Sagas of the Demonspawn

 RANKINGS

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1. Fire*Wolf - Score = 3.2    Tier = Bad

Attempts to beat: 22

Wow. Talk about your opening book disasters. At first blush I was really looking forward to playing something with a more advanced and fleshed out game system as it appeared that this book contained. Unfortunately, this was not the case. I'm all for having all kinds of different stats to track as it can help to add variability and strategy to the adventure, but the game system here is so packed with serious flaws and glaring omissions that it almost beggars belief.

To list some of the many issues:

-The book has you start out by generating stats for each of 7 different attributes (Strength, Speed, Stamina, Courage, Luck, Charm and Attraction) by rolling two dice and multiplying the results by 8 for each. The total of all these attributes then combine to give you your Life Points. Why multiply by 8? This seems totally unnecessary and leaves you (and all your opponents in the book) with very large Life Point totals. This of course contributes to combats taking forever. This is far from the worst part though...

-Combat itself. Egads! You first need to determine who strikes first by rolling two dice and adding the result to your Speed, Courage and Luck scores. You then do the same for your opponent and whoever has a higher number strikes first. I don't think my Speed, Courage, and Luck total was ever within a range of 10 with any of my opponents so the rolling two dice part seems completely pointless. The combat then involves rolling two dice (you and your opponent taking turns) and requires a roll of 7 or more to register a hit. This would make most battles close to a 50/50 proposition, depending on starting Life Points, as to who will win with minor factors such as Strength and the weapons that the combatants have equipped also included as they can give a bit of extra damage. But here is the best (meaning worst) part, for every 10 Skill points either you or your opponent has, the number required to hit is reduced by one. Fire*Wolf begins the adventure with 0 Skill points, therefore he must still roll at least a 7 to hit. However, pretty much every opponent he comes across has at least 20 Skill already which means they only need a 5 (or sometimes less) to hit. Oh, and did I mention that for every number you roll above the required value to hit, an extra 10 points of damage is done? So therefore if Fire*Wolf rolls an 8, he does 10 damage along with whatever bonuses for Strength and weapons he has. Meanwhile, if your Skill 20 opponent rolls an 8, he does 30 damage along with the associated bonuses. All this means that unless you have a much higher Life Point value than your opponent to start (and this rarely happens), or you are incredibly lucky, you are unlikely to win many fights. This combat system is a travesty. 

-As unbalanced as the first handful of fights are against you, there comes a point halfway through the adventure where you acquire a magical sword called Doombringer. So does this sword help to balance out the combats? Nope. It just skews it wildly in the other direction. Because this sword does 20 extra points of damage, and more importantly, restores your Life Points for the amount of whatever damage you do to your opponent, you are now unlikely to lose any battles. True, you lose 10 Life Points every time you swing the sword, but this hardly seemed to matter as I was easily recovering as much if not more than I lost. This proceeds to make the fights after this point a cakewalk (save for the final battle which I will get to below). This is somewhat similar to the overpowered effect the Sommerswerd has in the Lone Wolf books. 

-Perhaps worst of all, it's never explained when you can heal. After playing the book a couple of times, I came to the conclusion that you must be able to heal (and brought back to maximum Life Points) after each fight, otherwise the book I believe would be Crypt of the Sorcerer level impossible to defeat. After many more attempts though, I'm not so sure this was the intention. There are a few points in the adventure where you are told to deduct from your Life Points when you are outside of combat (ie. you stub your toe on something), and this would seem pointless if you are to be brought up to full health at the start of each fight. The only other way I can see it intending to work is if you were to be brought up to full health at the END of each combat, then incur and keep any Life Point deductions until your next fight upon which, with successful completion, you would go back to full Life Points again. This seems like a pretty big stretch for author J.H Brennan to have intended without even mentioning it anywhere in the rules though. If he really did intend for you to complete the book with no healing between combats, then he is completely clueless.  

 

-Your Stamina score dictating how many rounds you can attack for before you need to take a "two round rest". This is just stupid and for me created one of the biggest time wasters of the combats, that is, determining which rounds you and your opponent needed to "sit out" because now you also need to constantly keep track of what round it is instead of just going back and forth until the fight is over. 

-The magic system. You need Power (essentially magicka) in order to cast spells, and this is accrued by passing various ordeals in a series of crypts under a castle that you visit. Most of these ordeals come down to a single-roll attribute test whereby if you pass you get 20 Power points and if you fail, you die. Fortunately you can choose which ordeals to take based upon your stats, but only after figuring out which door hides which ordeal through trial and error. Once you have your Power score you are ready to cast spells and at first glance, the list of spells you have at your disposal seems like this will be very cool. Until you read what the spells do and discover that several of them seem completely broken. The Invisibility, Paralysis, and Poison Needle spells are all essentially insta-wins. You need to pass a couple of rolls (both in your favor) to first determine if Fire*Wolf is "in the mood" to cast a spell, and then to see if the spell works. With these 3 spells to choose from though you shouldn't have much problem. Power itself can also be replenished (up to your maximum) by exchanging Life Points for Power Points on a 1 to 1 basis so you are unlikely to run out of Power either. 

-The final battle against the Demonspawn Regent. Good grief. First off, this guy's stats are through the roof so I dont see any way you can beat him through straight up combat. Therefore you either need to use (a) spells or (b) a magical orb that can be found in an earlier section. If you use spells, the Invisibility spell tells us that Fire*Wolf "can proceed to the next section as if he were the victor". Seriously? Similarly, the Paralysis spell tells us that Fire*Wolf "can escape to the next section". I take it that's a win too then? Thematically it doesn't sound like it would be, but I guess if the Regent is paralyzed you shouldn't have too much trouble plunging your sword into his gullet. Oh, and the Poison Needle is instantly fatal to an enemy as well, although you only have a 50% chance of hitting this one. The magical orb also apparently kills the Regent instantly although you have to pass a do or die Luck check to obtain it. Perhaps the most egregious part of this final battle though is that while the Regent himself has several powerful spells at his disposal, it's never actually explained anywhere when he uses them! We are only told "if he elects to use them". So, am I supposed to be playing as the Regent as well then? Brutal.   

Additionally, there are some other more minor issues with the adventure. You are frequently asked to roll two dice and compare to one of your attributes. Except that your attributes were generated by rolling two dice and multiplying by 8 making these tests totally pointless. I'm assuming these are editing errors. In that same vein, there are also several sections in the adventure where you are not told where to go next. The fact that this point barely rates mention due to the other issues the book has is very telling. The self-promotional introduction at the beginning of the book tells us that author Brennan is a role playing gamer but I call BS on that. Any such gamer would have put the gameplay first and never have come up with a system like this. 

I almost forgot the story, which sees as controlling the title character, an exiled barbarian who takes up a quest to rescue a hermit's daughter only to become embroiled in a much bigger quest involving staving off world domination by the "demonspawn". Is the story here interesting and well written? Probably. But I was too angry and frustrated to enjoy it. I will try to go into Book 2 of the series (how did this become a series?) with an open mind but if the game system doesn't undergo a drastic overhaul my hopes aren't high. 

Ranking: An asterisk needs to go beside this ranking (see what I did there?). If you assume that healing occurs automatically at some point between combats, then the adventure is at least beatable, even though it's still in the bad tier thanks to its many other gameplay issues. The only reason it even scores this high is due to the writing and story. But if you take the instructions as meaning that healing only occurs when you are told explicitly that it does so (and I have a bad feeling that this may be the case), then I believe the book is broken and would receive a score of 0. If anyone else out there has played this I would love to hear their thoughts on it and if there is perhaps something I have missed because it's hard to believe the game system was this untested.

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2. The Crypts of Terror - Score = 1.0    Tier = Bad

Attempts to beat: 7

Bloody atrocious. If there was any positive to be found in the previous book, it was at least a pretty good and well written barbarian themed adventure story. Well, this next book can't even give us that much. The adventure here is essentially split into two parts. In the first, we travel once again into a crypt to acquire more Power for our spells (didn't we just do this last book?), and in the second part we need to find a way to eliminate the enemy Prince who is massing his invading army somewhere over the mountains.

The second part of the adventure is the more interesting (if you can call it that) of the two halves of the book, but lets start with the first half which has to contain one of the most poorly conceived dungeons (ok, technically a crypt) of any gamebook I've come across. The adventure begins with Fire*Wolf seeking out the Alchemists Guild within the city of Pelimander in order to obtain more Power so that he will be better prepared to battle the Demonspawn using his sorcery. Upon locating the Guild, we are sent once more into a crypt area using the same "trials" angle as book #1 and are told by the rules at the front of the book that if we are able to survive the crypt on our first attempt we will acquire 100 more Power points with an additional 20 for each enemy killed along the way. If it takes us at least two attempts to clear the crypt then the bonus will only be 50 Power points with an additional 10 for each enemy death. But wait...once we actually make it through the crypt, the book tells us that we have gained an additional 200 Power points and 25 for each enemy we slaughtered! So which is it? I have no clue nor do I think author JH Brennan did either.  

Back to the crypt itself though. It is laid out in a way such that there are 3 levels, with a staircase leading down from level to level. Each of these levels contain anywhere from 2-6 doors that can be opened. Behind these doors, there are only ever one of two things. You will either find an item, or have an encounter with anywhere from 2-4 Alchillers (something akin to a ninja). The Alchillers stats make them incredibly difficult to defeat and unless you started the book with sufficient Power that will allow you to cheese your insta-win spells you are essentially doomed, because while in the crypts the healing powers of your Doomsword do not work. And that's it. You basically use trial and error to determine which doors contain items and which contain Alchillers. Once you know this, you can make your way through the crypt from beginning to end in moments just picking up the items from otherwise empty rooms. 

These items you collect within the crypt are not free from problems of their own as there is very little direction to how they actually work. We can pick up a Web of Warding which can trap an enemy, but is this one use only or can we continue to use it? There is a Magic Wand we can acquire which has a random amount of charges and can cause an enemy to flee in terror if we roll a 10 or higher on two dice. Somewhat useless with those odds then. One of the rooms in the crypt contains something called a Power Accumulator, but what does it do? I'm assuming this is the "Poer Battery" listed among the items on page 188? Another victory for the editing in these books. And saving the best item for last, in one room in the crypts you can acquire a Horn, which when blown will call forth a Horn Monster to fight for you. His stats are very high making this a pretty powerful item to be sure, but check out the caveat that comes with calling him:

"Note- each time called there is a 1 in 12 chance - score 1 on double dice roll - that the Monster will turn on Fire*Wolf and fight him to the death" 

Score 1 on a double dice roll? Yep. That about sums this book up. 

The second half of the adventure sees Fire*Wolf emerge from the crypts with his newfound Power (whatever that amount is supposed to be), and a need to rally the nation against the imminent Demonspawn threat. You are then given 5 different courses of action you can take. At first this seems like a great addition to the book, giving you several different things to try and I desperately hoped that this might salvage the adventure. Unfortunately, one of the options leads to a quick death and three of the others all just lead you to the last remaining, and only viable, option. There is a similar set of choices given once you finally obtain the airship and cross the mountains. Here, you are given a choice of 7 different areas on a map that you can visit in your search for Prince Ragnok, the current leader of the invading northern forces, so that you can assassinate him. The book loves to tell you "bad choice" or "Fire*Wolf immediately regretted his decision" if you choose an incorrect option which really ruins a lot of the tension that could have been used effectively here. If you get one of these "you just messed up" messages in the first sentence of the section you turn to, you already know Fire*Wolf is probably about to die if he doesn't pass an attribute check. 

The problems the spells had in the previous book return here with nothing having been corrected, clarified, or improved. The Invisibility, Paralysis, and Poison Needle spells are still vastly overpowered, and taken at face value allow you to just move on past any enemy you need to. In another great bit of editing, the Crypt spell still tells you to turn to section 150, which was the section in book #1 you needed to go to in order to re-visit the crypts of that adventure. Problem is, the crypt in book two begins at a totally different section. Brennan also tells us again that there is a 50% chance that any spell you cast will not work, so you need to roll a 6 or better with two dice in order for it to succeed. A 6 or better with two dice is 50%? In Brennan's world it is. You are sometimes also told to "return to the section you have just left". So I'm supposed to keep track of all the section numbers I visit?  Thanks for telling me after the fact! Terrible. You know, a couple of these things might be understandable, but it's carelessness like this that is prevalent all throughout the book which just makes the whole thing seem incredibly lazy and embarrassing. 

As in the previous adventure, there is a section in this book, section 13, that acts as the "death section" of the adventure. This is the section of the book you are sent to whenever you die, be it either from combat or from an instant death paragraph, and you are told to roll up a new character and start again. Unlike in book 1 however, here you are given a chance to start with your newly rolled character at the section you died at should you be able to roll a 10 or higher with two dice. This obviously does you absolutely no good should you have died due to an instant death section, but it might allow you to try a combat again should you get very lucky with this roll. However, even if you fail this roll, you are allowed a SECOND roll, whereby this time depending on what number you rolled multiplied by 10 could see you respawning at some random section number of the book, which just ends up turning the narrative into a complete mess that makes no sense. This terrible idea is just par for the course in this gamebook.    

Because there are so many things left vague and unexplained, I'm unsure if I legitimately won this adventure or not. Many times you have to make a "house ruling" because there are gaps or contradictions in the information you are given. I really feel like I shouldn't need to make these rulings either as now I'm doing the game designers work for him. And of course, in a book that I just want to be over as soon as possible, I'm more likely to make these house rulings in my favour. I guess if there is one positive to the book, it's that it is only 158 sections long. Thank goodness for that! 

Normally I wouldn't take a break in the middle of a gamebook series that only has 4 books, but I'm going to have to make an exception in this case as I really need to get away from this series for a bit before returning to (hopefully) finish the final 2 books. I really need to go play something fun now! 

Ranking: Total crap. It takes all the problems of the first book, adds some new ones, and takes away the interesting story that book at least contained. It's kind of ironic that Brennan requires you to do a large number of calculations throughout the combats in the book when he himself apparently struggles to comprehend the laws of probability, or even at times basic math. One of the worst, and perhaps THE worst gamebook I've played so far.

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3. Demondoom - Score = 0.0    Tier = BROKEN

Attempts before reality set in: 60

J.H. Brennan......you're killing me man. I've had these last two Sagas of the Demonspawn books hanging over my head like my own personal Sword of Damocles for months now and I've been dreading returning to them. It didn't take long to remember why. In contrast to what was to come, the story here actually begins in a fairly strong manner, as we pick up 10 years after the previous book to find Fire*Wolf living quite comfortably as a lord within the capital city of Pelimandar, where he also sits on the council of advisors to the good King Voltar (who we rescued back in that previous adventure). Voltar has brought peace to the land as no Demonspawn attacks have occurred over this past decade. Our quest begins when King Voltar is assassinated by a mysterious assailant and as I've mentioned in previous reviews, a murder mystery to kick off a book is always a great way to start. After this though, things start to get a little silly. More than just being the King, Voltar was also one of the most powerful sorcerers in the country's history, and determining who ordered his murder is only half the problem, as we quickly learn via a letter that the King left for us to open upon his death, that the reason no Demonspawn attacks have occurred within the last 10 years is that Voltar had installed an invisible protective force-field around our country's borders through which people could pass freely (without even knowing the force-field was there), but through which Demonspawn could not penetrate. Now that Voltar is dead, his force-field has dropped and the country is once again open to Demonspawn attack. Voltar also mentions in his letter that there is an artifact (a golden orb) powerful enough to regenerate the force-field should we be able to locate it. How the orb will accomplish this is never said, but best not to quibble over details. So, we thus set off to find the orb and reinstall the protective field.  

One of the biggest things that sticks out as you begin the adventure is that, hey, remember all those trials you went through in the previous two books to build up your Power score? Well you can throw all that out the window, as your Power at the beginning of this adventure is set to 50 regardless of what you did in the previous adventures. There should have been at least some reward on that front for making it through those slogs but I guess Brennan isnt much for character progression throughout the series. 

If there are any positives to be mentioned here though it is the fact that Brennan appears to at least be making an attempt to clear up some of the loopholes in the magic system from the previous books, so I have to give at least some credit for that. In the previous adventures, you could cheese the Paralysis and Invisibility spells to bypass most encounters completely. Brennan has nerfed that strategy here though, as now it is spelled out (haha!) that you can only use these two spells once each in the adventure. I was so surprised that some effort may have actually been put into correcting something from the previous books that I almost fell off my chair. The unfortunate byproduct of this change however is that because the combat system was not also corrected, this renders the adventure nigh on impossible. At least before, the broken combat system and the broken spell system cancelled each other out to some degree, allowing the player to at least progress through the mess. Only fixing half the equation throws up a brick wall against player advancement.

And then you actually start playing the adventure, and oh my goodness does that brick wall ever come home to roost! The combats, and the amount of time some of them take, in this book are ludicrous. This aspect was bad in the previous books for sure, but here it goes completely off the deep end. Here are the main problems you will need to contend with. If you are reading this, I hope you are sitting in a comfortable chair.

- The Assassin - Right in the very first section, you are attacked by a Skill 70 Assassin, who insta-kills you anytime he gets a 6 on his roll! At the best of times, the combats in these books are going to take many rounds, so the likelihood of him getting a 6 at some point during the fight seems quite high. As such, it took me my first six attempts just to get past THE FIRST SECTION OF THE BOOK! I eventually gave up trying to beat him any other way, and if I couldn't first get him with the Poison Needle spell, I would use one of my precious insta-win spells. The whole Poison Needle spell process isn't in your favor as you first need to roll to see if Fire*Wolf is inclined to cast spells in the first place, and then roll again to see if the Spell even connects. And even if it does connect there is a 50% chance the enemy will be immune to poison! So whenever that didn't work, I would attempt to use the Paralysis spell (provided Fire*Wolf was in the mood to cast spells), and I used this routine every time I had to start the book from scratch after that. You really need to end this fight as quickly as you can.

- The Lions - while travelling overland and camping for the night, you are attacked by not one, but two Skill 60 Lions that attack both at once. Even with the Life Point replenishing Doomsword, this is pretty much good night sweet prince. This is where I would use the other insta-win spell (Invisibility, as Paralysis is only good against one opponent and which I may have already used against the Assassin). 

- The Demonspawn Regent - Ah yes, this guy is back. Fantastic. With Skill 100 and 610 Life Points, not to mention a sword that does "+10 damage in the first combat round, +20 in the second, and +20 multiplied by the result of a single die roll in the third" with the cycle beginning anew after three rounds......good luck! And that's not even mentioning the litany of powerful spells he has at his disposal should he "elect to fight" with them. It's still completely a mystery to me as to when he is supposed to use these spells but that is probably a good thing. 

- The Dragon - A Skill 80, 525 Life Point dragon? Sure, why not. 

- The Stone Villagers - Here, Fire*Wolf fights against 4 men from his childhood village. None of these men has particularly high stats, but anytime you need to fight multiple opponents at once with this terrible combat system, you are likely screwed. Not to mention how long this all takes. 

- The Spawn - Speaking of excruciatingly long and drawn out combats, at one point you attempt to rescue some villagers being attacked by Spawn. How many of the Spawn you need to fight is determined by rolling two dice and that's the number you have to take on. It is made clear that however many attack you, you are able to fight them one at time as they "attack singly by their nature". No wonder they haven't been able to take over the world! This being the case, and thanks to the Life Point regenerating Doomsword, you are unlikely to lose any of these combats, but the first two times I made it to this section, I rolled an 11 and a 10 respectively. Think about that for a second. Knowing how long these individual combats take, I had to fight 11 of these guys in a row. That's insane!!!!    

- The Satzensquash - Ok....I guess this is supposed to be this world's version of the Sasquatch, or Yeti. Unlike most opponents, this creature's attack is quite simple. If it rolls a 5 or better it does 20 damage. True, it drains Fire*Wolf's Strength points as the fight goes on, but even so, this is one of the easier opponents in the book once again thanks to the Doomsword. But this fight still takes forever as the creature begins with 900 Life Points for crying out loud! 

- The Guardian - A large serpent that is blocking passage of a tunnel that Fire*Wolf needs to travel through. This guy has Skill 80 and Life Points of 695, with the real kicker being that you can't use the Doomsword against him as it will drain YOUR life instead of the Guardian's. Gahhhh!

- The Sentient Web - Ok, this one is just incredibly stupid and is one of the worst "combats" I have ever seen. Here, you get trapped within a web and must free yourself by defeating it. The Web has 500 Life Points, does not attack, and there is no time limit for when you must defeat it. So, there is not only literally no way you can lose this, but there isn't even any way you can take any damage. All you are supposed to do is keep rolling dice and striking it until you bring its Life down from 500 to 0. It's like Brennan actually enjoys wasting your time.  

It is at this point in the adventure that we finally find the golden orb we have been searching for, and obtaining it results in a large increase to our stats, which should make it much easier from here on out right? Not so fast. We still have:

- More Spawn - Here we fight two more Spawn with stats of Skill 100 and Life Points 650 each. Wonderful. 

-  The Spawn Captain - Skill 100, Life Points 705. The hits keep on coming. He also has a Blight spell that can paralyze you for two rounds should he be successful casting it, which would likely mean certain defeat for Fire*Wolf if not for that fact that as usual, it's not actually explained when he elects to use this spell. With stats like these though, he doesn't really need it. Could you at least make his Life Points an even 700 here Brennan as opposed to 705? Even if just for calculation purposes? Oh I forgot, he hates his readers.  

This is just an insane gauntlet to have to run through. And if at any time you get even moderately unlucky with your spell casting rolls, it's pretty much curtains. As such, the difficulty level here is off the charts. I'm a big fan of challenging gamebooks where the difficulty comes from needing to crack an elaborate gamebook puzzle, such as in Creature of Havoc which took me 52 attempts to beat and which is to date, alongside Crown of Kings, my top rated gamebook that I've played. But having difficulty come from a series of combats totally stacked against you that requires endless rolling, dying and retrying just to get past one fight only to die again and have to repeat the process on many subsequent fights is not challenge, it's an exercise in extreme frustration. 

The adventure also contains several puzzles that must be solved in order to achieve victory. I initially found these puzzles to be incredibly obscure, but apparently Brennan knew this might be the case as he actually provides a "Hints Page" at the back of the book that can be consulted should you get stuck on any of them. The hints themselves are written backwards to prevent you from inadvertently spying out any other hints other than the one you are looking for. If he wanted to give me a headache from reading these backwards, then mission accomplished. Otherwise, I'm not sure Brennan should have bothered, as some of the hints seem almost as convoluted as the puzzles themselves. The question of healing in this series also rears its ugly head again and it seems clear now that you are indeed not supposed to heal between fights, as there are many sections in this book that see you penalized by a loss of Life Points outside of combat. This calls into question whether I actually was able to beat book #1 legitimately, but Id rather not open that can of worms.

The "death section" (section 13) of this adventure switches things up again from the last book. Anytime our character dies, be it either from combat or from an instant death, we are sent to this section and told to roll up a new character. However, if we can roll a 6 or higher on two dice we can begin with our new character at the section that we just died at. Once again this does you absolutely no good should you have perished at an instant death section, but I believe this is the only element of this book that makes it remotely possible to complete. If you can keep passing this respawn roll, you may be able to slowly make your way through the book, eventually getting past all the difficult fights and picking up where you left off after one of them inevitably kills you. It's not really clear if your Paralysis and Invisibility spells are available for use again should you pass this respawn roll, but I figured heck, if I've got a completely new Fire*Wolf character to play as, then all his spells are reset too. However, even using this ruling, I STILL wasn't able to defeat this book. 

One of Brennan's usual highlights, his prose, seems to have taken a step back in this book, with such lines as "the pit behind him sealed itself, closing like a sphincter". Yikes. There are also more than a noticeable amount of filler sections. Several times you are asked if you want to search a dead body, or a room you come across, only to be told "you find nothing, move on". You are also asked on occasion if you would like to turn around and head home (and if you choose to do so, you instantly fail the adventure). I wonder if Brennan was contractually obligated to have this book be 250 sections long or if he received a bonus for doing so, because he really seems to be forcibly stretching to hit this mark. Overall though, the writing is still well above average. Even so, I don't think there is any level of writing that can save a gamebook this poorly designed. The quality of the writing, which if done well can greatly enhance the experience of an adventure, likely isn't the reason most people are playing a gamebook in the first place, which is unfortunate for Brennan. Not being able to beat the adventure, I checked out the final section and epilogue so that I would know how the story played out and what I'm supposed to know going into the final book. And after all that, we apparently never do find out who ordered the murder of King Voltar (that I found in any case). Maybe this will be revealed in the final adventure, but it wouldn't shock me if it never came up again either.   

Ranking: Broken! The second book I've come across in my travels that gets this ranking after Crypt of the Sorcerer. And this book was actually released two years earlier than Crypt so I guess chronologically speaking this is the first to get that dubious honor. I think Demondoom is probably "easier" than Crypt of the Sorcerer, and I feel it could eventually be beaten by getting lucky with the respawn rolls. I might have actually stuck with it and kept trying longer if there had been anything fun about the gameplay, but there isn't. It's sheer torture in fact, and is nowhere near worth the self abuse. Brennan has actually accomplished something I didn't think possible. He has taken something I love doing, playing gamebooks, and has me anticipating playing his as much as I would a trip to the dentist. At least with the dentist you know it's going to be over in half an hour. Life is too short for this nonsense. 

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4. Ancient Evil - Score = 0.0    Tier = BROKEN

Attempts before declaring it a lost cause: 28

Just when you think things couldn't possibly get any worse, Brennan outdoes himself. The design of this book is such a slap in the face to any gamebook player that it really is quite rage inducing. But first, the story. The book starts off just a few months after the conclusion of the previous adventure, with our Fire*Wolf character getting married to the Lady Freya, who it was mentioned was his betrothed in that previous book. We learn just before the wedding, that there have been several strange cases reported around the city of Pelimandar over the last few months. In all these cases, people have vanished, only to reappear some weeks later with no memory of where they had been or what had happened to them. This seems like it would be a rather alarming phenomenon, but the people of the city barely seem concerned with it and just shrug it off. It should come as no surprise to the reader then, that immediately after the wedding ceremony between Fire*Wolf and Lady Freya, our new wife also completely vanishes, and thus the quest here is to figure out what happened, and to find her. 

The structure of the book allows for more exploration than usual, as there are a couple of "hub" areas with corresponding maps at the back of the book. In these areas, we start at a location indicated on the map, and can visit other locations in any order we choose. I like this style of approach in general, but unfortunately it's wasted here. One of these areas is the city of Belgardium that you once fought your way through back in book #1. Back then it was overrun by the Spawn, but over the past decade it has been mostly rebuilt and is now a bustling city of human activity. This could have been interesting, but there is unfortunately very little going on at any of the buildings that you can visit. Even worse, some of them even reuse events from other sections which then totally breaks continuity and ruins immersion. It's incredibly half-assed and surprisingly boring given the initial setup.  

There also seems to be a contradictory event concerning our magical cursed sword, Doombringer. Ever since we acquired it back in book #1, we have been continuously told that the sword can never leave our side because it is cursed. If we try to get rid of it, it just returns to us kind of like a mandatory returning of Thor's hammer. But despite all we have learned about that over the course of the previous adventures, here we are told we leave it in our chambers when we are getting married, and we were able to do so because we left it "voluntarily". What??? This makes absolutely no sense and completely contradicts three books worth of information we have been given on the subject. Just more fuel for the fire regarding the poor quality of this series.  

Thankfully, the difficulty and length of the combats have been dialed back a bit from the previous book (although they are still extremely hard). Not so thankfully though, the book has some other impossible roadblocks to overcome. In order to be able to beat the book, you need to acquire 5 pieces of a broken black stone. When all these pieces are combined, they form a cruciform shape that fits into a lock within the Crypts of Xandine near the end of the adventure that opens a secret door and allows you to move on to the end game. Therefore, without all 5 pieces, you cannot complete the adventure. The pieces are held by various individuals scattered throughout the quest that you obviously must then encounter and obtain the pieces from. There is a huge problem though. Two of these pieces are next to impossible to get your hands on (at least for me). These two pieces in question involve doing the following:

- One of the required pieces can only be obtained by passing a series of tests that make the roll to obtain the orb in Masks of Mayhem seem downright fair by comparison. This series of tests involves skill checks against your various attributes. To say the odds are incredibly against you in these tests would be a bit of an understatement, as you can possibly need to roll a 10 or higher 3 times in a row (!) in order to pass some of them. This number can be mitigated if you have a high enough value in the skill being tested, but even then the odds are highly stacked against you. And there are several of these tests in a row remember, with one single failed roll at any time resulting in death. Good grief!

- Another required piece is hidden behind a riddle that must be solved in order to obtain it. And this is where I had to pack it in, and is why my number of attempts at this book ended at the number it did as opposed to the round number of 60 from the last adventure. Regardless of the odds against you for any dice rolls that may be required, if I can't solve a riddle that is essential to completing the book, then that's "Game Over" right then and there. This riddle is posed to you in section 132 of the book by a strange girl you meet in a forest glade, and it seems so obscure to me that I will reprint it below for those who don't own the book to see if anyone reading this can make sense of it. 

"It is simple," said the girl "you must tell me my name."

"But you might be called anything."

"I might, but I am not. Listen" She threw back her head and rhymed:

"My first is nowhere, but never elsewhere

My second is everywhere, but never in air

My third it is royal, but is not a king

My fourth is in mitre, and also in ring

My fifth is around you, but out of your reach

My sixth is in undergrowth, but never in beach

My seventh is saunter and standstill and stay

My whole is the answer to show you the way!"

She laughed, "Add six times six to the total of my name and go safely on your journey, warrior!"

Wow! Ok, well as in the previous adventure, this book contains a Hints Page at the back, and I wasn't all that surprised to see that there is only one hint listed, and it happens to be for this section above. The hint when read backwards (by the way, if it's the only hint, why did it need to be written backwards?) states:

This is a straightforward conundrum. Each line gives one letter of the name. The trick is to find the letter that is in the first word but not in the second. For example in line one the two important words are "nowhere" and "elsewhere". The letter you want is in the word "nowhere" but not in the word "elsewhere". This means the first letter of the name is either the letter "N" or the letter "O". Do this with the first seven lines thus ending up with a seven letter word. Replace letters with their numerical values - A = 1, B = 2, etc. and add 36 to find the section number you need. 

So that explains how it works, which could be somewhat implied from the riddle itself in the first place. And even though it helps you narrow down the possibilities for the first letter of the name, the subsequent amount of combinations it leaves based upon the remaining lines is crazy. I suppose you could try looking up the answer online somewhere, or you could just look at every section of the book until you find the one that looks correct, but that seems like cheating to me, and honestly, if the book is going to include something like this (along with its many other issues) along the required path, I'm not sure it deserves to be completed anyway. 

Incredibly, the above isn't even the worst of it all, as I have saved what is probably the most infuriating single section of any gamebook I have ever read until last. For that I give you section 258. Not being able to get all 5 pieces of the stone, and knowing I wasn't going to be able to beat this book, I decided to read through to the end to see how the story concluded. On that front, it turns out there was an Invasion of the Body Snatchers style plan going on perpetrated by a trio of evil sorcerers known as "The Ancient Evil", whereby they would abduct prominent people and strip their souls from their bodies, leaving them under their control when the person was then returned. And then as I read on, something happened, and I couldn't believe my eyes when I came upon this entry. Keep in mind, this section occurs near the end of the adventure, and if you fail the check outlined below, you die. Nothing new there right? Unfortunately, having to pass a do or die check in a gamebook in order to win isn't exactly anything new. But no, this one really takes the cake. I present the check in question below:

Add Fire*Wolf's current stats together (ignoring POWER) for a wholly accurate calculation of his LIFE POINT potential. (Note: This figure is not necessarily the same as his current LIFE POINTS which may have been reduced by combat etc.). If your calculation shows Fire*Wolf's constitution to be 600+, turn to 222. If less than 600, turn to 257. 

And yes, 257 is a death section. In other words, if you didn't begin the adventure (or even indeed the entire series for anyone starting with book #1 and carrying a character forward) with an extremely powerful and unlikely-to-get randomly generated starting character, you are instantly killed once you get to this point of the final book! That's the definition of egregious and is probably the single worst thing I've seen in any gamebook. I wonder if Brennan has ever received any hate mail for all this. 

Ranking: Broken.....again. No shocker here, but this is awful. Who would have guessed that book #1, with its lowly 3.2 score would end up being the "highlight" of the series. As I was playing through this final book, something hit me like a ton of bricks. This whole series is a troll job. It has to be. There is just no way someone could have designed something this terrible unless it was on purpose. I suspect that Brennan, being an actual novelist, really harboured some sort of disdain for the gamebook craze, along with its adherents, and saw this as a way to belittle and frustrate them while at the same time cashing in on said craze which was in full swing at the time. This series sees him easily take the lead in the category of "Worst Gamebook Author of All Time" .........and it's not even close.