

______________________________________________________________ 

4. The Sorcerer's Isle - Score = 💀💀💀 - Three Skulls

Sections: 159
Attempts to Beat: 1

On to book 4 and hey-hey, we actually have something of an initial goal this time. Getting away from the typical "you enter the dungeon at Knightmare Castle, (just because), and are informed half-way through what you need to do", we are instead informed this time by Treguard that we are going on a quest for the Holy Grail! I have often thought that such a quest would make for a good gamebook series, as one short adventure wouldn't seem to be enough to cover such a momentous quest, but I will take what I can get. (And Herbie Brennan's "Grailquest" was a big tease in that regard. Why was it even named that?) Once more we have some new mechanics introduced here, in the form of THREE new stats to track! First, and most importantly, we have our Chivalry stat (because only a chivalrous knight may find the grail of course), which begins at a score of 3, and you are awarded or deducted points from that based upon actions you take during the quest. Next, we have both Armour and Dexterity stats, which are pretty self explanatory. You have 7 points to allocate between these two stats however you wish, needing to have at least a 1 in each, and at times during the quest you may be asked to test one of these stats by rolling one die, with you needing to roll under or equal to your current value of that stat in order to pass the test in question. I'm sure the tactic most players would probably take on a first playthrough would be to roughly split their 7 points among both stats, but I decided to give myself 1 in Armour and 6 in Dexterity, because knowing my luck if I allocated 4 and 3 I would still end up failing more than I should, where at least now I was guaranteed a pass in any Dexterity tests, and could hopefully use that knowledge to my advantage to attempt stealth instead of combat whenever possible, which is how this series seems to normally skew. 

Much like the previous adventure, this quest begins with you having to choose from among 4 doors with different symbols: Cup, Sword, Staff, and Coin. However, instead of these doors leading to various paths through the dungeon, instead these doors each lead to different "areas" that must be traversed before they all join up together at a later chokepoint. With not much to go on, and despite how obvious it seemed seeing as how I was looking for a grail, I decided to start with the Cup door, and boy did that turn out to be both a simultaneously good and bad choice. It's good if you want to win and win quickly, because this path through the book is incredibly short, and also very easy. It starts with you judging an "ugliness contest" between 4 female characters, most of whom I recognize from previous adventures, before moving on to 3 quick True-or-False questions, and that's it, you arrive at the chokepoint on a riverbank. The True-or-False questions I thought were all quite easy, and the ugliness contest can even be completely bypassed if you wish. Once at the riverbank, you have a quick encounter with a leper, travel through a forest which takes a lot longer narratively than it does gameplay-wise, before arriving at another river, dealing with the knight that guards the bridge over it, where you then make your way to a Stonehenge-like structure where you have to "test your Chivalry score" to see if you are worthy enough to claim the Grail and win the game. Even my describing what you go through makes it sound longer than it is, and not only did I beat the adventure on my first try, I believe I did it in about 15 minutes. I mostly enjoyed what I did experience though, and not wanting to just leave it at that, I decided to go back and try the other initial doors as well in an attempt to do this review at least some justice, and give me something else to write about.   

And I'm really glad I did too, because the other routes are longer (some of them much longer), with a fair share of colorful encounters along the way. One of the doors takes you to a magnificent castle where a tournament is about to begin, and you can choose to take place in either the jousting or archery competitions (where obviously your allocation choice between Armour and Dexterity scores is going to come into play). Another door will see you taking a rural journey across fields and meadows, all the time being tested by the god Pan in how well you respect nature. And yet another door will have you visiting a rustic outdoor market, complete with fortune-teller, talkative priest, and forlorn elf-maiden. Trust me to pick the shortest and least-interesting of the 4 routes on my first playthrough, as I found all the other paths a better read, if even they are still lacking somewhat in atmosphere, once again likely due to the shorter section lengths. 

That said, I didn't find any of them any more difficult than the Cup door route, and the whole purpose of travelling along is to gather Chivalry points for the final test. Doing this isn't really all that hard, you just need to act like a "good person", so when you are asked questions such as "do you want to talk to the Leper, or move across the road and avoid him?", it's pretty obvious what you should be doing. I will say this though, depending on which route you take, even acting like a chivalrous individual at all times does not mean you will necessarily gather the 3 Chivalry points needed that would bring your score up to 6 and guarantee your success on the final test, as a couple of them are rather well hidden. So you could feel like you did everything right, but an unlucky roll right at the end could still scupper you, which no doubt would be rather frustrating. Most of these different routes also contain an item that can help you later on in the forest that comes after the chokepoint, but I didn't really find any of them necessary, as unlike the first book in the series you are not just killed outright for making a bad choice or not possessing a certain item. Even the knight guarding the bridge right near the end of the quest was incredibly easy to get by, and I'm not sure how you wouldn't make it past him. There is a very strangely designed moment though where you can pick up a food item that will restore 2 Levels of Life when eaten, however you acquire it immediately before the final Chivalry test, rendering it completely pointless. (Unless we have been meant to carry items between books all along). 

Ranking: I mentioned that the biggest thing the previous book had going for it was in its replayability, and that is even more true for The Sorcerer's Isle. This score is based upon a player trying all, or most, of the 4 different opening routes through the adventure, because otherwise it is just too short, and in my opinion, too easy as well. Another good thing it has going for it though is in finally getting out from the repetitiveness of the 3 level dungeon of Knightmare Castle, and we therefore get an adventure that feels "fresh" for the series. I enjoyed the Chivalry point system, even though its usually obvious what you should do in a given situation, and getting to allocate your Armour and Dexterity scores yourself is always nice. I am really enjoying how Morris is tweaking the series rules as he goes along. However, the downside to that might be that earlier mechanics that I was enjoying, such as the inventory and spell systems, are now pretty much afterthoughts. There was at least a bit of a story this time too, and the writing felt better because of it. I would have scored it higher had it been even a bit more challenging, but as it is each playthrough had me feeling that I was along for a pleasant, yet short, ride