Legends of Skyfall

RANKINGS

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1. Monsters of the Marsh - Score = 6.3    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 9

Very messy, but with a saving grace endgame. My first foray into the Legends of Skyfall series by David Tant begins, and not having the faintest idea what to expect I found this opening entry to have some great ideas so it's unfortunate that it fails to execute in several important areas.

Beginning with the game system, I gave the Golden Dragon series a bit of a knock for seemingly copying over the Fighting Fantasy stats so Id be remiss if I didn't say the same here. In fact, this is even worse. Instead of Skill, Stamina, and Luck we have Expertise, Vitality, and Fortune. That's just blatant. There is also the coin flipping mechanic substituted for dice which I have to give points for creativity if not practicality. Having coins bouncing all over the place isn't a lot of fun and if you are supposed to do the catch-and-smack-it-on-the-top-of-your-hand thing this would make the combats last forever. I assume like most who played, I just used 6 sided dice (odd numbers = heads, even numbers = tails) so at least this was easily bypassed.

To the story, we are first given an overview of the world of Skyfall and having the humans on the planet being refugees from an Earth in the distant future who have since reverted to a more medieval lifestyle (albeit one which now includes magic) was definitely an interesting angle. This was never really explored that much, if at all, once the adventure starts but I'm hopeful this backstory is somehow incorporated a bit more in future adventures. The book specific prologue I found to be excellent. Setting up a good mystery is always a great way to begin a gamebook as I am then anxious to begin exploring and uncovering clues because I'm keen to solve it. The mysterious disappearances of the barges (including your fathers) was really well written and laid out. It's a bit of a shame that the cover of the book kind of gives away a bit of the mystery even if I did find the combination of artwork and colours on this cover to be very appealing.

I was excited in beginning the adventure as well. Using the map which details the rivers and streams we have available to explore in the gloomy Dunmarsh promised a great time in clue-hunting and map making. Imagine my disappointment then to "discover" that many of these avenues contained....nothing at all. I began by exploring the Doone river and its tributaries (made sense I thought as that is where the disappearances occurred). The lack of encounters or anything going on here is head scratching. I found myself travelling up and down a maze of rivers and streams and while this should have provided a great time in map making, it's pretty boring if you are just drawing lines on your map and not adding any encounters or even discernible features as Tant hardly even provides any description of the marsh itself. The only encounter I had in this whole area was with a group of Centaurs who needed my help in freeing their comrade from some Giant Spiders. I wish I had come across more parts like this as this little quest was very well written and enjoyable. Unfortunately though, after helping them they reward you with an amulet which marks you as a friend of the Centaurs. I'm not totally sure, but this reward seems almost completely useless! Sure, it might help you if you travel into Centaur Forest in the far north but there is really no reason to go there anyway. So basically, I found the Doone river and the whole eastern part of the map to be a bit pointless.

I also have to wonder, why am I constantly being told about the width and length of everything I traverse in this book? I'm continually being told how many miles long and wide the river I'm on is, or how many feet wide and long the cavern or room I'm entering is etc. Maybe this is Tant's way of having us visualize these areas but that's what imagination is for. As written, it comes off as a very dry math textbook whenever he does this. He also likes to explain each river or passageway you enter in a general sense so that each description is the same regardless of whether you are entering it from one end or the other. I can see how this could cause confusion if you arent paying close attention as you might not know which direction you are actually heading.

I also found some confusion regarding the rules. There is a completely useless bit of record keeping whereby you keep track of how many hours you have been travelling for and every 14 hours you have to stop and eat a meal. This only seems to apply when travelling up the Doone river though as going up the Sol river this mechanic is completely forgotten. And what happens if I'm out of meals? Am I dead? Do I lose Vitality points? Beats me. It must be something I would think otherwise whats the point in this whole process. I'm also told when I set out that my canoe has space for a weeks worth of food. Hmm, does that mean I now have 9 days worth (the 7 in the canoe and the 2 in my backpack)?  I mean, it didn't actually say I TOOK a weeks worth of food. Also, why am I often told "you may take a potion if you wish"? Don't the rules say you can take a healing draught at any point except in combat? So can I only do so when the book gives me the option? It seems Mr Tant wasn't even referencing his own rules when writing the book. 

The book also has a bit of a looping problem. Much like Forest of Doom and it's "go back to the start of the forest and try again" mechanic, you can find yourself here covering ground you've already been through and having the exact same encounters over and over again. I fought a Giant Beaver on top of a dam several times in one playthrough and there is a glaring example of poor editing within the cave on top of Dragon's Mount which contains the eagles. In this cave, you can kill the mama bird sitting on her nest and then execute her chicks (wow, what a heroic adventurer!), before exploring some fissures at the back of the cave. If you leave the cave you are told to ignore future eagle references, but not if you remain in it. So, at some references the book acts as though the eagle is still alive and you can I believe keep fighting her and killing her babies over and over and over (Prometheus had nothing on our hero here) and keep grabbing the neutralize poison bottle to use against the scorpion bite over and over and over. This obviously couldn't have been what was intended so I didn't do this but you could have exploited this to have dozens of tries at obtaining the magic mirror contained within one of the fissures.

So after all these problems, why did the book even get this high of a score? The answer is the Dragon's Mount section. This area is great (eagle cave issue notwithstanding) and fortunately is a fairly large chunk of the book. It contains several interesting encounters and elements including monsters, deathtraps, hidden items etc. It's really one big puzzle as you have to determine how you can get past the guards, free the captives, and increase your fighting power in order to defeat a Lizardman quickly enough in a key combat and also in the final battle against the mysterious Leader. It's a shame the whole book wasn't like this and maybe that's what bothered me the most is the wasted opportunity. There are so many pointless and boring sections used exploring the swamp that could have been used in this final area and I kind of wished the book had been called "Dragon's Mount" and had the whole adventure set in here.

Ranking: A great set up and mystery to solve, confusing game rules and poor editing, boring and pointless swamp exploration, but really good final act. Is the final act enough to completely redeem the book and make you forget all its problems? No, but it definitely helps it to go out on a high note and manages to pull it squarely into the OK tier.
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2. The Black Pyramid - Score = 1.5    Tier = Bad!

Attempts to beat: 10

Bloody hell! Back in my Starship Traveller review I questioned whether I would find a gamebook worse than that one. Well now I have my answer. Ladies and gentlemen I give you....The Black Pyramid!

Jeez where to begin with the problems in this one. Lets start with the story I guess. The previous book had a really good opening hook, giving you an interesting mystery to solve and a personal reason for wanting to solve it. This book does not have that. Here we decide to follow the rantings of a man who wandered in from the desert one night having survived several days crossing it. He tells tale of a strange pyramid out in the desert with beings that shot down his flying carpet (yes, really). Lured by the possibility of riches and adventure we decide to see if we can find said pyramid. Unfortunately, his directions for doing so basically consists of "head southwest". It occurred to me that this wanderer probably isn't the most reliable source for hidden treasure information seeing as how his journey likely made him delirious and hallucinatory but what the hell I guess.

The book then commences with a short linear trip across the desert where we none too surprisingly find the titular pyramid and make our way inside. This is when the adventure really goes down the crapper in the form of its design. Exploring and mapping out a pyramid should be a grand old time, but unfortunately the movement through its passageways and rooms is tantamount to gamebook torture. Mapping is essential here by the way and I would highly advise mapping using the section numbers in addition to the traditional way (never a good sign when you have to do this) because many of the sections here are highly confusing. One of the problems with the previous book, Monsters of the Marsh, was its bland and boring descriptions of the rivers you traveled along. Incredibly, Mr Tant has made this issue EVEN WORSE here! Every passage you come across is explained in the most boring detail imaginable. Once again you are given the dimensions in terms of height, length and width of everything you traverse and little else. This is boring as sin! To make matters worse, you can't seem to travel 20 feet without the book stopping you to ask if you want to carry on or go back the way you came. While I suppose this is to allow for free movement within the pyramid, all it really does is make a seemingly simple act such as walking down a passageway an exercise in tedium which takes far longer than it should.

There are many passageways and rooms to explore too as the pyramid covers 3 different levels. The lack of anything interesting going on here is once again mind boggling. The encounters you do have are among some of the driest you could imagine. The only thing of any interest you come across are the sections on the bottom level which point towards the series lore of humans arriving via spaceship from a distant future Earth as we learn the pyramid is built on top of (or incorporates) an interstellar craft. This doesn't really play into the conclusion of the adventure however, it's more just a neat bit of discovery.

The main goal of the player character here is apparently the procurement of riches, which he eventually gets when you free a couple of wealthy prisoners in the bottom level who promise you reward for helping them escape. You didn't know these guys were down here when you began the adventure though so I'm not really sure what the ultimate plan was. To lug a treasure chest back across the desert for 3 days?

Maybe the worst thing about the book? Once you finally make it to the end and think you are just about ready to chalk this "adventure" up as complete, you learn that you must now backtrack all the way back to the entrance! Are you freaking kidding me?? When I discovered this bit of sadism I came very close to setting the book on fire. I managed to see it through though, praying I wouldn't suffer some insta-death just as I emerged back out from the pyramid. The 10 attempts this book took me to complete felt like more than double that. Usually I have a feeling of accomplishment in beating a gamebook, particularly the difficult ones. In this case it was just a feeling of pure relief.

So, was there anything positive about this book? Well, it's (barely) playable and can be beaten, I can say that for it I suppose. The spaceship incorporation was a nice story touch. The free movement system throughout the pyramid, horribly designed as it is, at least allows you to go back for items you may have missed even if it does often come with the usual continuity problems this brings. These crumbs are nowhere near enough to save this one however although I guess they keep it from a 0 score.


Ranking: Just terrible. Mere words cannot really do it justice. It must be....experienced. The story and encounters are very weak and the design is outright atrocious. The worst gamebook I've played to date and it's a wonder Mr Tant got the chance to write two more of these things. I'm hesitant to see what the next one has in store but it has to be better than this right? Right???
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3. Mine of Torments - Score = 7.6    Tier = Good

Attempts to beat: 10

To paraphrase Dumb and Dumber, just when I think a gamebook author couldn't get any worse, he goes and does something like this.......AND TOTALLY REDEEMS HIMSELF! This book is night and day from the previous one in the series and I wonder if Mr Tant knew full well that The Black Pyramid was awful because he changes this one up so much.

The prologue here is back to providing a great mystery to solve, much like the first book, Monsters of the Marsh. The adventure starts by providing us with 3 great mysteries actually even though 2 of them are highly connected. Various hauntings and disappearances have been occurring in each of the affected areas of the land (forest, valley, and mine) and being the hardy and adventure seeking type we decide to take up the challenge of solving them. To make things even better, you get to decide the order in which you wish to attempt to solve the 3 mysteries. The backstory for each area is also set up in a chillingly spooky way which makes you eager to solve these disturbances while at the same time hesitant about the horrors you might find. Really great stuff!

If you want any realistic hope of winning the adventure there are 3 magical items you will need to collect. Mace, horn, and urn. In that order too I believe as I don't think there is any way to backtrack to get the mace once you've gotten to a certain point. Until you get to an encounter at the very end of the book though, you don't even know you are looking for them (one of those "wait, I need what?" moments). Once you know to hunt for them there is quite a bit of fun to be had in tracking them down and planning out the best route to collect all of them. The possible exception to this being the horn which can be a bit infuriating as the means by which you defeat the Killer Ivy (and are then rewarded with the horn) is completely counter-intuitive.

I did appreciate Tant giving you the chance to still defeat some of the creatures in the book even if you didn't have the required magical item though this meant the odds would be heavily stacked against you (as it should be). However, this can lead to the odd story discontinuity. For instance on an early playthrough I somehow managed to defeat the Spectral Dwarf without the magical urn with 1 vitality point to spare. I was then told my urn sucked in and disposed of the rest of the phantoms. Wait, what urn? I didn't have any urn nor had I even heard of it until then. Clearly the book didn't expect anyone to win that fight without it. I once also found myself instructed to turn to a section number which was the same number as the one I was already at! That kind of thing crops up in gamebooks occasionally and I don't want to hold an editing mistake against the adventure, but it can still be maddening.     

The encounters here are a step up from the previous books. Although considering the dearth of interesting things going on in those that really isn't saying much. Still, the Spectral Dwarf and Lake Phantom were highlights even though I wish there hadn't been an illustration of the Lake Phantom as it wasn't anywhere close to what I had pictured in my head when I first read that section. The Killer Ivy and Yeti were well done also and yes, it doesn't seem like you can EVER travel across a snow covered area in a gamebook without encountering some kind of Yeti creature, so while maybe not original by any means, this one was actually well described and suitably scary. There were some odd goofy things going on though such as the troll and the 3 goats (what the heck was that about?)

Mr Tant's writing also seems to have improved here. He has, for the most part, dropped the tedious descriptions of the dimensions of everything you come across although this still comes out here and there, most noticeably in the mine area. I have to say though, the premise of the mine area and its associated mystery seems to be yet another flat out Lord of the Rings ripoff. Let me get this straight....the dwarves mined "Mithral" there, and while digging they unwittingly uncovered some demonic force that wiped them out and now inhabits the mine? Good grief! There are also a couple of times where long stretches of exposition is given covering multiple sections with no choices to be made which can make it feel less like a game.

Of the 3 mystery areas, the forest and valley are very well done as are the areas you travel across to reach them, with the valley being particularly spooky. Unfortunately the mine area is a bit of a weak link though as there is some pointless exploration you can do here which might just serve to give you Black Pyramid flashbacks (shudder!). The confrontation with the Vretch is pretty anti-climactic too as we don't really learn all that much about them or their motives nor do they seem particularly interesting. Do they serve someone? The cover seems to indicate they do as it appears as though something is in the flames behind them. If so, who? Beats me as it was never explained. They are defeated pretty easily with the mace, then that's that and you leave. Because the mine area is clearly meant to be the final mystery solved, this unfortunately means that the book ends on a bit of a flat note which is kind of a shame.


Ranking: It's not great, but it's pretty good. I would highly recommend this if you enjoy the more puzzle oriented as opposed to combat oriented books. This is easily the best of the series so far and I'm glad Mr Tant found his groove here and hope he can keep it up in the final book.

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4. The Garden of Madness - Score = 3.0    Tier = Bad!

Attempts to beat: 13

David Tant what are you doing??? Great job in destroying the goodwill you earned with Mine of Torments. The Garden of Maddening is a more appropriate title for this one because that's exactly what this book is and I can't recall the last time I was so frustrated with an adventure. The Black Pyramid was tedious beyond measure to be sure, but this book was actually making me angry. Maybe because it appeared as though he had seen the light with Mine of Torments only to go right back in the dumper here. 

Starting with the story, we are tasked to rescue a princess from a castle so she can make it back to the city in time for her wedding. Hey, it's good to have priorities and all but that's not exactly the most riveting of premises to be honest. I'm also wondering why the book is called The Garden of Madness when you spend all of the first 2 minutes in the Garden itself before moving into the castle. Once inside the castle itself, here we are back again to this slow free movement dungeon crawl we had to endure in The Black Pyramid. To be fair, it's not quite as bad as that book but that's mainly because the castle we are travelling through here doesn't seem nearly as large as the pyramid from that adventure. Still, at one point it took me a good 5 or 6 sections just to travel up a flight of stairs for crying out loud. Yes...I WANT TO GO UP THE FREAKING STAIRS! Quit asking me over and over!  

I mentioned in the review for Mine of Torments that it was an adventure about finding the true path as opposed to combats and it worked in that book's favor. Well, this adventure goes completely overboard with that design decision. You only seem to get in a combat here if you make a bad choice or open the wrong door, and then you are screwed because the creatures usually greatly outclass you, making these in essence an insta-death as you really have no hope of killing them. When I eventually discovered the winning route, there were only two fights (against The Guardian of the Way and the Princess herself) and both of those ended after one hit on my opponent. Not only that, they aren't even real enemies. The Guardian of the Way is an illusion (with a really lame reason for why he is able to damage you if he isn't real) and the Princess obviously isn't an enemy and you only need to hit her once as well in order to stop her from attacking you when you surprise her in bed (don't ask). The Princess "fight" is particularly infuriating because she only needs to hit you once also and then it's game over as she has a poisoned dagger. So this is basically a "fail this one roll and you lose" type of deal. Oh joy! 

There also appear to be a heck of a lot of dead ends in this book. The worst of these occurring after you spend far too much time futzing around with gold chains attached to wyverns (don't even get me started on this bit) and then need to choose between red, green, or blue doors. I hope you pick the right one because if you pick wrong you have to do the whole wyvern thing again, which now that you know how to get past them makes it an incredibly tedious page flipping chore. On a related note, you spend a lot of time passing through different colored doors as you make your way to the princess and you find yourself thinking there must be a reason for this. And sure enough there is. It comes in the form of a clue you are given in the prologue where apparently a spy's final words before being executed were "remember Vaspago!". This comes up again when you make it to the spy's quarters deep in the castle and discover that Vaspago stands for Vert (Green), Argent (White), Sable (Black), Purpure (Purple), Azure (Blue), Gules (Red), Or (Gold). This is the order in which you pass through the colored doors to make your way successfully to the princess. Clever! There is a problem though. Unless you have a knowledge of heraldic colors and also managed to apply that to the clue (gimme a break!) then when you finally discover this information you have already made it almost all the way to the princess with only the Gold door left and therefore already know the correct route. So what was the point of all that? What a waste! 

Also, what is it with Tant's fascination of using ladders to climb through holes in ceilings? Is that supposed to be a metaphor for something? The coup d'grace in this whole mess comes once you finally discover the correct path through the book, find the princess, and then are told you need to retrace your steps back out the way you came (as in The Black Pyramid). AGAIN with this? So, back to doing all the things you did to get to the end but in reverse order to get back out again which seems like a huge waste of time and is terribly boring. 

Overall, what a disappointment. I wonder if after this outing, David Tant realized writing gamebooks wasn't really for him and decided to call it quits. When a full 50% of your output is really bad you should probably hang it up and to his credit it appears Mr Tant has done exactly that as I couldn't seem to find any other gamebooks he has written. 

Ranking: Slightly better than The Black Pyramid because at least there are some things happening in the various rooms in this book and it's mercifully shorter. Still really bad though and terribly frustrating. The Vaspago clue in particular was a good idea ruined by planting it so close to the end. A distant third among the four books in the rankings and the fact that this adventure isn't even the worst of the series is quite depressing.