Lone Wolf - Books 1-5

RANKINGS

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1. Flight From the Dark - Score = 7.0    Tier = Good

Attempts to beat: 4

And we're off! I finally begin my epic 30-odd book Lone Wolf journey. Although I probably wont get to book 30 for awhile as I'm attempting to play all the gamebook series in as chronological an order as I can because I enjoy seeing how gamebooks have evolved over the years. Im trying to play each series in its entirety in a row, however there are a couple of exceptions, those being Fighting Fantasy and Lone Wolf. As these books cover so long a time period, Im breaking them up into sections (10 book chunks for FF and the various "Kai" series for Lone Wolf).

So as I start this epic multi-book adventure, I have to say I found the first entry to be a bit underwhelming. Perhaps I expected more with it being the start of such a well known and long running series, but in all fairness almost every first book of all the series I've played so far with the exception of The Shamutanti Hills has been somewhat this way.

The overall story here I actually found to be well done and quite enjoyable. True, it's a somewhat generic beginning with an evil army (do we even know who their leader is?) invading the player character's kingdom, but the seemingly simple quest of just making it to the King to inform him of the almost total wiping out of the Kai warriors has a pretty high immersion factor. I really did feel as though I was traveling through a war zone. Hearing the screams of enemy mounts overhead, encountering struggling refugees who have lost everything, hearing battles in the distance, coming upon wounded soldiers or enemies committing atrocities, and meeting up with combatants from both sides who have become lost or broken off from their groups. This all made for a really great atmosphere.

Another positive was the choosing of the Kai disciplines at the beginning of the game. Although I admit I didn't really like the idea of being locked into my choices for who knows how many books. What if I chose one I later found useless or that I disliked? Perhaps because of that I really gave it quite a bit of thought as to which ones I wanted to select. I ended up going with:

1) Sixth Sense- This seemed like a no-brainer. I didn't really know how any of these worked at this point but I was hoping this one could help me avoid any right-left options where picking wrong meant instant death. (Wouldn't this discipline be useful in pretty much every decision you make in the book though?)
2) Tracking- Pretty much for the same reasons as Sixth Sense
3) MindBlast- With its +2 combat I thought this would give me an extra edge in battle and I figured selecting this I could bypass the Weaponskill discipline so wouldn't have to worry about finding the correct weapon, which seemed kind of random
4) Animal Kinship- This one just seemed like a fun one to have and might lead to some extra dialogue options, some extra clues, and perhaps strategically avoiding some tough fights with animals
5) Hunting- It came down to this one and Healing. I wasn't sure how plentiful meals were to come by at this point, and remembered all the times I didn't have a meal when prompted during the Sorcery series so this seemed like a good final pick.

These didn't really allow for the experimentation I usually like though as the book only took me 4 attempts and I didn't deviate from these as they were the ones I wanted to continue the series with and wasn't sure if I would be allowed to switch them around in book 2 (probably not as that would kind of defeat continuity).

This brings me to my next point. The book is very easy. Again, this is common for "first books" in a series, likely by design to introduce the reader to the game system. That being said, it's tough for me to rank an easy book too highly as it feels like I'm done before I've really dug into it. This is alleviated somewhat by there being apparently many paths through this book so there are some different things you could try. I just don't think you'd have much problem with any of them. There was only one encounter I found that was even remotely difficult (the Gourgaz) and even he could be avoided.

Speaking of encounters, there really wasn't many notable ones at all in the book. Banedon was pretty cool, but other than that you encounter a lot of Giak and soldiers which makes sense from a story standpoint but it doesn't really leave an impression on you either.  There WAS an opportunity to do something very cool with the graveyard section but this seemed like it was over before it really got going. You fight an animated statue in this area but some more horror-style enemies would have been appropriate and greatly appreciated. There was also a somewhat odd stretch at the end of the story when you reach the gates of the city. You follow a couple of different people through the streets and eventually arrive at the King. I am kind of curious now as to what the options to ditch your escorts led to, but putting yourself in the role of the character, why would you do this? I felt like the book was trying to trick me into doing something stupid here. Twice.

Another aspect I thought was great at first but I become more unsure of it as I went through the adventure is the combat system. The more combats I had the more I realized that the combat table at the back of the book seems HEAVILY in your favor. Many times I was scoring 10-12 points of damage on my opponent while taking 0-2 myself. This ended combats quickly (which maybe was the point?) but it also robbed them of a lot of fun tension that some other gamebooks have. Eschewing dice for a random number table seems kind of silly too. If Mr Dever didn't think d10's were all that common, I'm not sure why he couldn't have used 2-12 as the range of outcomes for the table thus allowing two d6's to be used?

The writing here seemed short and to the point in most places, avoiding a lot of flowery descriptions which allowed you to get right back to adventuring. There is something to be said for this approach but I think I would have appreciated more descriptive prose in a shorter adventure such as this one. That being said, Mr Dever does an above average job in setting the tone and atmosphere of the story and overall the book is well written.


Ranking: It straddles the line between Good and OK but the interesting Kai discipline selection along with the good immersive story help to just bring it into the Good tier. As usual, being the first book in the series, to #1 it currently goes!
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2. Fire on the Water - Score = 7.3    Tier = Good

Attempts to beat: 6

Smoooooooke on the waaaterrrr! Fire in the sky! Cmon, tell me you didn't also have that song in your head when you saw the title of this book. Sure it's not exact, but close enough for the trigger.

Well first off, this adventure is a step up in both length and difficulty from the first one and I think is the better for it. Looking at my map here, it is almost twice as large as the one from Flight From the Dark. Full value for the adventure too as I think the story and overall atmosphere is great. We are tasked with bringing back the one weapon (the Sommerswerd) that can defeat the Darklords from where it is being held by our allies on the other side of the map. I do have to wonder though, being as key to our survival and all, why would we send this away? I get that it was an act of good faith or some such to our allies in Durenor but still, apparently only a Kai can wield it anyway and to my knowledge they only exist in Sommerlund. Kind of a bonehead move and tempting fate if you ask me but so be it.

The adventure itself does a great job of taking us along an epic feeling journey. We get to travel by sea (twice), overland by foot, carriage, and horse, we get to visit cities, towns, a couple of inns, and even explore an underground tunnel section. I felt that the atmosphere created all along the way was great and Joe Dever's writing here is a clear step up from his first effort.

Even better, unlike the first book there are actually several interesting characters we come across. Captain Kelman, the group of fellow travelers in the carriage, Rhygar (a very well done encounter), the Noodnics, and Vonotar the Traitor all add greatly to the overall experience.

So far so good. So why isn't the score higher here? Well....as strong as the story and atmosphere are, the design of the book is almost just as weak. There are far too many encounters or events here that are determined by random number selection. I suppose the argument could be made that if Lone Wolf is a passenger on a ship or a carriage, (when most of these random events are generated) then he wouldn't really have a say in what is coming down the road or across the sea anyway. That may be true, but not having the option of choice removes a lot of player agency from the adventure. I also may have missed out on some interesting things (or I may not have) because when on the Green Scepter at the beginning of the book for example, I rolled a 4 or a 5 on three straight playthroughs and encountered refugees in a longboat. I'm still not sure what some of the other outcomes led to and not because I didn't want to try them out either. I just never rolled their corresponding number.

You quickly learn that many of the choices you actually do get to make (or random numbers you roll) don't really matter that much anyway. Asked to pick an option or roll a random number? No worries. Odds are no matter what you do you will come to the same choke-point section in a paragraph or two anyway. There was one early choice where I was asked if I wanted to hunt for the killer of Ronan, first mate of the Green Scepter or just row out to the ship. If you choose to hunt for his killer? You are basically told "You don't find him. Row to the ship.". Gee, thanks for the option there, that was really meaningful. There was only one choice I could recall that really felt meaningful and that was if I wanted to give the magical spear (which I had barely obtained through a very tough fight) to Rhygar so that he could defend himself while trying to buy me some time to escape. Even this choice becomes moot though once you realize that having the Kai discipline of Animal Kinship (which I did) allows you to have the Noodnics aid you in the tunnels and therefore bypass the whole magic spear business entirely. Albeit at the cost of all your gold, but still worth it.

One sequence of the book that deserves special mention because it really should have been one of the highlights of the adventure is the Clue-like game that goes on during the traveling by carriage. Here we are introduced to the five other people traveling to Port Bax along with us, given a bit of backstory for each, and must determine which of them is in fact a hidden assassin trying to murder us. This could have been a very cool murder mystery (or attempted murder mystery rather) type sequence where various subtle clues are given about who the culprit is. Maybe even some clues contradicting each other suggesting it could be different suspects entirely. Unfortunately, the identity of the true assassin is made so blatantly obvious from the outset by the illustrations that all tension evaporates. As if that first illustration of the suspects wasn't enough for you, the book gives you another one that clearly shows the assassin's serpent wrist tattoo (albeit the tattoo is on the wrong arm in the picture. What happened there?). Once this character is chosen as the culprit and killed, any doubt as to whether he really was the assassin is soon put to rest too as a mountain of incriminating evidence is discovered on his body. Would a real assassin keep that much evidence on him? What if he was searched? I'm surprised you didn't find a portrait he had made of himself actually poisoning your food as well. This whole part of the adventure was frustrating because it was such a great idea but it needed far better implementation.

I picked Healing as my added reward discipline for finishing the first book so I believe I was at full strength for every combat I had in this book. The Healing and Sixth Sense disciplines in particular feel overpowered. And if these didn't help to make the combats easy already, I come to the next design flaw of the book which I believe is the Sommerswerd itself. Once you obtain this, you seemingly become crazy overpowered. Adding +8(!) to combat, doing double damage to the undead when you connect (which you certainly will heavily), and having it absorb magic attacks. It's so overpowered that the book doesn't even make you bother with an end boss fight. You basically just hold your sword up in the air like it's Thor's hammer, channel the sun instead of lightning, and then obliterate anything you like with it. I guess you need the sun to be shining to do this? Still, I greatly worry that the Sommerswerd is now akin to an "I win" button as I go through the series. Heck, who needs to carry the Ark of the Covenant in front of their army to melt faces when you have this thing!


Ranking: A slight step up from the first book so to #1 for now it goes. The story is really very good and noticeably better than the first adventure, but the design has some pretty big weaknesses. The added length and epic feel of the adventure work in its favor. This could have been much higher had there been more player agency involved and the mystery assassin sequence been longer and more difficult and fleshed out.
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3. The Caverns of Kalte - Score = 7.4    Tier = Good

Attempts to beat: 3

Slowly getting better, but is there any light at the end of this tunnel? Here we are after book 3 and I'm getting a bit worried that the Lone Wolf game system just isn't going to allow for a great book. This is yet another good solid effort that is held back from being more than that by its ease and lack of tension in choices and combats.

I very much enjoyed the story here whereby we are sent to capture and bring back Vonotar the Traitor so that he can stand trial for his crimes in Sommerlund. How many times in gamebooks are we asked to hunt down and kill the evil wizard? Having to capture him instead of kill him this time is a nice twist on the formula, if even just a minor one. The inclusion of your guides and Kanu-dogs added greatly to the story too even if they are doomed from the start. The atmosphere is also top notch. The book is very well written and Mr Dever does a great job of detailing the icy seas, frozen wastes, towering glaciers, and chillingly cold caverns that you are traversing.

The encounters here are for the most part solid if nothing spectacular. The Baknar is basically the Wampa from Star Wars (which I guess in turn is basically a vicious Yeti) and you can't really have an ice set adventure without such a creature. Most of the other encounters are interesting enough if kind of strange. The Ice Barbarians on their skis with their children on their backs firing arrows at you was unique I'll give it that. Some of the other creatures such as the Crystal Frostwyrm and the Akraa Neonor  were definitely a bit out there but not necessarily unwelcome. The character of Loi-Kymar was also a nice addition as it's always good to have a colorful companion with you. His backstory is actually pretty detailed and interesting as well. Even if he does give you away with his sneezing (hold it in for crying out loud!) he makes up for it by providing a means of getting you out of the fortress and back to your ship. I was wondering how Dever was going to handle the return trip to your ship should you be successful, dragging Vonotar all the way, or if it would just be glossed over. However, the appearance of the Loi-Kymar character answered that question.

The problem I had from the previous book regarding apparent lack of player choice is improved on here. There are two different routes you can take at the start of the adventure, either the glacier route or the basin route and they both have their interesting decisions to be made regarding such things as fleeing or fighting ice barbarians, how you are going to cross dangerous crevasses etc. Yes, there are some more random-numbers-determining-events sections here but it doesn't seem nearly as bad as the previous adventure.

Unfortunately, despite the added choices here, you don't really feel like you are in all that much peril. I got to add yet another Kai discipline as a reward for completing book 2 and I chose to go with Mind Over Matter. The Kai disciplines of Sixth Sense, Hunting, and Tracking however allowed me to bypass many tough decisions. Just as disappointingly, there didn't seem to be all that many combats in the book and those that are here were all almost basically formalities due to my ridiculously high combat score. The lowest combat ratio I had in any fight was +9 and the vast majority of the time I was at the maximum. I even killed the final creature, the Akraa Neonor, in one hit. The exception to all this was the Kalkoth encountered at the fortress door who would insta-kill you if it hit you for any loss at all. This kind of modifier is really the only way it seems like you will ever lose a fight.

Thus, my initial concern that unless something changes in the formula going forward, it's going to be tough for any book in the series to break the ceiling of being merely "good". Not that there is anything wrong with being good, I'm just always hoping for greatness in every gamebook I begin and it would be a shame if the Lone Wolf series doesn't reach that level at some point. 


Ranking: I feel like each book in the series has gotten just a bit better than the previous one. I enjoyed this one just a hair more than Fire on the Water due to increased player choice if even though the story maybe wasn't quite as epic. It does a good job of giving you some different routes to take, both in the journey to the fortress and within the fortress itself. What holds it back is the ease of difficulty and lack of tension. Overall though still pretty good.
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4. The Chasm of Doom - Score = 6.6    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 3

Aaaaand now we are going backwards. Here we are at book 4 and the faults of the game system has finally started to drag the overall experience down, along with the score and ranking.

I'll start with the positives of the book though. It has a compelling story and is extremely well written. Mr Dever has come into his own as a story teller and each book has employed progressively better prose. The overall quest here is also pretty darn interesting. A whole missing regiment of warriors makes for a good mystery to solve and keeps you guessing as you use various clues you find to try and piece together what happened to them and if they are still alive. It is also getting kind of amusing how any guides/escorts/companions (rangers in this case) you start the adventure with need to finish their wills before setting out because they will be pushing up daisies in short order. Aren't you supposed to be "Lone" Wolf anyway? Go it alone already and spare their families some grief!

There are several different paths you can take to reach your end goal and this is also a very big positive. After meeting the traveling minstrels, you can travel to either a temple or an inn on your way forward (but why on God's green earth is this determined randomly? More on that below) Later on, you get to choose whether to go to Eshnar or straight to Ruanon and both are viable routes before you are funneled to the mine area. The book also does a really good job of giving us some interesting settings to traverse. Over plains, through forests, mines, inns and a temple, there is a good variety of locations on offer here.

That all being said, some definite problems emerge. The main of them for me being:

-Random numbers determining events. Back to this again? Ugh. After I felt this had been improved in Caverns of Kalte, I found it now has gotten even WORSE here than it was in Fire on the Water. The aforementioned random number deciding whether you visit the inn or the temple seems stupid. Why not give the player the choice as to which he would like to investigate? Having random numbers determine which monster you fight is one thing, but now it's determining which PATH you take? There is another situation where an enemy archer fires at you and a random number decides what happens. Roll a zero? Too bad, you're dead. Granted it's only a 10% chance of death, but why have it in here at all? These fail-one-roll-and-you-lose deals anger me to no end in Fighting Fantasy and I guess Mr Dever wanted to get in on some of that "lets piss off the player" action.

-Instant deaths from exploring. Ok, I realize this situation permeates gamebooks in general and I'm usually actually ok with insta-deaths as they can be avoided in future playthroughs and you can use information you've gleaned to try new things. Sometimes I'm actually glad for them because they allow me to go back and do some more exploring of things I might have bypassed before and I can then see more of the book.  However, the instant deaths I incurred here actually deterred future exploring. My only two deaths in the book came because a) I investigated the cellar of a cabin and, b) I investigated a cavern instead of a balcony. To clarify, I wasn't killed because of some choice made or something done within these areas. I was killed merely for looking inside them. Isn't exploring cellars and caverns what adventuring is all about? It makes sense that one choice would be more dangerous than the other and you might have to suffer some penalty but this is taking it to the extreme.

-Combats have become pointless. Perhaps the above insta-deaths can be explained by it being the only way Mr Dever could include any kind of challenge in the adventure because the combats are hardly worth bothering with. If you have been playing all the books and still have the Sommerswerd (and some other combat score increasing items) you will be ridiculously outclassing everything you come across. Even the final villain, Barraka, had absolutely no chance against me. There was a strange moment where you fight for one single combat round against a horseman charging at you to determine who loses more endurance points (gee, I wonder who that will be?). But what are you supposed to do if you one-hit kill him in this round? Beats me. I guess he still lives.

-Bland enemies. With the exception of the main villain Barraka, the enemy encounters here are really quite dry and boring. Pretty much all you fight are interchangeable bandits and horsemen. There is a fairly interesting mass battle sequence in the book and I give full marks for trying something new here but Im not sure it really it ends up playing out all that well. Seems like something that was better in theory than in practice. On the good guy side at least Captain D'Val is a pretty decent companion and added some much needed personality to the quest. There is also a somewhat interesting meeting with some sort of magician right at the beginning of the book who gives you the scroll but his appearance and backstory are never really explained. I'm assuming in a future book then?

So there we have it. Joe Dever certainly has a really good grasp on the "book" portion of the gamebook. It's his "game" portion that really suffers and could use some work. Unfortunately for him, although both are important for a great book, the "game" portion is really the more important of the two. That's why I'm playing a gamebook and not reading a fantasy novel. The combats have become formalities so much so that the books are starting to become more akin to pick-a-path books as opposed to gamebooks.


Ranking: Despite its problems, it's a decent effort overall but really not any more than that. It's definitely the weakest of the series for me so far so drops to the bottom for now.
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5. Shadow on the Sand - Score = 7.7    Tier = Good

Attempts to beat: 1

Well that was a step up! This is a really ripping adventure which includes (for me anyway) a prison break, palace exploration, a flying battle sequence, some desert exploration, and a final battle with an interesting villain.

The writing and world building going on here is really impressive as Joe Dever does a great job of making the settings found here come alive. I thought the prologue was a little weak though. Having Lone Wolf travel to Vassagonia to sign a treaty isn't exactly gripping stuff. Being a warrior he seems a pretty strange choice for this task and the explanation given in the book isn't the strongest either. Nevertheless, we know this isn't going to go smoothly in any case so it's really just an excuse to have Lone Wolf travel to the desert kingdom and the minute he makes port the excitement really picks up.

Once again there appear to be several paths through to the end of the book and most of my problems with the previous book have been eliminated or at least alleviated here. Exploring is encouraged and there are many cool and interesting items to be found. The encounters seemed more varied and interesting as well. The palace exploration section in particular was great as was the section where a Vordak attacked my flying Itikar. Getting to meet Banedon again was a treat but what if I had bypassed him in Flight From the Dark? This encounter would have been a lot less meaningful then. I also have to ask, did he cheat at gambling in order to win his dwarven crew? Are they his slaves? Not sure how I feel about this character now. He even apparently cheats a street kid out of a silver ring!

Despite all the great stuff going on in this book, the usual problem of this series is still present. It's just way too easy. One attempt to beat a gamebook is ridiculous. Did I just get extremely lucky with my choices? It's possible. Although if the first 4 books in the series are any indication probably not. I could have just as easily beaten Caverns of Kalte or Chasm of Doom in 1 attempt also I suppose.

I lost my equipment at the beginning of the book which made the encounter with the jailers the most dangerous part of the adventure. I found all my gear a couple of rooms after this and combat from then on out was back to being a breeze. It seems like Mr Dever attempted to make the final battle against Lord Haakon and his Crypt Spawn more difficult than usual by giving them higher stats and I'm wondering how a player starting with a new character at this book would have fared against them. For a player like myself though carrying over a bunch of combat increasing equipment, it still doesn't seem like the stats were set high enough. To illustrate, after defeating the Crypt Spawn, I still had 21 endurance points remaining. Here is how the final battle with Lord Haakon played out with a +3 combat ratio (thanks to the aforementioned combat increasing special items I have been collecting to this point). I was fairly surprised that Lord Haakon wasnt immune to Mindblast but the text is supposed to explicitly state if that's the case.

                                                                        Lone Wolf                 Lord Haakon
Start                                                                           21                         45
First Roll = 9 (-0 , -14)                                              21                         31
Second Roll = 3 (-3 , -7)                                           18                         24
Third Roll = 4 (-2 , -8)                                               16                        16
Fourth Roll = 9 (-0 , -14)                                           16                          2
Fifth Roll = 7 (-1 , -11)                                              15                          0

So, even though Lord Haakon had more than double my endurance points at the start of the battle, I still defeated him easily. Losing only 6 points in the process to his 45 (54 if you want to include all the points that would have put him into the negatives). That's crazy! I believe the heavily skewed results from the combat table are the bigger problem than the accruing of various combat increasing items and potions.

It's a matter of taste perhaps, but a gamebook being too easy is just as bad as being too difficult in my opinion. Even after I've beaten it, am I meant to keep replaying it to find every single different route that can be taken to beat the book? That kind of defeats the role playing aspect of it for me. Once I've won through, I'm ready to move on to the next one. I might come back to play it again at some point but that would be at a much later date and with a fresh character. As such, there is only so high of a score I can give a book that unfortunately I don't get to spend all that much time with, no matter how good it is in some other areas.               

On a final note, what the heck is with the "two adventures in one" angle of the book? This is just dumb and frankly, kind of insulting. The second "adventure" picks up immediately where the first one left off. To have a second adventure, doesn't the first one have to end first? I can only imagine if the Warlock of Firetop Mountain was advertised as two adventures. One prior to the river and one after. Hey, they could have charged double! Better not give them any ideas.


Ranking: As mentioned with just about every book in the series so far, the ease holds it back from being anything more than good. It is on the high end of good though due to the exploring, intense action sequences and great setting. Easily the best of the first 5 books for me and I have no problem declaring this the best of the Kai series.