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1. Green Blood - Score = 5.4 Tier = OK
Sections: 500
Attempts to Beat: 10
Woo hoo! Back to a series written by a couple of authors that I am quite familiar with, Mark Smith and Dave Morris (one of my faves). This opening entry is from Mark Smith, and I'm sorry to say he does not get this series off to the best of beginnings. This was surprising to me as I have been a fan of a lot of his previous work, which is often very good. This however, was a far cry from that. The story here sees us playing as an adventurer (and more on this later), who decides one day to leave the foulness and pestilence of living in the city behind, and seek adventure on the open road. To that end, having become fed up with the degradation of mankind, we decide to head for the Forest of Arden (and the similarity of this name to the famous Ardennes forest is a bit obvious isn't it?) to seek out the mysterious Tree of Knowledge, where we hope to obtain wisdom and then bring that wisdom back to share with mankind. Not totally sure how the mechanics of that would work but what the hell, I'm game. So we begin by leaving the city of Godorno, and head north along the road toward the forest.
Turning to the game system here, I was surprised to find that this game contains no dice rolling or other randomized elements (unless you count having to randomly guess among options at times, but I'll get to that later as well). This can be both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, it eliminates the frustration of failure just because you rolled poorly at an inopportune time, but on the other hand it also means that you are always guaranteed to make it back to the section you were just at before you made a bad decision that led to failure, which makes going back and replaying the whole thing just to get back there again feel a bit pointless and tedious at times. It also removes a lot of the tension involved with possible character death. Instead of dice, this is a Skill check adventure, where you begin the game with 4 out of a possible 11 different Skills. Then as you make your way through the book, which Skills you have at your disposal then determines which checks you are able to pass, and you thus need to figure out which route you need to take based upon the Skills you have in order to beat the game.
I was quite excited though to see that the adventure comes with 7 different pre-generated characters, with each being a different style of adventurer. You can choose from among: The Duellist, The Ranger, The Monk, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, The Starveling, The Traveller, and The Thief. These all sound rather interesting, and I'm not even sure I have heard of a Starveling before. Each comes with 4 different Skills that are meant to reflect the talents of that character. Guessing that we would be spending the majority of this adventure in the forest, I thought it wise to select The Ranger, who comes with the Skills of: Archery, Streetwise, Swordplay, and Wilderness Lore. Not sure why The Ranger would have a Streetwise skill, but I'll go with it for now. Each character also comes with a certain amount of Life Points and Gold, with my Ranger getting 11 Life Points and 10 Gold Pieces to start the quest. Most interestingly, each character also comes with a short background of a sentence or two, giving some info on their origin and experiences. I am told this about my Ranger character for example: "Being loyal to the traditional values of your forefathers, you protect those forced to journey off the road." I thought this selection system was great stuff, and with visions of role-playing as an Aragorn-style character dancing in my head, I was ready to begin.
So, with every new gamebook I play, I do my damndest to begin each with an open mind and the highest of hopes. A clean slate as it were. Many times those high hopes are dashed as I make my way through the adventure, but I think Green Blood may have just set the record for how quickly those dashed hopes took hold. I didn't even make it to Section 1! Yeah, the praise I was giving the character selection idea of having 7 different distinct individuals to play as? Well, right in the Prologue the book scuppers that great idea and decides to just say "Nah, never mind". This is because the Prologue goes on to provide a complete background of your character, who apparently is a life-long city dweller, and a destitute one to boot. Well, that certainly flies in the face of the Ranger character I chose to play as doesn't it? This Prologue doesn't jive with the background information of several of the selectable characters, and I'm left wondering how the author could have forgotten about it so quickly. He really needed to be as vague as possible here.
Right after leaving the city, I made an uneventful trip along the road to the village of Burg, with still a little ways yet to go before reaching the forest. Stopping at the inn for a night's rest before continuing my journey, I just so happen to meet an old woman inside the common room, and it turns out she is one of the few humans who knows the location of the Tree of Knowledge within the forest, where she also happens to live. (Well, meeting her right away was incredibly fortuitous wasn't it?). She gives me directions on how I can seek her out when I get inside the forest (can't I just go with her?), which I obviously take her up on, as locating the Tree of Knowledge is the whole point of my quest. Hang on a second though......the Tree of Knowledge? The map inside the front cover of the book shows it as the Tree of Life. This is something that popped up a few times in the adventure, as sometimes this Tree is referred to by one of these different names. I began to wonder if there actually were two different Trees, and it was up to me to locate the correct one. It turned out there was only one special Tree (that I found anyway), so was this an error on the author's part?
After leaving the inn the next morning (promising the innkeeper's daughter that I would keep an eye out for her father, who has disappeared during the night), I quickly come to the edge of the Forest of Arden itself, and enter. The first thing I needed to do was locate the old woman, who unsurprisingly turns out to be anything but what she initially appeared to be. Known as the Lady in Grey, she obviously has magical powers, one of which is the power of foresight, and she goes on to show me a vision of what I must do in order to save the forest from a group of "Westermen" barbarians who have recently begun cutting down and burning the trees. They fully intend to destroy the Tree of Knowledge too, so if I wish to locate it and learn its wisdom, I must first stop these Westermen and become the "Hero of the Forest". The vision also shows me how to do that, as I will need to gather the aid of both the elves who dwell in the forest, and also a Dragon thought to live somewhere in the woods. I then head once more into the forest in an attempt to gather these forces.
I then wander around the forest, where I can acquire various Codewords depending on what I am able to accomplish, and the whole game system seems to boil down to either having the proper Skill to pass a check when asked, or picking the right choice from among a list of options. The Life Points? What the hell was the "point" of these? I played the book 10 times and only once did I ever lose any Life Points, which occurred when I found myself in a swordfighting duel with the Elf King's champion to prove my worth and gain their help. Was this just another "oops, I forgot to use this" mechanic? How about your Gold Pieces? Nothing to see there either, as again in all my plays of the book I only ever spent 1 Gold Piece, which occurred at the very start of the adventure when I paid for a night's lodging at the inn.
So, the whole exercise became trial-and-error in determining which Skills could be used where to acquire the Codewords I would need to eventually win. This approach could work if the story were interesting, but I didn't find the plot here even remotely engaging. The absence of an evil wizard is the only thing keeping me from calling this a totally standard fantasy quest. As it turns out, you need to do 3 things if you want to win (and gather the associated Codewords). 1) Enlist the aid of the Dragon. 2) Enlist the aid of the Elves. 3) Discover what the Westermen's plan of attack is. Once you have the appropriate Codewords, you are allowed to move on to the endgame, and the final battle against the Westermen, where your forces make a stand against them right beside The Tree of Knowledge itself. You then need to defeat the Westerman leader, who is decked out in a set of large steam-powered armour (pictured on the cover of the book). What follows is a sequence involving a combination of decisions, where a wrong choice can lead to instant failure. Make it through however and you successfully defend the Tree of Knowledge and are declared the Hero of the Forest. No word on if you managed to bring wisdom back to mankind though, so maybe you changed your mind on that one.
As I have stated several times in my reviews, I do not mind trial-and-error in gamebooks at all as long as the story is engaging with different paths to explore, and they don't go overboard with complete random guessing, which unfortunately is what I felt like I was starting to get here the more I played. The biggest example I can think of regarding this was nearer the end of the adventure, when I mounted the Dragon whose aid I had enlisted, and prepared to attack the Westermen who were now marching into the forest in two columns. At this point, I was asked which of the two columns I wanted to attack. After making my choice, I was then asked if I had the Agility Skill, and was forced to answer no. (C'mon now, The Ranger doesn't have Agility?) I then immediately plummeted to my death, falling off the back of the Dragon as it banked through the sky. Hmm, ok, well back through the book again to make it back to this point where I decided to attack the other column this time......only to be asked again if I had the Agility Skill. Uh-oh. Don't tell me. Yep! I once more fell to my death as the Dragon banked, in the exact same text as before, just in a different section number. The only other option I had left to me was in not mounting the Dragon at all, which was annoying because in a vision that the Lady in Grey showed me earlier in the adventure, I was shown to be riding a Dragon, and she even tells you this will be the manner of your victory. Well I guess not you liar! At this point I put the book down to stare at the wall for a moment, because it felt like I was back playing the Stephen Thraves Compact gamebooks again, where I was just supposed to make totally random guesses as to what I should be doing.
The message of the adventure also seemed to fluctuate wildly at times. For example, a couple of sections impressed upon me the importance of respecting all life. But then when confronted with an option of killing my opponent or letting him live, killing him outright often seemed the better course of action. As an example of this, at one point I came across the innkeeper who had disappeared at the start of the quest. It turns out he had been captured by the Westermen, and was now their slave. In order to free him, I am given the choice of killing his guard outright, or bide my time to look for another solution. I get that the Westermen are supposed to be the "bad guys" here, but based on the message of the adventure up until this point, I thought for sure that killing the guard in cold blood would be the wrong choice. Nope! It turns out that opting to bide your time leads to the death of the innkeeper, at which point I'm not sure it's possible to win the adventure, as I needed him to lead me to the Westermen leader where you then stealthily sneak a look at their plans. The final victory section even gives mention of the fleeing Westermen being slaughtered by the elves in the "tens of thousands". Harsh!
To say this book also has a strong environmental message would be a bit of an understatement, as it sure does like to beat you over the head in that regard. (Yeah I get it, forest=good, cities=bad). The adventure doesn't seem too positive about mankind either, with a somewhat amusing line delivered by an elf who says he has met only a few men over the last millennium, and they were all bad. I will say that there is an odd situation in this "world" where apparently an elf can't hide if a human is looking right at them. Huh? This leads to a ridiculous staring-contest moment where you stand with your eyes riveted on the last elf remaining from his group, refusing to look away because you need him to take you to his leader, while he begs you to avert your gaze so that he can go back into the forest. I can't tell if this was supposed to be intentionally amusing or not. Also, apparently humans are only allowed to talk to the elves on Midsummer's Day, with an attempt to do so on any other day leading to instant death from their arrows. Well, it sure is a good thing that this particular day you are in the forest happens to be Midsummer's Day isn't it? (Incredibly fortuitous once again you might say!). There is also an interminable sequence here whereby the Lady in Grey tests you with questions to see if you are worthy to be the Hero of the Forest, and boy does this drag on way too long. Oh, and while I'm at it, there was additionally a section that describes "fanciful and bizarre stories" involving the elves, however it is then immediately stated that no one who has ever met the elves has lived to tell about it. Which begs the question about where the stories came from then!
The book also contains a map on the inside of the front cover, depicting the Forest of Arden and its various landmarks, and I have to say, this is not one of the better maps I have seen. First of all, the area in which this adventure takes place, the Forest, only takes up about half the map, with the other half showing areas, to my knowledge, that do not involve the quest. I really wish the whole map had been of the Forest, as much could have been done with the extra space to bring it to life. Second is the scale of the map, which seems rather off to me. No distances are given, but it sure felt like the walk from the village of Burg to the edge of the forest was made in a few hours. According to the map though, this walk is about the same distance that would take you through half the forest, which would make it seem rather small for a forest which is supposed to be of such importance and is providing the world with life. Case in point, the map shows the River Sirion flowing along the northern edge of the forest. However, we enter the forest at the southern edge, and reach this River after only a few sections (which again only felt like a few in-world hours at most). The various landmarks on the map are also out of necessity crammed together, which contributes even more to the forest feeling smaller than it should have been, although perhaps maybe this is just me.
I want to conclude with the thought that something really awesome could have been done here, if each of the 7 pre-generated characters came with their own mini-quest that could only be activated by them. Perhaps The Monk needs to defend a Nunnery from attacking vampires, or The Thief needs to reclaim a family heirloom unjustly taken by a robber baron. The possibilities abound here! These quests wouldn't have to be particularly long, or take up too many sections, but they would give a great reason to try and go back and beat the book with all the provided characters. As it is, it didn't feel like it mattered in the slightest which one of them I picked, certainly not story-wise anyway. I suppose it matters in the sense that which one you pick determines which Skills you get, and therefore which way through the book you might need to go, but this aspect started to feel random to me the more I played in any case. Also, you have the option of creating your own character and picking any 4 Skills you like, which thus totally renders the whole thing moot if the background of the characters is not going to come into play anyway. The closet the adventure came to a sidequest is when I found a tower within the forest, but you need to have one of two specific Skills in order to get inside it. This would have been what I am talking about had this been more character-specific, but unfortunately it isn't, as nothing in this adventure really is.
Ranking: I won't say this is outright Bad, as there is something to be said in discovering a safe path through the book, but its definitely what I would call "Weak". As such, this makes it into the OK tier, but not by much. In fact I am starting to think I should have created more tiers, because some of my tiers leave quite a large room for variance. A Weak tier might have been a good name for the 5.0-5.9 range of scores perhaps. Ah well, hindsight rears its ugly head once more. The rules section for Green Blood appeared to set the stage for a very good gamebook experience, but then not only did the adventure not deliver on that early promise, it didn't even appear to want to try to deliver on it. I found very little that happened within the quest to be of interest, and while I believe diceless gamebooks can work, I think this entry in particular was severely hampered by not having to roll the bones from time to time. Smith's writing felt like a step down from what I remember of his too (although several of the death sections are rather entertaining), and my expectations for this series have now taken a firm punch in the nose. Still a handful of books remaining to right the ship though, so hope springs eternal!
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2. Down Among the Dead Men - Score = 8.1 Tier = Good!
Sections: 427
Attempts to Beat: 5
Avast ye landlubbers! A pirate-themed adventure from none other than Dave Morris? That's a recipe for success if ever I've heard one. The book certainly kicks off by delivering the entertainment value, as we get a wonderfully written prologue where in a dream we recall how a couple of years ago, while sailing aboard a merchant vessel through the tropical and Caribbean-inspired Carab Sea, our ship was attacked by the infamous pirate Skarvench and his ship, The Belle Dame. Despite taking a bullet to the head ("it's just a flesh wound"), we were then press-ganged into becoming a member of the pirate crew, which has amounted to little more than a life of slavery ever since. The adventure then opens with the gruesome murder by Skarvench himself of one of our few friends on the ship, Old Marshy, who has his head bashed in with a hammer for daring to attempt to intervene when Skarvench prepares to launch an attack on a ship of helpless monks. This being the final straw, we determine to escape from the ship, and find that there are several others who wish to join us. These three fellow crewmates, Grimes, Oakley, and Blutz, had all also been captured by Skarvench to serve aboard his ship unwillingly, and have suffered greatly under his command. The four of us then manage to steal the ship's jollyboat in the dead of night, and make our way out into the open ocean with two goals in mind: to make it to the haven of Port Leshand which lies several hundred leagues to the west, and to then find a way to take our revenge on Skarvench.
The game system here is the same as last book, and once again we have a list of 7 different pre-generated characters that we can choose from. These include: The Adventurer, The Buccaneer, The Changeling, The Gypsy, The Mariner, The Swashbuckler, and The Warlock. Each of these come with 4 different Skills, along with 10 Life Points and 10 Doubloons (although considering our predicament aboard The Belle Dame, I wonder why we had any money at all? I will just assume we stole it on our way out). And also once again, you still have the option of creating your own character and taking any 4 Skills of your choosing. After seriously considering selecting The Adventurer or the Swashbuckler (and immediately dismissing The Warlock, as playing as a magic user is NOT what I am looking for in a pirate adventure), I decided to play as The Mariner, as it felt the most thematically appropriate. With this as my selection, I was thus granted the Skills of: Agility, Seafaring, Streetwise, and Wilderness Lore. Two books in and I have to say that the rules section in this series is rather refreshing, as not needing to bother with explaining a combat system, you get to jump right into the adventure very quickly. "Here are your Skills, Life Points and Money. You can carry up to 8 items. Now go to it!"
The adventure can be broken up into two halves, the survivalistic voyage to Port Leshand, and the acquisition of a ship in which to hunt down Skarvench and take your revenge. The first half reminded me a little bit of the 1789 voyage of Captain Bligh, who along with 18 members of his loyal crew, was set adrift in a jollyboat after the "mutiny on The Bounty", which was led by one of his lieutenants, Fletcher Christian. In the small boat, Bligh impressively navigated 6700 km back to civilization, often having to weigh risking going ashore on islands possibly full of hostile natives, and with the very real likelihood of death by thirst, starvation, or exposure. While your character and his 3 companions don't have to travel quite that far, you still begin your voyage with many of the same problems. Do you sail in a straight line toward Port Leshand; head south toward the main shipping lane with its stronger westerly current; or make for The Smoking Isles where food and water can most likely be found, but you will run the risk of attack by hostile islanders. I think the adventure is clearly trying to goad you into going to The Smoking Isles, and this is probably for the best, as I found this to be easily the most colorful and interesting initial course to take (if not necessarily the most efficient based upon my choice of The Mariner, but I will get to that later).
This initial island-hopping section is a lot of fun, as you can go ashore at any or all of the 4 islands that make up the chain. You do indeed get to encounter some of the islanders (some hostile, some not), along with a powerful witch and even Skarvench himself again who comes ashore at one of the islands looking for buried treasure. You can acquire provisions, items, or codewords here that may prove useful later on in the adventure. The provisions are given priority in the early going, as you can find yourself being drained of Life Points rather quickly when out on the open ocean (or if you make any wrong moves when dealing with the island denizens). My only real complaint about all this is that I would have liked these island sequences to have been even longer, as I was enjoying them quite a lot. Even bypassing the islands can lead to some interesting encounters with vampires, giant crabs, and maybe even some more good ones that I missed. Your companions, Grimes, Oakley, and Blutz, play a surprisingly large role in the story, and each is fleshed out with their own personality. Just as surprisingly to me, they stick with you throughout the whole adventure, and to my knowledge there is no way for any of them to die unless you do ("Lone Wolf" companions these ain't).
During the course of the adventure you will eventually uncover Skarvench's plans, which involve the construction of a magical flying galleon called The Moon Dog, with the ultimate goal of using it to kidnap the de facto ruler of the area, Queen Titania of Glorianne, who is en route to the colonies in the Carab Sea on an official royal visit. Skarvench then intends to ransom the Queen, becoming filthy rich in the process. You and your comrades take it upon yourselves to foil those plans, saving the Queen and hopefully killing Skarvench in the bargain. In order to do this, you are going to need to get yourself a ship to command, and this becomes one of the highlights of the adventure. Once I had finally made it to Port Leshand, I was expecting the adventure to backslide into a more typical fantasy quest, but then this idea was introduced that I thought was brilliant. What I thought made this great was that there are apparently 8 different ships that can be found in the adventure (unless some of these on the list are unobtainable and I am not aware of it), with each presumably requiring a different path or mini-quest to complete in order to get them. Fantastic idea!
Up until this point, I thought this gamebook was well on its way to greatness. Unfortunately though, the final act I felt was a bit unsatisfying, and pulled it down just enough to keep it out of that tier for me. One of the main reasons for this is that the brilliant idea of having a bunch of different ships you can acquire to sail into a final battle against Skarvench as he makes his attempt to kidnap the Queen had very little payoff. Each of the ships comes with a rating between 1 and 5, which had me thinking that the higher the rating, the more firepower or "special abilities" the ship would have. As far as I can tell though, all that the ranking indicates is how many hits your ship can take before it sinks. If you have the ship with the lowest 1 star ranking for example, then just one hit from Skarvench's cannons and its game over. So I guess having a higher ranked ship gives you more room for error as you attempt to board him (and you can be asked such things as if you want to approach him from the port side or the starboard side for example should you take a certain path, with the wrong move seeing you take a hit), but that appears to be all it does.
I was also surprised that the gamebook felt a bit on the easy side by the time I was done. And I don't mean that because it only took me 5 attempts, but from what was required from me on my winning playthrough. Playing as The Mariner, I found I could just skip the whole Smoking Isles sequences, which is some of the best stuff in the book. Sailing around them to the south, my Seafaring skill came in handy in helping me survive the elements (but even if I didn't have it, I still think my Life Points would have held out). Only going ashore at the last of the 4 islands allowed me to stock up on provisions for the final leg of the journey to Port Leshand, where I was picked up by a friendly merchant vessel halfway there anyway. To win the game I only needed to get 3 things: 1) the "deed of ownership" to a sloop, which is gifted by the friendly merchant captain. 2) a codeword for helping a scholar who is being bullied in a tavern (and most players would assist him I'm assuming, so this seems tough to miss. And 3) a pocket-watch, which is by no means hidden and can be bought from a peddler.
This last item, the pocket-watch, proved to be very curious, and I'm still puzzled as to how it exactly helped me to win. So, once I had my ship (thanks to the deed of ownership), and sailed towards the final encounter with Skarvench, I found myself in the middle of a thick fog, when the pirate's newly constructed magical ship, The Moon Dog, came flying out of the sky, apparently powered by the "lunar winds". At this point, I am asked if I have one of 3 things: A bat-shaped talisman, a black kite, or a pocket-watch (along with the codeword for rescuing the scholar earlier). If I don't have any of these, I have no means of covering up the moon and stopping him, and Skarvench successfully captures the Queen and the game ends in failure. If I have the pocket-watch and the codeword however, I know that a lunar eclipse is scheduled to happen at this very moment, which briefly robs The Moon Dog of its powers, allowing me to get to the Queen's ship in time. And this is the part I don't get.....the lunar eclipse only happens if you have the pocket-watch? Is that how eclipses work? I was immediately reminded of a classic episode of "The Simpsons", where Springfield narrowly avoids obliteration from an incoming comet. The solution of the townspeople to make sure this situation never repeats itself? Burn down the Observatory of course!
This also meant that yes, I was able to beat the adventure with no problems using the lowest ranked ship available, the one-star rated "Lady of Shalott", as I never even needed to take a single hit. The strange part being that when I first acquired this ship, it was made more than clear what a run-down piece of crap it was, but then as I gathered my crew and sailed to meet Skarvench, somewhere along the way narratively, it seemed to morph into a ship that was more impressive than I was led to believe and that the crew was proud to sail aboard.
I then got to the actual final fight against Skarvench himself, which I also found to be rather a letdown. This final combat, in my playthrough anyway, occurred halfway up a rope ladder (?), when I was climbing up said ladder to reach Skarvench's ship in the sky, at the same time as he was climbing down to the deck of the Queen's ship in order to kidnap her. I can't even fathom how the mechanics of this fight would actually have worked, as the two of us must have looked like two spiders jiggling around on a dangling piece of string. Was he trying to kick me in the fingers while I grabbed his ankles? Due to not having a combat system, the fight itself was also incredibly abrupt. I was asked if I had any of the skills of Swordfighting, Marksmanship, or Brawling (nope to all three), with each coming with an associated amount of Life Point loss. Having none of them, I suffered a larger Life Point loss, but still not enough to kill me. And that was it, survive that section's Life Point penalty, whatever it is for you, and you win the game. I guess Skarvench gets one good lick in on you before plummeting to the deck below and his death, which was a rather unsatisfying way for us to get our ultimate revenge on him. You are then rewarded by the Queen and her Admiral with an offer of joining the Royal Navy, which is left open-ended as you try to decide between accepting or continuing in the life of sailing the Carab Sea, which promises even more adventures. (And a possible sequel from the way it's worded?)
Don't get me wrong, all of the above I have written regarding the final act of the adventure is just meant to illustrate why this book didn't quite make it to greatness for me, as none of it is terrible by any means, it just felt like the adventure had been building towards something that it never quite delivered. There is still great writing and storytelling present throughout this final act, which definitely helps to make it not nearly so much of a negative as I might be making it all sound, and I still enjoyed it well enough. Nonetheless, there were several times during this endgame where I sat back in my chair and gave an uncertain grunt of...."Hmm".
While the character selection system did appear to have a bit more meaning this time, at least on the surface, it was still not nearly as much as I would like to see. And I suppose I can understand why it was done, but it's almost unfortunate that the rules allow you to create your own character with any 4 Skills, as it feel like this detracts from the studying of the various characters before deciding on which one to select. There is also some really nice replayability here should you wish to try and locate all the various ships, it's just a bit unfortunate that it ultimately didn't seem to matter all that much which one I had. Although this could have been different had I not been playing as The Mariner, which for all I know could be the most powerful of the 7 characters.
Finishing up on one of the best aspects of the adventure though, I return to the subject of the prose of the book, and wow! As soon as I began reading this I was getting flashbacks to a previous Dave Morris book I had played, The Temple of Flame, because like that adventure, this is fantastically written. Morris doesn't shy away from gruesome or unpleasant elements in the story either, with the death of Old Marshy "hammering" that point home very early in the book. There is also a scene where on the brink of starvation aboard the jollyboat, you and your comrades rig up a makeshift fishing pole and use your own excrement as bait! (Where was the illustration for that?) Heck you can even steal a monkey (the ship's mascot) from The Belle Dame when you make your escape, and should you get desperate enough when suffering from hunger later on, you have the option of eating him. (Does Morris have something against monkeys? I still remember the fate of poor Minki). Every situation you find yourself in though is wonderfully and colourfully described, and for me all the characters felt like they had the exact turn-of-phrase that you would expect and hope for from a pirate-themed gamebook.
Ranking: Overall an incredibly Good gamebook, falling just short of greatness for a few reasons. The book sets up a delightfully dastardly villain right off the start, and the tale of survival it tells as you make your way westwards is very engrossing. Exploring The Smoking Isles is a treat, and there are a few different interesting side-stories throughout the adventure to uncover, and presumably, quite a few ships to locate. The main thing that keeps it from greatness for me is the ending sequences, as I thought the final confrontation with Skarvench was a letdown, and the book appeared to be setting up for some form of ship-to-ship combat which never really materialized in any meaningful way. These aren't massive issues though, and I still had a very good time playing this. This is also a beautifully written gamebook. I have said before that no one can write a fantasy tavern quite like Joe Dever. Well, between The Temple of Flame and now Down Among the Dead Men, no one can write a tropical setting quite like Dave Morris. I now find myself chomping at the bit to get to his next entry in the series.
Q: What type of socks do pirates wear?
A: Arrrgyles!
(No, this terrible joke was not in the gamebook......I don't think.)
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3. The Coils of Hate - Score = 3.5 Tier = Bad
Sections: 416
Attempts to Beat: 22
Ranking: This gamebook is something of a mess and easily the worst of the first 3 entries in the series. There are a lot of section transitions here that are just awful, and I spent so much time wondering if I was reading the correct section that I began to think the author was playing a prank on me. This contributed to me feeling like I really didn't know what the hell was going on half the time. The book was challenging, but in the worst way, as I was routinely left to just guess at the correct course of action, with an incorrect choice leading to instant death. This seems to defeat the purpose of the Life Points, because you could at least let me take a couple of hits for "poor" decisions before killing me off instead of just doing it immediately for any number of wrong moves. It's a shame too, because there ARE actually some glimmers of hope here and there, as the plot is rather unique for a gamebook (even if borrowing rather heavily from world history), and even though the illustration of it looks a little silly, the description and concept of Hate itself I thought was suitably horrific, and the fates of those slowly absorbed by the gelatinous mass was probably my favorite part of the book. However, that wasn't nearly enough to raise this out of the Bad tier. I dearly hope this is the low point of the series.
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4. Necklace of Skulls - Score = 9.4 Tier = Great!
Sections: 442
Attempts to Beat: 16 (to reach optimal ending)
Holy crap! Even turning back to author Dave Morris for this entry in the series, and with how good I thought Down Among the Dead Men was, I sure didn't see this level of greatness coming. Not from a dice-less gamebook anyway. I was immediately impressed with the setting for Necklace of Skulls, as this is a full on Mayan adventure, which takes place in Mesoamerica in the distant past (and the provided map at the front of the book seems to confirm this), albeit in a heavily fictionalized one where magic, dragons, hydras, and all manner of deadly horrors exist. (No elves or dwarves that I could tell though. That would just be silly). The prologue begins with our character, Evening Star, relating a dream he had to a soothsayer about how he was visited by his twin brother, Morning Star, who appears to be in dire straits. We soon learn how prophetic the dream was, as a messenger arrives shortly after and informs us that our brother, who was the leader of a diplomatic group that had ventured westwards toward The Great City, is believed to have been killed when the City was attacked by a force of werewolf creatures that emerged from the bordering desert, and he then led his group out to confront the one responsible, a sorcerer known as Necklace of Skulls. Only one member of the group, a veteran soldier, managed to survive and escape the deadly desert, and has only barely made it back to your home city of Koba to relate what happened. Not being totally sure if our brother is really dead, we decide honor demands that we head out to The Great City to look for him, and either rescue him should he still live, or avenge him should he have perished.
The book is light on rules as usual, and we once again get to choose from among 7 different pre-generated characters. On offer this time are: The Warrior, The Hunter, The Mystic, The Wayfarer, The Merchant, The Acolyte, and The Sorcerer. I have been trying with each book to select what I think will be the most thematically appropriate character (which is something of a guessing game not yet knowing exactly what the adventure is going to entail), and this time I decided to go with the first option listed, The Warrior! Playing as a "Mayan Warrior" felt too enticing to pass up, and along with this selection came the Skills of: Agility, Etiquette(!), Sword Play, and Unarmed Combat. That second one, Etiquette, was intriguing, and my first thought was "I guess I'm going to defeat my enemies through my impeccable manners?". Instead though, this Skill helps to denote you as of noble blood, and can aid you in Skill checks should you find yourself dealing with nobles of other clans as you make your way through the adventure. The Sword Play Skill also means I got to start with a sword as one of my Possessions, and along with my 10 Life Points and 10 Cacao (money), I was ready to seek out my brother. I think I may have jinxed myself in the last review when I commented that I had seemed to be picking one of the better characters each time. This time however, I found myself routinely asked if I had one of several Skills, only to find that I had none of the ones in question, often requiring me to then suffer a Life Point loss. That's okay though, as I can appreciate more of a challenge, and I was still able to beat the adventure playing as The Warrior. Incidentally, if I ever come across one of the pre-generated characters that are impossible to beat the book with, I will absolutely pillory the author responsible for that travesty.
Before I set out though, I had the opportunity to gather some useful items from the head of my clan, and then later possibly some additional items from the city market. And right away the choices I would make here at the very beginning of the game would play a big role in my route through the gamebook. After trying out I think all of the options over my playthroughs, there were 3 in particular that really stood out. The first was a Man of Gold, a small statuette (that I couldn't stop picturing in my head as looking like an Oscars trophy), that when warmed up in your hands could perform miraculous feats. This item could help you bypass some very dangerous situations in the adventure, and for awhile I thought that this item surely must be essential to winning, even if it was a one-time use only item. Heck even your leader says it's the clan's most valuable treasure. The more I played the adventure and realized what was required though, I found myself instead leaning towards the second item in question, that being a Magical Drink which restores 5 Life Points and can be used at any time except when in combat. Not the sexiest of items to be sure, but for a stretch of playthroughs I was finding the margins razor thin when it came to my Life Points. Depending on which way you go, there are some unavoidable Life Point losses, and very few places that these points can be recovered. Once I played even more however, I was able to slowly piece together a route through the book where this Drink wasn't needed, while at the same time realizing that in order to rescue my brother, the third item in question would be more useful, that being a certain codeword that can be obtained by visiting one of the temple priests before you set out. Getting this codeword aids you while playing in a game of Pok-ta-Pok (an actual Mayan ball game) that occurs near the end of the book. Getting this codeword means you bypass the other items though, so you can't have everything. This is some great design that had me sitting back and thinking which would be the best item to take depending on which route I was going to attempt through the adventure, and my strategy for trying to beat the gamebook was constantly shifting.
And that last part there is probably the best thing about the gamebook, as there are many different routes through the quest. Shortly after leaving your city, you will get to choose how you want to make your way to The Western Desert, which lies just west of The Great City. You can choose to head North to the coast in an attempt to book passage on a ship and sail part of the way, or to head South through the forest and make your way overland. This only sounds like two options at first, but each one branches out even further, and you can thus find yourself sailing on the ocean, travelling through a forest, following alongside a river, visiting different cities, walking over open plains, trudging through the desert, or even take a detour through the Underworld! You will ultimately need to decide on some form of combination of all of these options and more, with each one having their own challenges, and I must say, incredibly well-done encounters. The Underworld sections in particular were a highlight. At first mention this had me rolling my eyes, (The Underworld? Haven't I done this more than a few times by now in gamebooks?), but that was quickly forgotten as Morris really injects these sequences with a lot of appropriate atmosphere and visual imagery. For my ultimate winning playthrough, I decided that the Underworld route wasn't viable so I went in a different direction, but by that point I had played through it enough times to come to really appreciate it.
As I experimented with the different paths open to me in order to travel westwards to my ultimate destination of Necklace of Skulls' palace in the desert, I started to realize that I was going to carefully need to manage both my inventory and my Life Points. There are many items that can be collected here that can come in handy later in the adventure, and I often found myself running out of backpack space (you can only carry 8 items) and then needing to think carefully about which items would be the most useful in helping to avoid a later loss of precious Life Points. And avoiding these Life Point losses was key, at least for the majority of my playthroughs until I worked out what I thought was an optimal route, because whenever I found myself making it to near the end of the adventure, I would often have only a few left, and knew that wasn't going to be enough as I had had a brief glimpse of what was to come. So, it was back to scouring my map, looking for every possible place where I could scrounge up an extra Life Point or two. Could picking up an item I had been ignoring up until now perhaps save me a much-needed Point somewhere along the way? Could choosing a different option from a list of choices than the one I had normally been making lead to an even better outcome than the one I had been happy with up until now? This was another aspect I thought the book excelled at, and Morris did a great job balancing out the different routes through the adventure and the corresponding juggling act when it comes to your inventory and Life Points. This all comes with the usual caveat for the series in that my review is based upon playing as only one of the specific pre-generated characters, so for all I know the gamebook could have played out much differently for me in this regard had I chosen differently. And sure, it's always possible a player might hit upon the optimal route, or close to it, on one of their first few playthroughs through sheer luck, but that feels very unlikely here, and playing as The Warrior at least, I thought this adventure was incredibly well balanced. It took just enough time to provide a fair challenge, but not too much that it overstayed its welcome.
Once I finally found myself having survived my journey through the final desert section to arrive at Necklace of Skull's complex, then began yet another intriguing sequence, where his courtiers (dog-like humanoid creatures) force you to undergo a series of challenges before you can be granted an audience with the sorcerer. These challenges involve you spending one night each in 5 different buildings, with each coming with its own challenge that must be overcome. There is the House of Fire, The House of Bats, The House of Knives, The House of Cold, and The House of Gloom. Here is again where a lot of those items you have been collecting throughout the adventure come into play, as you will need several of them should you wish to stave off the Life Point losses that can otherwise result from staying in these deadly buildings. Special mention needs to be made of the back-and-forth verbal parrying and veiled threats that your character exchanges with the head courtier all throughout this sequence as you both attempt to intimidate and outmaneuver the other, and I thought that aspect added a great amount of fun to the narrative.
Should you survive the 5 nights in these buildings without losing all your Life Points, you still have one more challenge left to face, as despite thinking that you are now about to meet Necklace of Skulls in person, instead you are thrown a curveball (literally), and must compete in the ancient Mayan ball game of Pok-ta-Pok against two of the sorcerer's Shadow Warriors (actual shadow-men). I won't delve too deeply into the specifics of the game itself, but it involves throwing a ball around the walls of a stone arena to score points while your opponents try to tackle you. The game is played two-on-two, and depending on what you have done earlier, you can have one of two different allies on your team to square off against the two Shadow Warriors. First team to get to 7 points wins. I hate to say it, but this, for me, is where the adventure started to go ever slightly downhill. Sporting events don't seem to work too well in the gamebooks I have played, and this one wasn't really an exception. You are given different options to choose from which range between playing aggressively and trying to score early, or to play more conservatively and try to focus more on defense etc., but despite some advice you may have been given earlier when it comes to this sport, one choice often seems just as good as the next. Once you make it through this game, you finally get your final confrontation with Necklace of Skulls himself, and this was something of a letdown too. Although rather than discuss that here, I will include it in my next area of the review starting in the next paragraph where I will go over the few minor issues I had with the adventure. I actually managed to defeat Necklace of Skulls on my 9th attempt at the adventure, however it was only then I discovered that while I had successfully destroyed him and saved the world, I had failed to save my brother in the process. So, in order to get the more optimal ending where I accomplish both these goals, I continued playing the gamebook until I finally managed to get that best ending on my 16th attempt, destroying the sorcerer and ending the adventure by heading back home alongside my brother, who I was able to restore to life using magic.
So yeah, any criticisms I have with a book I give this high a score to are going to be minor, but nevertheless in the interest of balance and for the sake of completion, here are the few niggles I had with the adventure that kept it from scoring even higher. Heck, I enjoyed the book so much I feel a bit guilty even giving it these criticisms, so I will even try to counter my own issues on each and explain why these were only minor:
- Probably the biggest weakness of the book is with the titular villain, Necklace of Skulls himself. As villains go, he felt rather weak to me. Not in power level or anything, he's got that in spades, but more as to his characterization. We get a good physical description of him right at the end, but who is he exactly? What are his motivations? To take over the world I guess (or destroy it), and he indeed starts by doing that to The Great City. But when you arrive at his desert complex, there doesn't appear to be much going on there, no massing of armies or deadly creatures being groomed for war that I could tell. I also did not come across any encounters with him until that final confrontation, and this is the one thing I felt that Down Among the Dead Men did better than this adventure, as I thought Skarvench was overall a better "baddie". I also found myself initially saying..... "What, a kill-the-evil-sorcerer mission? Again?", as let's face it, even saying that a quest with that goal has been done to death isn't doing it justice anymore. However, I was so engrossed with the whole adventure up to the final fight, that this aspect didn't bother me at all, and just proved to me once again that this rote goal of a quest can still be incredibly enjoyable if done well.
- Much like with Down Among the Dead Men, the ending sequence wasn't quite as good as the rest of the adventure. For me, this starts right around the time of the Pok-ta-Pok game. If you just want to defeat Necklace of Skulls, it doesn't really seem to matter how well you do in the contest, as you end up at the same place regardless. If you lose the game, you move on to the final fight with Necklace of Skulls. And if you win the game, he accuses you of cheating, and you go to the same place. If you want to save your brother though, it seemed there was a very tight window of what you need to do in the ball game, and it involved at least for me, performing an action that appeared to contradict a strategy for the game I had been advised to use earlier. This made the optimal ending for me quite difficult to find (as I played this Pok-ta-Pok game several times before even trying out what I would eventually need to do). The more I thought about it though, perhaps hiding the optimal ending so well is really the right way to go in a diceless gamebook such as this, as that is where the challenge needs to come from.
- This then continues into the final fight against Necklace of Skulls. The first time I defeated him, the fight played out similarly to the Skarvench encounter in Down Among the Dead Men, with me needing to endure a certain amount of Life Point loss depending on what Skills I possessed, and if I survived that Life Point penalty, then I beat him. I did not however also save my brother, so back I went in an attempt to get the optimal ending. When I finally did this, my brother and I defeat Necklace of Skulls together, and I still have no idea how we were able to do it. One minute Necklace is screaming with rage, then he falls into a pit and is gone. How did we do that exactly? As far as I could tell it's not like we used some magical artefact against him or anything. He is clearly made out to be incredibly powerful, so he should have squashed us like bugs if our only strategy was to "rush him".
So as you can tell from the above points, my criticisms of the book come right at the very end, as they did with Down Among the Dead Men. The difference though is that the ending stretch in question was much shorter here, and right up until the Pok-ta-Pok game at least, I was being left very impressed with how great this book was.
Turning to the writing, I have to emphasize that right from the get-go the Mayan setting here is top-notch. Morris does an incredible job with his descriptions of hot arid plains, heat-haze obscured ancient cities, white-washed temples, clear blue oceans, and searing desert heat. When you can almost feel the sun blistering down upon you as you play, that is the mark of a great gamebook writer in my book. The setting was so good in fact that after playing this I immediately felt like watching the 2006 movie "Apocalypto" again. Each area you visit as you travel westwards brings something unique and interesting to the table, and you can even pick up an ally or two along the way who will travel with you for a time. I've already mentioned the great Underworld sequence (and safely making it past The Sentinels in this area involved a subtle clue that I could see some players being caught out by), but the following desert sequence and Hydra encounter was well done also (and it's hammered home a few times that you better not enter the desert without a waterskin!). Top spot for me though goes to the horrific Nightcrawler encounter, which occurs out on the open road. There is just something about a disembodied head that moves of its own accord that creeps me out to no end. Especially in this case where it survives by attaching itself to a host and then sits on their shoulder alongside their actual head! Wonderfully gruesome!
Ranking: Fantastic! This easily takes the number 1 spot in the rankings to date and any doubts I may have had about a dice-less gamebook making it into my personal Hall of Fame were laid to rest here, as this is a brilliant piece of game design. Maybe one of the bigger compliments I can give is that for the vast majority of my time playing it, I completely forget it even WAS dice-less! When I finally closed the book for the last time after my final victory, I was left with a very similar feeling to the one I got from playing Stephen Hand's books in the Fighting Fantasy series. Great setting, wonderful game design, atmospheric writing, and a real gift for horrific and macabre encounters (and although Hand leans more heavily into that aspect, Morris is clearly no slouch either, with the Nightcrawler in particular a shining highlight). This should be right up the alley of anyone who enjoys working out a big puzzle while being constantly entertained narratively all along the way to boot. Highly recommended!
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5. Heart of Ice - Score = 9.3 Tier = Great!
Sections: 454
Attempts to Beat: 4
Ok, so this book might have "Ice" in the title, but was Dave Morris on fire by this point in the series or what?! This makes back-to-back great entries! From a setting standpoint, you don't get much different than going from Necklace of Skulls to this adventure. The fantastically written prologue tells of a post-apocalyptic future in the year 2300 where most of the Earth is undergoing another ice age thanks to an artificial intelligence controlled weather satellite system, known as GAIA (Global Artificial Intelligence Array), that was infected with a virus many years ago, and to date no solutions have been found to fix the malfunctioning AI, with it looking increasingly likely that mankind's days on the planet are numbered. We play here as a character just trying to survive from day-to-day in the icy wasteland, which is still populated by a handful of cities struggling to get by, along with a few nomadic groups and individuals here and there. The adventure opens as we find ourselves holed up within The Etruscan Inn, located in what was once northern Italy. During the night, we receive a strange message from the Inn's viewscreens, where GAIA appears to issue a broadcast detailing the location of an artifact known as The Heart of Volent, which is thought to be one of the oldest items in the universe, having come from the explosion of "The Big Bang" itself. Furthermore, GAIA relates that this artifact is incredibly powerful, and any who touch it would be granted ultimate power, more than enough power to save the Earth from its current plight (should they wish to, that is). Not only that, but GAIA also communicates that the last known location of this artifact was the city of Du-En, which also happens to be the previous headquarters of the Volentine Watchers, a former cult and terrorist group. We are not the only ones to have heard this broadcast however, as it has been communicated all over the continent (if not the world?), so we find ourselves in a race against several others to be the first to make our way to Du-En and acquire The Heart of Volent. With that in mind, off into the icy wasteland we go.
Alright, so the pre-generated character choices for this adventure include: The Explorer, The Bounty Hunter, The Spy, The Trader, The Visionary, The Scientist, and The Mutant. Once more going for what I felt was most appropriate, and after seriously considering The Explorer and The Mutant, I decided upon playing as The Scientist for this book, which granted me the Skills of: Cybernetics, Lore, Piloting, and Survival. The first and last of those felt like they would be incredibly useful considering the world I found myself about to venture into. The structure of the adventure initially felt very much like Necklace of Skulls, as you have an opening option of taking two different routes. The former city of Du-En is located in the Sahara Desert (now covered in ice), and to start you can choose to make your way there in either a clockwise or counterclockwise direction, going around the Mediterranean Sea. So you either head west and make for a jungle in former France (where a malfunctioning satellite has kept an area of the region unusually hot), or you can head east towards the village of Venis (formerly Venice). Both of these routes then have additional options added to them, and you can visit several different villages and settlements along the way. The setting is once again great, and there are many little different "stories" to uncover as you travel, involving both living settlers trying to survive, and also those who perished long ago and some of the advanced technologies they left behind.
It did seem to me that locating and acquiring valuable or essential items as you travelled did not play nearly as big a role here, however this is made up for by the inclusion of the other individuals who are also after the Heart, and how you can encounter some of them before you even get to Du-En. Your interactions usually lead to acquiring some kind of Codeword, which can then affect what happens when you finally get to the ruins of Du-En. There is a wealth of options to experiment with and explore here as you travel, and you can even communicate with GAIA "herself" at several points along the way as she provides advice in how you can acquire the Heart, with her motives for doing so wisely being kept somewhat murky. It seems like she genuinely wants to save mankind by having someone, anyone, find the Heart so that they can use its power to rescue the planet. However in the back of my head I was always wondering if perhaps there were more sinister hidden motives involved. Getting to visit the former city of Cairo and the pyramids of Giza is always a treat, even though the history buff in me was wincing at the archeological damage that must have been done when even the Great Pyramid itself had been "modernized" at some point in the past so that it now houses a former military and research base. It is within the Great Pyramid in fact where you can acquire one of the coolest, and strangest, allies in the game. This comes if you find yourself activating an advanced former military robot known as Gilgamesh, which reminded me greatly of Maximillian from the 1979 movie "The Black Hole". As cool as it is to have a badass robot accompanying you on the rest of the journey, what struck me as odd was that no one you meet reacts to it. If you acquire Gilgamesh you are given a Codeword, but unless you come to a section where you are asked if you have that particular Codeword, interactions occur as if he doesn't exist. So, no one is going to comment on this big ass robot following me around? Alrighty then!
Ok, so this movie I did not enjoy. Cool robot though.
When I finally made my way to the ruins of Du-En where the Heart is supposedly located, I was half expecting the adventure to drop off a bit as the previous ones had done right at the end sequence. However, my experience with Heart of Ice was flipped in a way from that of Down Among the Dead Men and Necklace of Skulls, because where I felt those prior entries sagged a bit at the end, I thought Heart of Ice perhaps sagged a bit at the beginning and really picked up steam at the end, with the ending sequence in the ruins of Du-En being perhaps the best in the adventure thanks to the presence of the other adventurers. There are half-a-dozen other individuals who have also arrived at the ruins in search of the Heart, all of them also having heard GAIA's broadcast at the opening of the book, with each of them having their own background, abilities, and varying degrees of ruthlessness and duplicity, and an uneasy truce forms between all of you, at least initially. When it is determined that the Heart must lie somewhere in the underground of the ruins, it is mutually decided that peace will be kept between everyone on the surface, but whenever any of the group decides to venture below ground to look for the Heart, all bets are off and its everyone for themselves.
The final stretch of the adventure then kicks off with a futuristic underground dungeon crawl, culminating in what I thought was one of the better parts of an already great gamebook, that being a 4-way standoff I found myself involved in between myself and the 3 other remaining adventurers who had managed to make it to the final chamber (with everyone else having being killed by this point), that contains the Heart of Volent itself, represented by a large gem. This sequence is so good because your actions up until this point could mean that you have formed an alliance with one of these remaining individuals, and having the associated Codeword for having done so, will go a long way in determining what happens next. Depending on who you may find yourself allied with, and what you choose to do, can apparently lead to several different endings, and from what I could tell at least, there does not appear to be a "best" one per se.
When looking back at my time with this gamebook, one thing that stuck out is that there is really no big-bad villain to speak of here, and I loved that about it. I guess that's one way to get around the "evil wizard" trope! It is incredibly refreshing to have to overcome a set of dire circumstances rather than defeat a blackhat-wearing evil doer. The "bad guys" of the story would have to be the cult I suppose, but they are long gone by the time this adventure kicks off. (With at least one exception coming from one of their number who was trapped in time by a stasis-bomb, which I think is a marvelous concept). There are the other Heart of Volent seekers sure, but they are just trying to do the same thing that you are, claim the prize, so I would not really consider them the bad guys here. (And even though some of them can get rather nasty at times, who can blame them considering what's at stake?) I have to admit that I was expecting some big reveal or twist involving the Kyle Boche character (one of the other Heart of Volent seekers), considering that he very well could have been accompanying you right from the first section of the gamebook. This twist never came, at least for me, and I was left wondering if one of the other pathways or endings of the book may have contained such a twist. And that's the thing, even after having beaten it, I feel like there is still so much to go back and discover.
Which leads me to my next point. Despite how much I enjoyed this gamebook, there was something of an elephant in the room that was ultimately the reason why I didn't score it higher than this. That being, this adventure just felt rather easy. I don't know if this was perhaps a function of the character I picked, The Scientist, but on my winning playthrough events seemed a bit too short and sweet. I was able to acquire a flying car that allowed me to bypass what felt like a large chunk of the adventure as I just flew to Du-En. I didn't appear to miss any essential or even vital items by doing so either. I didn't even need the giant robot apparently. Even before finding this sky car though, the adventure felt rather forgiving, as you are often given the option to chose from among a handful of different Skills or items when confronted with a problem, and even should you have none of them, you usually can get away with just a Life Point loss (although not always, as my failed attempts would attest). There might be some other "easier" gamebooks I have given Great scores to, but based on my rankings from other series, I normally tend to value a greater challenge than provided here. That said, more so than any other book in this series (which is really saying something), I think that Heart of Ice would benefit the most from trying it out with all the different pre-generated characters to see what other paths and situations could be unlocked. Who knows, I might even need to come back and re-evaluate my score should I ever do so, but for now I am sticking with my plan of playing a book until it's beaten, then moving on.
Perhaps another reason why this book only took me 4 attempts to finish comes in the form of its endings. There are apparently several different successful ones you can get here (depending on how you define "successful" of course), and normally I would play until reaching the optimal one. But which one is the optimal one? Unlike Neckace of Skulls, I think that is open to interpretation here. The ending I achieved saw my character become an actual god, and I suppose you can't get much more optimal than that! However, I can't help but feel there may have been a "better" ending, or at least one that suited my narrative tastes more than becoming totally omnipotent, but I decided to save that for a future playthrough of the gamebook at some point, when I can come back with a different character. As such, this gamebook goes to the top of my "definitely replay in the future" list.
Ranking: Another sure fire Hall of Famer for me, and at this point I have to say that Dave Morris has taken over the top spot from Steve Jackson for greatest gamebook author I have come across so far. At the risk of sounding like the guy's press agent, it feels incredibly unfair that not only does it seem like he is the best gamebook designer in the business, but he might very well be the best actual writer when it comes to the prose of these things too. Heart of Ice is another fantastic piece of design with a great setting, although I didn't enjoy it quite as much as Necklace of Skulls when it was all said and done (but it was quite close). The main reason for me that I put Necklace of Skulls just ahead of it is due to challenge level, which I felt was a bit lighter than I would have liked from Heart of Ice. It also probably depends on if you prefer replayability or challenge. While ideally I'd like to have both, I put a bit more stock in the latter. Which setting you prefer would obviously play into it as well, either icy post-apocalypitc European, or fantastical blistering hot Mesoamerican, and again, while I greatly enjoyed the former, I personally give a slight edge to the latter. That said, Heart of Ice is still the best science fiction gamebook I have played to date (although admittedly the competition on that front isn't exactly stacked with top contenders), and is even further proof to my former doubting self on how good a dice-less gamebook could actually be. One more book in the series to go, is it possible for Morris to keep this level of quality up? Time will tell, but I have faith!
I was expecting this to score much lower, but maybe I am bitter. Many decades ago I was able to choose a free book for winning a competition at school, and chose this rather than a Fighting Fantasy.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I enjoyed reading your thoughts on this book more than I enjoyed playing it back in the day. Mind you, the series does have some excellent entries. Basically the Virtual Reality strain needs to be crossed with the Dave Morris strain to obtain a working formula.
This comment brought back memories of buying books at the book fair in my school's gym. Bought my last two FF's there (Creature of Havoc and then Beneath Nightmare Castle) before moving on from FF for several decades. Great memories!
DeleteBad, OK, Good, and Great are enough tiers. No need to overthink or split hairs any thinner in my opinion. Also this is a series which starts on the wrong foot but definitely picks up very quickly (don't be afraid). By the way I found Green Blood more interesting than other people did, though I will elaborate on it on my own review.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to reading your review Guillermo. Please let me know where you post it. There are a couple of things I wish I had done differently when I started the blog, but I guess I will just roll with this decision.
DeleteYeah...not the greatest of starts, really. Some nice writing and decent ideas let down by heavy-handed environmentalism, and the disappointing irrelevance of the character selection. By the by, I think Arden is more likely lifted from Eng lit than European geography. It was the name of the historic Warwickshire wooded region (mostly gone now) in which Shakespeare set "As You Like It". I guess Mark is trying to conjure up the hey-nonny-no, Green Heart of England vibe Shakespeare lent it, to give extra piquancy to its ruination by the dread forces of industrialisation and modernity and what-not. Still, some much better stuff to come!
ReplyDeleteWell if it's lifted from Eng lit then that would explain why it went over my head! I always had trouble paying attention in English class. "Hey-nonny-nonny my Lord!" from Blackadder was the first thing I thought of when reading your comment, which probably speaks volumes about what grabbed my attention in my school years.
DeleteThe Forest of Arden is the primary setting for Shakespeare's As You Like It, and also appears in the first pair of books in Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson's two-player series Duel Master.
ReplyDeleteA word of warning regarding Smith's other Virtual Reality Adventure: Skill checks sometimes do a sub-par job of indicating that use of the Skill in question is optional rather than mandatory. Instead of saying 'If you have [Skill] and wish to use it, turn to [section]', the text may read 'If you have [Skill], turn to [section]', list multiple other checks and related decisions and directions to sections, and only then add that you don't have to use a Skill if you think doing so would be inadvisable at this juncture. Using the wrong Skill at the wrong time can prove fatal, so this slapdash approach to indicating when having a Skill does not automatically require you to make use of it is pretty inexcusable.
Is it optional in those cases? It would certainly make the book more playable though I can't see anything saying to treat skills in such a manner.
DeleteI have said it before. Everyone is entitled to interpret rules in gamebooks the way it makes the books more enjoyable for them. There is a lot more discussion about the "one true way" to play this or that book than there should be.
DeleteI would agree with that but Ed seemed to be saying this was a little known official rule as opposed to a house rule.
DeleteAnd I just re-read his comment properly! Never mind, I should really think before I type sometimes.
DeleteSection 254 contains a hefty list of Skill checks, some of them in 'If you have X, turn to Y' format, followed by an option not to use any of the listed Skills.
DeleteThank you for the heads up Ed. When confronted with a list of options where it says "if you have XXX, turn to...". I would have assumed it to be mandatory and would have started at the top of the list and worked down until I came to the first Skill I possessed. So this very well could have saved me from a self inflicted forehead smack or two.
DeleteI really like Green Blood. It's got such a melancholy feel and it's elves feel very otherworldly and dangerous. More like the elves of folk tales than Tolkien-inspired fantasy.
ReplyDeleteIt's also very replayable as you have to take different approaches depending on your skills. Having or not having Wilderness Lore in particular makes a huge difference.
There's definitely some inconsistencies and confused messaging but this one grabs me in a way some of the better thought out books in the series don't. But this seems to be a minority opinion in the fandom.
Actually that is a good point about the elves, they ARE very different to the usual Tolkien inspired trope. Maybe I need to give the book more credit. I ought to try playing it again one day.
DeleteOver the past few years I couldn't help but hear how well regarded this series is, so I was fully expecting to be in the minority with this review for book 1. I appreciate your comment about Green Blood because it's good to be reminded just how subjective this all is!
DeleteIt's interesting you mention Wilderness Lore because that was the Skill that felt it was easily the most useful. I wish there had been more reason to go back and try the adventure with all the characters, but that might be an issue I will have with all the books in the series for all I know.
I love the story in this book, with meaningful companions and a villain that actually feels dangerous and despicable.
ReplyDeleteIf I recall correctly, there are several different ways that you can end up facing off against Skarvench, so perhaps you found the most ludicrous one, but your description of it gave me a good chuckle.
This and Green Blood are the only two books I'm the series that I am really familiar with, so I am really looking forward to hearing more about the next books.
Much like with "Wilderness Lore" in Green Blood, "Seafaring" seemed to me to be the most useful skill in the book, although I haven't played it with all the skills yet so can't say for sure. But maybe that was the only reason I got the Skarvench ending that I did.
DeleteYeah, that Skarvench fight is a ridiculous anticlimax and kinda makes me wish the series had just implemented dice after all. Good book in general though even if I feel this series has better entries.
ReplyDeleteI see this book as a sort of intermediate position between Knightmare: The Forbidden Gate and Fabled Lands: Over the Blood Dark Sea. All of them involve island hopping, but this one is a lot more open in letteng you go about it however you want which would the evolve into the complete sandbox of Fabled Lands. I think another of the books in this series feels even more like a Fabled Lands prototype.
I'm getting closer and closer to playing Fabled Lands! Really looking forward to it. Might have to mix in another series though to break up the 6 original books, otherwise that would be quite the marathon.
DeleteGenerally when I play this one, I find myself encountering a bug where I'm given a bunch of options that don't apply and have to just quit reading. Sounds like you avoided that.
ReplyDeleteI quite like the concept and story of this one. I know it's a very unsophisticated allegory, but that doesn't really bother me. It's interesting to explore a serious real world issue like the persecution of the Jews via a fantasy lens. Hate is a cool concept too though I believe it's heavily inspired by a Fritz Leiber short story called The Cloud of Hate.
One time I commented on Facebook that this book is 'borderline unplayable' and Mark Smith replied, taking it very personally. I felt pretty bad for that. It's sometimes easy to forget that many of these books had a lot of love and effort poured into them and we don't always know the circumstances behind why they didn't turn out as well as they might have done. A pity he stumbled on me badmouthing this book rather than one of several instances of me defending Green Blood.
Glad you mentioned it because I sometimes wonder if any of the authors of books I gave negative reviews to ever happened to stumble across them how would they take it. At the end of the day though I am just being honest about my experience with the gamebook and am just one person after all, commenting on a highly subjective medium. Surely if you are a professional published author you have to expect that there will be some out there who won't like it, no matter what the consensus might be.
DeleteAnd your Fritz Leiber comparison is a lot more sophisticated than the one I made to Ghostbusters 2!
I wonder whether it is harder to write a successful book when there is no random element? Or maybe a random element creates the feeling that the world is 'larger' somehow, with more possibilities?
DeleteNope. In fact this series proves just the opposite.
DeleteIt's why I have been particularly looking forward to this series, since it is one I have very limited knowledge of. Looking forward to hearing John's views on the series as a whole and how the diceless system held up.
DeleteI'll let the blog's author have the mic, except to say this is one of the richest and most complex gamebook series ever. What is most notable is the series achieves this without needing any kind of randomization.
DeleteAnd... England won. It was to be expected. Sorry for the off-topic.
ReplyDeleteNext book is partly about a ball game if that helps. :)
Driving to work the morning after the game, there was almost no traffic. I approve of the 2am kickoff time.
DeleteI'm quite enjoying your reviews of this series so far. I have Down Among the Dead Men on my Kindle and found it a most entertaining diversion while on a long plane flight. I love most everything written by Dave Morris, but I haven't read Necklace of Skulls yet. Going to have to pick that one up. I guess you'll be getting to Heart of Ice soon; will be quite interested to see what you think of that one! And if you ever get to the VulcanVerse books he wrote along with Jamie Thomson, you're in for a real treat!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the kind words! I did pick up the VulcanVerse books but it will likely be some time before I get to those. They sure look in-depth too!
DeleteThanks mate, I didn't even realise the books were available on Kindle, but now I see I can get all four Dave Morris books for under £10. That's my holiday reading sorted!
DeleteNice to see The Odyssey movie has finally arrived in cinemas.
ReplyDeleteLong may your own Odyssey continue !
Thanks ed!
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