Way of the Tiger

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1. Avenger! - Score = 9.3    Tier = Great!

Attempts to beat: 13

Fantastic! As I proceed to "get my ninja on" by beginning The Way of the Tiger series written by Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson, I find it somewhat hard to believe that this book was published in 1985 as it combines so many well done gamebook elements that I figured it would have taken longer for something like this to evolve. The story opens in a Lone Wolf style way (not the only time I felt a nod towards that series either) as our character is an orphan who was many years ago left at the doorstep of a group of warrior (ie. ninja) monks who worship Kwon, one of the many gods in existence in the world of Orb where the adventure takes place. Kwon is one of the "good" gods of the world, so naturally he has evil enemies trying to destroy him. Upon the murder of our foster father by a visiting monk known as Yaemon, who also steals the sacred Scrolls of Kettsuin from the monastery, we know we will never be able to find peace until we avenge his death. Revenge is far from our only motivation however, as we soon learn that Yaemon has two cohorts, Honoric, the leader of a cult called the The Legion of the Sword of Doom (this is a mouthful all throughout the book), and Manse the Deathmage, a powerful sorcerer and follower of the evil god Nemesis. All three of these villains are banding together to travel to a location known as the Pillars of Change, where they intend to each intone a word of power that will send three of the more honorable and good gods and goddesses of the world (including Kwon) into Inferno, which is the Orb version of hell. So it's a race against time as we need to travel northwards across the continent and defeat them before they arrive at their destination. This is a bit of a convoluted story for an opening book, but I appreciated giving us such a great challenge right off the crack in needing to defeat three quite evil, interesting, and disparate enemies.  

  

From a design standpoint, the book really shines. It borrows the "skill selection" idea seen in the Lone Wolf series and this adds greatly to the experimentation aspect of the adventure. You open the story with your choice of three skills from a list of eight, and slowly learning which skills come in the most useful is a big part of the fun here. And just because you find one skill can be used more often than others doesn't necessarily mean it's one you should be taking. I found myself selecting the skills that could help me to avoid a situation I knew was coming where a bad roll could mean death even if it was the only time it was ever used. There is also a particular skill that you will want to take as it helps you avoid a Fate roll that you REALLY want to pass in order to gain not one, but two very helpful modifiers. These are so helpful that you wont want to leave this to chance. You also begin with a list of ninja equipment such as shuriken (throwing stars), flash powder, garrote wire, poison etc. Many of these have a limited amount of uses, but there only seemed to be one or two places to use each one so the strategy level involving when to use these are not quite what you may be hoping for. Still, having them in your arsenal really does make you feel like an incredibly dangerous individual and someone who is indeed capable of pulling off the incredible feats that you will need to in the book.  

The combat itself adds another layer of strategy (at least initially) as at the start of each fight you are presented with a list of options as to what move you wish to attack with. This usually involves choosing from among a punch, kick, or throw, with sometimes an added option to use one of your ninja skills such as Acrobatics or Shurikenjutsu. This provides some good strategy as you need to pay close attention to your surroundings and to the description of your opponent in order to choose the most effective attack. For example, a throw might be a good choice if you are fighting in an elevated or precarious location where if successful, it could lead to an instant win. However, a throw might be a poor choice should your opponent be either difficult to grasp or just much larger than you. The more I played the book, I became a bit let down that once you know the best attack for each encounter, you can just keep spamming that one attack. In my head this could look a little ridiculous, as both you and your opponent keep using the exact same move over and over again, potentially dozens of times in a row. Surely your adversary would pick up on the fact that you have used the Iron Fist punch 15 times in a row and would change their tactics accordingly? Still, there is at least SOME level of strategy present here in the first time you fight each opponent as opposed to just providing a single skill number as most other gamebook series do. So while the combat may ultimately get a bit disappointing the more you play, it's still a step up from most systems and has to be considered an overall positive. I also found the difficulty level of the book to be spot on. The combats were well balanced and many difficult situations could be overcome by finding key items and/or carefully planning out your route along with selecting the appropriate skills. 

The adventure also carries over the modifier system seen in the Falcon series, also written by Smith and Thomson. Actually, as they were both published in 1985, I'm not sure which series technically came first. (Boy, these guys sure were busy in 1985!). Here, you have four attributes: Punch, Kick, Throw, and Fate (the latter basically used to make luck rolls) that all begin at a level of 0. As you progress through the book, you can gain or lose levels off these stats, which affect the numbers you need to make on your dice rolls when attempting any moves under the various attributes. As these modifiers are carried over from book to book, and seeing as how valuable they are, the hunting down and acquiring of these should be one of the main priorities of the adventure. And anything that encourages exploring and trying as many different paths as possible is a great thing in my view. The modifier system in the Falcon series seemed to peter out in the back half of that range with very few, if any, modifiers to be found in the later adventures. It will be interesting to see if that happens again as I go through The Way of the Tiger.  

The adventure additionally includes a game element known as Inner Force. You begin the game with 5 points of Inner Force, and can use 1 point before making any combat roll. If you are then successful in the roll, you do double damage to your opponent. I felt there may have been a bit of a missed opportunity here as I believe you should also have been able to use these points to lower the required number to hit (or block) but even so, I really needed to plan out the combats that these would be most needed for and save them accordingly. Sometimes my carefully laid out plan to use these points was thwarted by some unlucky rolls in a combat and I would need to update my strategy on the fly to perhaps use some where I hadn't originally intended. This all helped to make the combats quite interesting and sometimes also very tense. Between the combat system, the modifiers, the skill selection, and the Inner Force points, there is quite a lot going on here and these all combine to make for a really great experience. 

Another strength of the book is the descriptive prose and the world of Orb itself. Smith and Thomson have really fleshed out a living breathing world here, with each city visited or landscape traversed having its own unique feel and interesting individuals. The existence of the various gods in the world, all having their own followers and beliefs, gives it a pagan, almost ancient Roman feel. I suppose the argument could be made however that a ninja, being such a part of Japanese culture, is stretching it a bit as a character within a fantasy setting. However, if other adventures are any indication, the ninja seems to be generally accepted as believable and accepted within these fantasy worlds. That being said, the cover of this particular book has a very "Earth-set" feel to it, and due to this, it is where I initially assumed the adventure took place.  

There are a couple of excellent parts in the adventure that need to be highlighted for special mention:

 

1) An arena tournament that can be entered within the city of Mortavalon. This tournament pits you against 3 other contestants (a magician, a dark elf, and a knight) to see who can navigate the creatures and traps within the arena and make it to a castle-like platform at the center where a large Hobgoblin awaits as your final challenge. The tournament is incredibly well designed and described and you need to use your wits in conjunction with your ninja skills in order to be victorious. It is quite unfortunate then that the prize for winning is a pretty big letdown, and indeed this whole tournament section is not required to complete the book. I feel like the reward should have been some sort of modifier gain as opposed to the item that you actually do receive for winning, which would have made this tournament more valuable to complete on each playthrough. The item you do receive is not needed to beat the adventure in the slightest and unless it becomes near essential in a later book (which would be quite a dirty trick) this feels like a wasted opportunity. That said, the tournament itself is one of the highlights of the book. 

2) The infiltration of the castle at Quench Heart Keep. When you finally catch up to your quarry, who have all taken shelter within a castle for the night, you are provided several different ways to get inside. Be it climbing the walls, going through the sewers, or pretending to be a travelling minstrel, all are viable with their own particular dangers and challenges. I would highly recommend trying all the different routes as I was surprised at how different they played out even if you have the Climbing skill which seems to make the option of scaling the walls too tempting to pass up. 

After this great castle section, the final battles against the three villains of the adventure can be a bit of a let down from a design standpoint, as with two of them it comes down to if you use the correct item against them (neither of which are tough to get) then you automatically win. And the final battle against Yaemon himself is rendered quite easy should you have found the kick modifier that can be picked up earlier in the adventure. Still, the narrative descriptions of these final combats are excellent and alone make them worthwhile and very fun to experience. The adventure also ends on a great cliffhanger ending and makes me want to dive into the next book right away. 

Ranking: Wonderful stuff and a Hall of Famer. Smith and Thomson have done it again. This adventure combines some of the best aspects from the Lone Wolf, Falcon, and Fighting Fantasy series and is the best opening book in a series I've come across yet. For me, this is already Smith and Thomson's third classic gamebook (after Talisman of Death and Sword of the Samurai from the Fighting Fantasy range) and I look forward to seeing how long they can keep this level of quality going. I also can't wait to whip out some nunchuks and start the next book in the series....kiiiiiii yaaaaa!!!

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2. Assassin! - Score = 8.0    Tier = Good

Attempts to beat: 20

Another winner! Although not as strong as Avenger!, this adventure succeeds in continuing the high level of quality I've come to expect from these authors. I have to begin with one of the weaknesses of the adventure though and that's the story. We pick up here immediately where the previous book left off, with us having just killed Yaemon and recovered the stolen Scrolls of Kettsuin. So our objective in this adventure is to then.....walk home. Oftentimes in gamebooks we are tasked with a long journey where upon finally arriving at our destination and completing our quest, our return journey home is then glossed over in one section that sees us returning triumphant. I can see why that is. (Although "Freeway Fighter" made something of a half-assed attempt to show a return home journey). This is a pretty big step down from the last book where we found ourselves in a race against time to defeat not one, but three high powered and evil villains. That's not to say this adventure doesn't have some good isolated story moments, but overall the plot here is on the weak side. The story is quite episodic, having you travelling back home, encountering various people along the way who you can choose to help or not, and with various individuals trying to kill you. Between each episode, you generally have your Endurance pumped back up before continuing on to the next installment. This episodic feel isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it's certainly not unusual in gamebooks, but I think with no exciting ultimate goal at the end to work towards, it precludes this book from having that epic feel that the first book did. Breaking the book down into these smaller adventures for further review:

1) The Escape from Quench Heart Keep - As mentioned, we pick up immediately after having killed Yaemon on top of the Keep, and his army of castle guards is now pounding up the stairs towards us. We are given several different options as to how we wish to escape, but I still kept having to pass an annoying Fate roll that was giving me grief. I actually found this to be one of the weaker episodes of the adventure. This could be because the enemies here are some of the least interesting ones we encounter in the whole book. It could also be because I ran through this part so many times that it started to become old hat very quickly. The authors also seemed to have recycled encounters from book 1, sometimes with almost the exact same text.  

2) Travelling through the Goblin's Teeth Mountains - This episode doesn't start out on the best foot either, seeing us chased by goblins through the tunnels underneath the mountains along with a possible confrontation with the Goblin King as in something out of "The Hobbit". This area is a fairly standard dungeon crawl and while decently implemented, it doesn't add all that much to the adventure. The Goblin King combat itself was quite tense though (even if his Dancing Sword seemed somewhat out of place).  

Unfortunately, this is NOT the Goblin King that we get to meet. 

 

3) The Sea Elves - This is an underwater mini-adventure where we can aid a group of mermen sea elves and in so doing, obtain a useful item. As we find ourselves with the magical ability to breathe underwater, I had strong "Demons of the Deep" flashbacks while playing this area. I found myself wondering if this area was in any way an inspiration for that book?  

4) The adventurers on the hilltop - Here we meet up with a group of fellow "good" adventurers, who as we come upon them are already engaged in combat with an Undead Warlord. If we choose to aid them here, we can possibly pick up a helpful item for use later. I found this merry group so similar to the one encountered at the beginning of "Talisman of Death" (another Smith and Thomson effort) that I began to think that maybe these were supposed to be the very same characters from that book as it has been awhile since I played it. Going back to "Talisman of Death", that clearly isn't the case which in itself is surprising seeing as how the authors seem to love tying their adventures in together.    

5) The city of Harith - Ok, up to this point in the adventure, the book was likely on its way to a score of 7 or so. It had been competently designed and very well written, but lacked oomph. Starting with our entry into the city of Harith though, things begin to really pick up steam. Upon entering this city, we have the Scrolls of Kettsuin stolen from us by that dastardly trio of Tyutchev, Cassandra, and Thaum. You may remember them as the incredibly dangerous group we encounter in the already referenced "Talisman of Death". They are no less deadly here, and indeed you cannot defeat them, you can only hope to survive. Eventually, the son of the god Nil makes an appearance (pictured on the cover of the book, although he doesn't totally match the description given in the text, looking more like Goro from Mortal Kombat instead), causing the powerful trio to flee and leaving you to face it alone. This is another really great fight as you try to determine which items and tactics work best and this whole episode, which takes place in the bowels of a temple, is top notch. 

6) The city of Wargrave Abbas - Well, maybe this one is a bit of a small step back, as this area seems all about trying to trick you into getting yourself assassinated. Apparently a bounty has been put on your head and the guild of assassins located within this city intends to collect. This area is very brief and is not one of the stronger ones in the book.

7) Hunting the Hannya and the O-Bakemono - While on the Japanese inspired Island of Plenty (complete with shogun and samurai), we come across a village terrorized by these two creatures. One of the daughters of the village has been kidnapped by them and we can decide to take up the challenge of rescuing her. The Hannya (something akin to the Medusa) and the O-Bakemono (an ogre) are quite dangerous and this area can be very tense. Another good one. Gee, did these authors go on to write the fantastic Japanese themed "Sword of the Samurai"? I never would have guessed! 

8) Assassinating Lord Jikkyu - Here we learn from the shogun of the Island of Plenty, Lord Kiyamo, that a rogue Lord, Jikkyu, intends to invade our home Island of Tranquil Dreams and destroy everything he finds. We are thus tasked with taking him out. We will also need to deal with his right hand man, a master archer called Akira, and this is another very well done area. I also presume that this part is from where the book derives its name. Otherwise, I'm not really sure how "Assassin!" makes much sense as a title for the adventure unless it's referring to all the people trying to kill you.   

9) The palace guest house - This area sees you provided with a guest house for the night by the shogun, who we just aided, and wow is the atmosphere in this part ever dialed up to ten. Here, we find ourselves a target of a fellow ninja (who follows The Way of the Scorpion and worships the evil god Nemesis) who infiltrates the guest house in the dead of night, and we get to experience a highly immersive cat and mouse game throughout the darkened house against an adversary just as deadly as ourselves. Excellent and one of the highlights of the adventure. 

I should note that some of the above episodes are mutually exclusive. For example, you cannot experience both the underwater sea elves and the travelling through the Goblin's Teeth mountains in the same playthrough. Even so, this book seemed very long to me and it's impressive how much the authors managed to cram in here. And despite my qualms with the overall plot being weak, the individual mini-adventures along the way were generally well thought out and the last few were quite exciting. Special mention also needs to made of the writing here which is absolutely excellent. Smith and Thomson continue fleshing out the world and their descriptions, along with the atmosphere it creates, are fantastic. 

Something else that made me smile was the name dropping of the demon Baal from the Falcon series, which I thought was wonderful. In "The Rack of Baal" from that series, Baal was revealed to have the ability to travel through both time and space at will. Not only that, he also had the ability to travel between dimensions which explains his presence in this adventure even though the Falcon series was essentially an Earth-galaxy set one. Attention isnt called to this either, it's just a nice little Easter egg for those who enjoyed that series. Between Fighting Fantasy, Falcon, and The Way of the Tiger, Smith and Thomson clearly like their series crossovers and I enjoy these very much. I do kind of wish Baal had shown up in the flesh though (he didn't that I came across anyway). 

As far as the game design goes, there don't appear to be any major changes from the previous book regarding your items, skills, modifiers, and Inner Force points. The issue of spamming moves still exists and unfortunately, actually appears to have gotten worse. The reason for this is that having the +1 Kick modifier from book 1 (and not possessing a similar modifier for Punch or Throw) made a kick almost always my preferred method of attack. This became even more true as another modifier can be obtained in this adventure, but instead of making it a +1 Punch modifier to balance things out, you are actually given the choice as to what attribute you would like to use it for. Seeing as how a Kick has been an option in every fight I can remember being in, taking another +1 to Kick seemed like a no-brainer and makes the Kick very powerful.  

The Skill selection, which was so reminiscent of the Lone Wolf series, becomes even more so here. As with that series, we are allowed to add a Skill to our 3 that we had after completing book 1. For the record, I finished book 1 with the Skills of: Climbing, Escapology, and Detect Traps/Picking Locks. I decided to add Poison Needles as my bonus Skill for this adventure and boy am I glad I did. This Skill alone seemed like almost a necessity at several points (although Arrow Cutting could have come in quite handy as well). 

There is one new game element added here however in the form of Kwon's Redemption. In perhaps a nod to the Sorcery! series and its prayer to Libra, you can call upon your god Kwon to come to your aid once, and only once, in the adventure. The major difference though (and why I feel it doesn't work nearly as well as the Sorcery! mechanic), is that you have to be given the option to do so. I only came across two points in the whole book where the option to call upon Kwon was given and these both seem to be used as a way to avoid a sticky situation where you might otherwise need to strategize. There were dozens of different moments I could have REALLY used the aid of Kwon, but wasn't given the opportunity to do so. 

Another element that I found frustrating was some of the dice rolls often required to win. There are a couple of places where you need to pass a do-or-die Fate roll or it's game over. I've made no secret of my dislike for fail-one-roll-and-you-lose moments and the same was true here. This is even taking into consideration the fact that I had picked up a +1 Fate modifier in the first book. Without that, this adventure likely would have taken me several more attempts than it did and my heart goes out to anyone who started the series with this book (or didn't get the Fate modifier in book 1). 

Unlike the Fate rolls, I actually appreciated the difficulty levels of the combats which could be harsh, but also had me on the edge of my seat and once again carefully planning out my strategy in regards to when to use my precious Inner Force points. Still, having obtained the +1 Kick modifier in book 1 helped greatly with the combats (as did having the powerful Kwon's Flail kick), so anyone not having that modifier could potentially find themselves in serious trouble.  

Ranking: A step back from Avenger!, but still a very good gamebook. The lack of much of a plot hurts, but is made up for somewhat by the excellent atmosphere and writing. The design doesn't add much to that from the first book, but why mess with a winning system I guess. At some point though (and it might be asking a lot) I hope to see some new design ideas or improvements or the scores may continue to slowly decrease. For now though, still recommended!  

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3. Usurper! - Score = 8.6    Tier = Great!

Attempts to beat: 15

Man, these guys are good! Three winners in a row from Smith and Thomson to start this series. And we are back to actually having a plot in this book. The opening of the adventure sees us learning from the Grandmaster of our order that we are in fact the heir to the throne of the city of Irsmuncast. Our father was once the rightful ruler of the city until he was murdered by Yaemon (who we have already killed in book 1) many years ago. Since then, Irsmuncast has been ruled over by the "Usurper", and while it's not made initially clear who or what he is, what is made clear is that he has been ruling over the city with an iron fist and subjugating the populace to his evil will. So our quest here is to journey incognito to Irsmuncast, and somehow find a way to overthrow the Usurper and reclaim the throne. This is quite an interesting start to the adventure. 

We then begin with what is probably the biggest strength of this book, that being two very distinct paths to Irsmuncast that can be taken in the first half of the adventure. These paths are outlined below:

Path A) This route sees us travelling from the allied Island of Plenty and making landfall at the city of Doomover, where we then continue on alone overland towards Irsmuncast. This path contains several exciting action setpieces, beginning with an excellent arena duel against Aiguchi, a monk of the Scarlet Mantis who is out to avenge the death of his master Yaemon. The arena this combat takes place in is very well done and brought back memories of the arena challenge from book 1, complete with a map of the various areas of the arena which is an outdoor location containing woods, hills, and tombs. I enjoyed beating this guy very much and rubbing it in the nose of the Legion of the Sword of Doom soldiers who were on hand and rooting against us. I only wish we had the option to challenge their captain to another duel after we had taken care of Aiguchi. Knowing that the captain couldn't refuse the challenge, lest he incur the wrath of Fate, I would have loved to have gotten his reaction and hopefully had the chance to kill him as well. 

Once this duel is complete, we then have another encounter with Honoric, Grand Marshal of the Legion of the Sword of Doom whom we believed we had assassinated in book 1. It turns out he survived our attack though and he himself is now out for vengeance upon us. This is probably the weakest moment of this path however as this confrontation is over very quickly and Im not sure if you can even lose it should you possess the Skill of Detecting Traps and Picking Locks (which I did). Honoric also seems to end up overcome in a rather ignominious way which somewhat belies the danger of the character.   

From here we move on to the next action piece of this path where we have an undead Golem set loose upon us, and narratively speaking this was one of the highlights of the adventure. This creature is basically set up as a combination of Frankenstein's monster and the Terminator, being made up of fused together body parts that cannot be destroyed and who will pursue us endlessly day and night no matter what, even should we travel to the ends of Orb itself. We need to use our wits in order to come up with a solution for escaping it and this is quite a tense sequence. I used to have nightmares of being endlessly pursued by something that would never stop so this hit home for me on a personal level. After surviving this sequence, this path then ends and converges with the end of Path B. 

Path B) This route sees us travelling from the allied Island of Plenty and sailing up the Greybones River to the city of Tor, where we join up with our old friend Glaivas from the previous books, who decides he will personally escort us towards Irsmuncast. The two of us decide that going by the road probably isnt the best idea so we head into the forest. Here, we have a battle with a Fiend sent by the followers of the evil god Nemesis to kill us. This is not your typical battle though as it takes place on the Ethereal Plane and I have to admit I found this a bit disappointing. You don't really get to do all that much here, and in fact the Spirit Tiger from the Seven Heavens actually ends up fighting the battle for you. 

Once the Fiend is defeated, we move on to the Palisades portion of this path. Here, we cross an enclosed and heavily guarded farmland area being worked by slaves to provide food for the evil forces within the valley. This section is very exciting save for a battle against 4 Halvorcs (and I don't believe this fight can be avoided on this path?) which all have the same stats and who we have to take on one at a time. This results in one of those combats that can become somewhat tedious, but other than that, this sequence is very well done.  

After escaping from the Palisades, we then find ourselves on the run from nine spectral warriors that have been sent out to hunt us. These Spectres are former generals of The Fleshless King, a local necromancer ruler, who in death are now bound by his sorcery to do his bidding. Much like in one of the authors' previous books, "Talisman of Death", there is a Lord of the Rings parallel going on in this sequence. Supernatural riders bound to a evil lord who are set loose to hunt us probably would have had me thinking so even by itself, but then there just happens to be nine of them? Still, The Fleshless King has one of the more interesting backstories provided throughout the adventure and I hope we get to come back at some point in the series and take him on.

Perhaps my biggest complaint with the previous book was the inclusion of some of the Fate Rolls, where one single low roll meant instant death. Doggone it if Smith and Thomson didn't include another one of these here in the sequence with the Spectres. In this case, you are required to make one single attack roll to see if you are successful in throwing a vial of holy water in a Spectre's face, with failure leading to instant death. For such a highly trained ninja, able to hurl shuriken with deadly accuracy at range and spit poison needles from under his tongue, this should be child's play. Apparently not! Because this roll is an attack roll and not a Fate roll, you can't even use any modifiers on it this time either. True, the odds for this roll are in your favor, but that didn't stop me from failing it more times than I should have. Losing adventures in this manner is infuriating and I wish gamebook designers would stop this practice. Once we do manage to survive the Spectres, Glaivas turns back home to Tor and this path then ends and converges with the end of Path A.

So, from the above I would say that both of these paths have their fair share of tense and interesting moments. I would also have to say though that I did find Path A to be the more exciting of the two, which then makes it a bit unfortunate that there is a near-essential item (the Saint's Locket) that can only be acquired on Path B. Without this item (and indeed without a couple of other things as well), you are likely going to be screwed, chewed and barbecued in the final battle. Once I learned how important this item was, I was all but forced to ignore path A, which was a shame. Still, you likely will have attempted the book more than a few times before knowing this, so hopefully will have experienced most of what path A has to offer. You could also view this as the adventure providing two different difficulty levels in which you can try to beat the book (being with or without the Saint's Locket) similar to what the authors would go on to do in "Sword of the Samurai" a year later. It's too bad then that the one unfair roll required to throw the holy water in the Spectre's face as described above is along the path with the more essential item which just adds to this roll's frustration. If this roll had been on what turned out to be the more high difficulty route for beating the book anyway, then it might have been much easier to swallow.    

Once the two paths converge near the Rift (a giant fissure going down to the middle of Orb and from where all manner of evil creatures ascend), we have an encounter with a paladin known as Dore le Jeune (who I will touch on more later) and then proceed alone into the city of Irsmuncast. The second half of the book begins with the gathering of information within the city and trying to win over various factions that may provide their support in your attempt to overthrow the Usurper, and then moves along to the final battle against the Usurper himself. You can visit various inns within Irsmuncast to get the pulse of the city first, and then seek an audience with the various factions that could be persuaded to assist you (the priests of the Temple of Time, the shieldmaidens of the goddess Dama, the merchants guild, and the peasantry). The first couple of times you do this it is very immersive as you don't know really who you can or should trust. I do feel this sequence is somewhat betrayed though by having the Grandmaster of the Temple to Kwon (of the Irsumuncast branch) provide you with an info dump which lets you know how you should approach each faction and what they value most. This makes the acquiring of the support of these groups somewhat on the easy side and once you've gone through this once or twice you will already know what you need to do (although the merchants guild can be a bit tricky). 

After that, we move on to the final sequence of the adventure which is the infiltration of the Usurper's palace and the final confrontation with him. And oooo boy is this final battle a tough and detailed one. There are several things you will likely need (the Saints Locket, the Ruby Circlet, and the aid of Dore le Jeune) or victory in this fight seems highly improbable. Even with all those things, this battle took me a fair amount of attempts and even when I did manage to win, it was a razor thin victory as I made it through with a measly 1 point of Endurance remaining which always makes for a sweet victory! I should start keeping track of gamebooks that I complete with 1 point of Stamina/Endurance/Life remaining as I believe this is the third or fourth time this has happened and always makes me wonder just how many more attempts the book would have taken if not for that 1 single point. This final battle with the Usurper, who we finally learn is actually Aztaroth, the Seventh Duke of Hell (talk about a cool title!) in disguise with his true form pictured on the cover of the book, is quite intricate and very well done. Just as an aside though, I thought Inferno was the Orb version of Hell? Shouldn't he then be the Seventh Duke of Inferno? Anyway, there are several modifiers at play in this battle and Aztaroth himself ends up summoning various other demons to aid him. It really does make it seem like you have overcome incredible odds when you finally pull this victory out! On the one hand I can appreciate having such a tough battle as the final hurdle of the adventure as it provides a great feeling of satisfaction, but with such a long road to get there as in this book, it can be tedious having to go back through the gathering support from all the various groups in Irsmuncast over and over again which while very interesting the first couple of times you do it, quickly just becomes a lot of page flipping.  

You are potentially not alone in this final battle though, as the paladin that I mentioned earlier, Dore le Jeune, can now come into play and special mention needs to be made of this guy. At first I thought he was an over the top parody of the Dungeons & Dragons paladin class, but by the end of the adventure he had dialed up his badass factor by such a degree that I couldn't help but think of how awesome he actually was. You first meet him while travelling near the rift, where he is making his yearly pilgrimage to kill some orcs because.......well, because he really, really likes to kill evil things! Much is made of his holy fervor, and even his handsomeness, so much so that I began to hear angels singing a chorus inside my head. Things get even crazier better though the second time you meet him. While engaged in the final battle in the throne room, and providing you did the correct things the first time you met him, Dore le Jeune bursts in out of nowhere, apparently having fought his way through the palace single-handedly because he could smell the evil present (if he wasn't a paladin I'm sure he would have bedded half a dozen beautiful maidens along the way as well) and he then aids you against the various demons arrayed against you. He ends up getting badly wounded, leaving you to finish off Aztaroth yourself, but even after you do so, the mere mention of there being Cave Trolls still on the loose in the dungeons beneath the palace practically causes his helmet to fly off his head toward the ceiling in anticipation of getting to kill even more evil things. He then drags himself off into the dungeons to take care of them as we are left wondering if he will survive and if we will ever see him again (I'm betting that we will as nothing short of a nuclear explosion is going to put an end to this guy). 

"Cave Trolls you say????"

As much as I enjoyed the adventure overall, there are a few final niggles, albeit nothing too serious. Once again we begin the book carrying over our character from the previous one, complete with skills and modifiers and are allowed to choose a new Skill to add to our repertoire. This time though, we have two new Skills introduced that we can choose from. These being Shin Ren (sort of a sixth sense type of deal) and Yubi-Jutsu (which allows us to target the nerves of our opponents). Seeing as how these two Skills have been introduced just for this adventure, it seems almost certain you are supposed to pick one of these as opposed to any of the remaining Skills you still do not have from book 1, of which you can also select. And of these two new Skills, Shin Ren seems somewhat unnecessary as you will undoubtedly learn the "secrets" of the adventure just by playing it. This made Yubi-Jutsu stand out to me as easily the preferred choice. There is also an odd moment near the beginning of the adventure while on the Island of Plenty where if you successfully assassinated Lord Jikkyu in book 2, you are provided with an army of 100 samurai that will head to Irsmuncast to aid you after you have overthrown the Usurper, and you are then asked if you want them to proceed to the city via the Doomover route or the Tor route. Strangely, it seems to make absolutely no difference which one you choose as upon defeating the Usurper the result is the same no matter which way you sent them (with the exception of an extra narrative section if you picked the Doomover route). Not a big deal, but it had me wondering what the point of determining which way to send the samurai actually was. Also, while not reaching the level of what I would call egregious, I did notice the creeping in of some "Turn-to-itis" (my new phrase for it). This is where you encounter a stretch of the book where no decisions are made or dice rolled as you progress through the story from section to section until it starts to become noticeable. Again, it's not too bad here, but I hope this isn't a new trend in the series going forward. 

Ranking: Better than Assassin! if not quite as good as Avenger! The two paths through the opening half of the book are great, with some excellent action and providing lots of options to try with many different things to see and do. The final battle is also very well constructed if maybe leaning a bit too far to the difficult side. The writing and atmosphere are again excellent and so far by themselves are reason enough to recommend this series. It has room for improvement in some areas, but overall does just enough to become another classic.

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4. Overlord! - Score = 6.8    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 16

Well, I didn't see that coming. This book picks up with our ninja character, Avenger, having taken over rulership of Irsmuncast, and the first order of business (and the second order, and the third order.....) is to do some administrative work. Yay! Back in my review for book 2 I mentioned I was hoping to see some new design ideas as the series moved forward. Be careful what you wish for I guess, as the first half of this book is radically different from the first 3 books in the series. Unfortunately though, it's not in a good way. 

The authors begin this adventure by doing something similar to what they did in "The Dying Sun" from their Falcon series (I'm actually not sure if "Overlord!" or "The Dying Sun" was written first). That book contained an interview sequence that saw you filling a newly opened position by first interviewing and then choosing from among several candidates. I enjoyed it there for the most part as a nice little change of pace and for introducing something different and new, even though it started to wear out its welcome towards the end. Here though, that premise is greatly expanded. In "Overlord!", you first interview 8 (!) possible options as to who you want to select to form your Privy Council, who will serve as your advisers in your governing of Irsmuncast. Then you need to select who will be your City Watch. Then you need to select who will be your personal bodyguard. Then you need to select who will form your army. Then you need to determine how to keep order in the streets. Then you need to decide what will happen to the former secret police of the city.  Almost done? Nope! Now you need to determine how you will raise the taxes to pay for all this. Pardon my french but....F#&$ me! This just goes on, and on...and on. Even when you make selections, you are constantly being asked "Is so-and-so on your council?" or "Did you do this in the previous book?". Speaking to the latter, having played the previous books actually seems to work against you here as you are sometimes railroaded in your choices. I had to treat my interview with Golspiel the merchant the same each time for example based upon the fact that I had "no dealings" with him in my eventual winning playthrough of the previous book. This was unfortunate as some of the other options in his interview sounded like they could be interesting. 

It turns out the only real point to all this decision making and politicking is to keep your Popularity rating (a new stat introduced for this book...and lets hope only this book) high enough so you don't fail any "checks" that occur at several intervals. Making decisions that the majority of the inhabitants of Irsmuncast like will cause your Popularity rating to increase, while making decisions they disagree with predictably has the opposite effect. It took me several attempts at the book before passing all these checks, encompassing more than a couple of hours of "gameplay" total, and I never even touched the dice once nor even got to make a map of anything. I ended up turning over control of absolutely everything in Irsmuncast to Force-lady Gwyneth and her Shieldmaidens of Dama. She seemed the only truly trustworthy character among the choices and was also very popular with the people, so I figured what the hell, lets see what happens. And it worked! Actually, the book cleverly tries to catch you out on this, telling you that if you have ended up putting her in charge of everything, you have now bestowed so much power on her that she is now idolized in Irsmuncast over all, including yourself. Perhaps then not so cleverly, the book then proceeds to let you off the hook for this. Because she is now so worshipped, it ends up costing you a couple of Popularity points sure, but you still have more than enough to pass the subsequent checks thanks to all the points you gained for putting her in charge of everything in the first place. 

This brings me to my next point. After all this administrative work, does it actually even matter who you end up picking for your council? Or assigning as City Watch, etc ? It would have been nice to have these selections have some repercussions other than just the gain or loss of Popularity points. Who knows, maybe this will actually happen in the next book as choices you make do indeed matter in subsequent books, but just for this book itself, there seems to be no importance to these choices other than passing the Popularity checks. Even not having enough gold in your coffers to cover your tax policy (am I really talking about tax policy in a ninja gamebook here?) leads back to, you guessed it, Popularity points. 

Apparently, trying to kill your own story by bogging it down with taxation intrigue started long before this infamous movie.

One of my niggles at the end of the previous book was wondering what the point was in the route you decided to send the 100 samurai (if you had them at your disposal in the first place) on their journey to Irsmuncast, and that question was surprisingly answered here. If you sent them via the "correct" route in that book, they were now one of your options for your choice of bodyguards. Unfortunately though, you apparently arent supposed to select them as doing so costs you Popularity (for trusting in outsiders) which ends up somewhat shooting this concept in the foot. You would have been better off sending them to their doom as then at least they wouldn't have tempted you as an option. 

Conceptually speaking, all this city governance isn't necessarily a bad idea and I appreciate Smith and Thomson trying something new, but there really needed to be some action in between these council sessions. Also, more so than any gamebook I can recall playing so far, this book badly, and I do mean BADLY, needed some form of save point system. Once you figure out what selections you need to make in the administrative part of the adventure in order to pass it, there isn't really much point in picking anything different. And because the second half of the book isn't exactly on the easy side, I found myself having to trudge through this needlessly long sequence time and again. Now that I'm thinking about it, because there can literally be no randomization until well into the book, it might be a good idea that once you have your political selections finalized, to make note of the section you are on when you get to your first random moment and start from there whenever you die. For me this was one of those fantastic single do or die rolls to see if Mandrake the Assassin managed to kill me or not (having whether you defeat this guy, who has been tracking you all over Orb, come down to one single roll seemed a bit lame I have to say). And ahhh yes, the frustrating rolls return with a vengeance in this adventure. There seemed to me to be even more of these this time around than in the previous books and I'm not sure what more I can say about them anymore. I do feel I need to mention them though as they are once again maddening as ever. 

As this opening governing sequence was finally wrapping up, in my mind I was picturing Smith and Thomson looking at each other during the writing process and saying "What are we doing??? This series is supposed to be about a ninja!". From here on the book delves into a somewhat hastily thrown together cross-country quest to retrieve a Sceptre and Orb that are supposed to aid the ruler of Irsmuncast. This quest seems to come right out of the blue (which partially contributed to my thought that a whole book based on the city governance idea was abandoned halfway through), but I was just glad to get out of the city and actually do something of importance for a change, as was my character. This second half quest is quite well done, although not as good as the cross-country treks of the first 3 books, but I chalk this up to the authors having to condense it down to half a book. For example, ever since spotting it on the map, I had been hoping we would get to visit The Forest of Fables as it sounds quite magical, and we do indeed get to go here on our way to the island where the Sceptre and Orb are kept. Blink and you miss it though as The Forest of Fables flies by in just a few sections. You can be told earlier that you need to find the leader of the Elves within the Forest of Fables, and coincidentally he happens to be the very first person you meet after being in the forest for all of 5 minutes, and shortly after that you are sent on your way. 

Still, this second half did have some positive things going for it. The quest overall provides several routes you can take, and does have some very cool and interesting things going on along the way. The theft of an amulet from the Temple of Nullaq was very good, as was the aid in the defense of the Haven of Tor from an aerial dragon attack. However, I did find the infiltration of the enemy ninja village something of a letdown. If you possess certain Skills (such as Climbing, Poison Needes, and Detecting Traps/Picking Locks, of which I have all) you end up bypassing several situations quite easily. You then proceed along a very short and linear dungeon crawl, defeating a ninja guard and a priest of Nemesis along the way (my character can't recognize his own reflection in a mirror? Seriously? I think the people of Irsmuncast dodged a bullet by having me leave). You then surprisingly arrive quickly at a fight against the Grandmaster of Shadows, who is the leader of the evil ninja clan that follow The Way of the Scorpion. This serves as the final boss battle of the ninja lair (and how is this lair not in a hollowed out volcano? What a missed opportunity!). In contrast to the somewhat disappointing lead up, this combat is well done and shows the intricate design that various fights from the previous books contained......with one exception. That exception being that the authors throw yet another do or die Fate roll right in the middle of this fight! Arghh! What a shame too as other than this roll, this fight is really great. This combat is also, in my opinion, the "real" final boss battle of the book. Oh there is a final fight on the last island against the Devil Beast, who guards the Sceptre and Orb, but I found it to be one of the shallower fights in the book and this creature isn't even close to being as interesting a character as the evil ninja Grandmaster was. Similarly, the Kraken (pictured on the cover of the book) can be bypassed in a sentence or two should you possess the correct item.  

The writing overall is as good as always here and its just become routine to expect this from Smith and Thomson at this point. I do have one quibble about this though and for that I give you section 42. This is the section that you reach upon defeating the aforementioned Grandmaster of Shadows. This is a long passage and there are so many Hollywood tropes going on within this one section that in a sense, it can actually be considered somewhat impressive:

-First, upon his defeat, the Grandmaster morphs into Basil Exposition, telling you exactly where the Sceptre and Orb are located and everything that you can expect to encounter along the way that is guarding them. He even tells you exactly what you need to get past the Kraken! For a world famous ninja such as you are, who has defeated demons and ancient Old Ones with his bare hands, not to mention just killed the Grandmaster who fancied himself the greatest ninja on Orb, I suppose he figured your chances of sailing to an island and defeating another monster were so remote that he could just lay it all out on the table? "You've got no chance mate!"

-Second, in a shocking moment just before he dies, the Grandmaster literally takes our your eye! I give the authors great credit for this as it left me with my mouth agape. This also results in a loss of 1 to all your Kick, Punch, and Throw modifiers, which makes sense. Although I have to imagine that anyone who started the series with this book is now totally screwed. What doesn't make sense though is that this grievous wound apparently causes no Endurance point loss. Your character seems to shrug it off pretty easily too. "Meh. Ill just pick up a spare eye at some point in the future. No biggie."

-Third, upon attempting to then leave the ninja lair, you are surrounded by many rank and file ninjas from this order. Your character then pulls out his plot armour because despite having you surrounded, badly wounded, and severely outnumbered, these morons decide to just let you walk out! They tell you that honor demands they let you leave, but that your life is now forfeit. Honor? I thought these guys were evil? Cash the cheque right now you fools! "Um, excuse me guys. Nemesis is on line 2 and he'd like to have a word with all of you."  

Overall, I think this adventure would have been better served by setting the whole book either within, or just outside, Irsmuncast itself while additionally providing more reasons and rewards for experimenting with your choices for Privy Council. If each choice of council member came with their own unique mini adventure upon selecting them for instance, and with each having a different reward for completing it, I would have greatly enjoyed replaying all the choices to see how they played out and what the corresponding rewards were, and then use that to help me decide which of these rewards I would want to carry over to the future books. I would also have greatly enjoyed spending more time individually with each of these characters and perhaps learning first hand their backstories and ultimate fates as they are all interesting and very well written. That said, I do feel the adventure concluded with a strong cliffhanger ending and I look forward to beginning the next book as soon as possible because of it. Not least of which is to hopefully learn of the fates of all the interesting characters that I didn't get to in this book as mentioned above. And as with Gnaag from the Lone Wolf series, I also badly want to get this Honoric guy once and for all!  

Ranking: A lot to talk about with this one that's for sure. For me though, this is clearly the weakest of the first 4 books. The opening is different so I have to give it at least some credit for the attempt, but unfortunately it just drags on far too long and seems to have very little consequence. The quest to retrieve the Sceptre and Orb is pretty good on the whole, but still lags a bit in quality compared to the preceding books. Overall, and despite some serious flaws, I think the book is OK. However, after the first 3 books in the series which ranged from very good to great, just OK feels like a defeat. 

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5. Warbringer! - Score = 6.4    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 19

And now, quality wise, it feels like we are slowly going backwards. The opening of this adventure sees us picking up right where we left off at the conclusion of the last book, standing on the battlements of Irsmuncast from having just teleported there thanks to the newly acquired Sceptre and Orb, and finding the city already decimated by an evil army of Orcs that has come up from the Rift. The adventure is then cleanly demarcated into 3 parts: The driving out of the invading army from Irsmuncast, the acquiring of allies for the battle against Honoric's forces, and finally the battle itself. Going over these in order:

1) Driving out the invading army - This opening sequence makes it initially seem you have many options as to making your way through the city and eventually expelling the invading force of Orcs. The more I played it however, I became surprised at how linear this sequence actually was. For example, right near the start you are asked if you want to go down the stairs from your position at the top of the battlements to confront some Orcs, or if you have the skill of Climbing you can attempt to climb down the wall into the gardens. If you pick the Climbing option though, you are immediately told you change your mind seeing as how the gardens are filled with Orcs and go down the stairs anyway. Gee, thanks. And unless you have a certain item (which I did not), there also doesn't appear to be a way to avoid another one of those godawful do-or-die Fate rolls in this opening sequence. Ah yes, the Fate rolls again. It's apparent now that Smith and Thomson actually see these as some kind of gameplay feature. In this case, you need to pass a Fate roll to see if a bucking horse lands on you or not, with failure spelling game over. Yeesh. Kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel in having different ways to kill off the players with these Fate roll deaths aren't we? If I could ask one question of Smith and Thomson it would be why on Earth do they feel that these rolls are good ideas. So you make your way through the city, having to defeat a Cave Troll, a Dark Elf commander, and then the leader of the invading force (the magician, Shadazar) with very little room for deviation. Disappointingly, after the initial combat against the Cave Troll, the remaining fights are handled narratively with you having to decide correctly among several options or you die. Once you defeat Shadazar, the invading force scatters and retreats back to the Rift and you have won back the city. 

2) Acquiring allies - This sequence has us learn from a travelling minstrel (who comes dressed in pink and green!) that Honoric is gathering a large force and intends to march on Irsumuncast and finally take his revenge upon us. There is then an interesting choice to be made at this point of the adventure where it is made clear that you need to acquire an ally in your fight against Honoric's army or you have no chance of surviving. Several of your advisers step up one by one and make different recommendations and you are ultimately left with five choices of cities to travel to in an attempt to gain said allies. Two of these choices lead to instant failure which I found irksome at first, but the more I thought about it, you were in fact given some warning that they were bad ideas. Among the remaining three options, two lead down a very difficult overland route where some powerful monsters must be fought while the remaining option is a very easy trip that can see you picking up the needed ally very quickly provided you make the correct decisions. This would appear to be the authors yet again providing both an "easy" and "hard" way to beat the adventure, although it's probably more appropriate to call them "hard" and "even harder" ways as even though this one particular choice may make things easier for this sequence, the rest of the book still sure isnt. Aggravatingly though, one of the two "even harder" routes leads to instant failure once you get to the final battle sequence should you have chosen it and this feels like a pretty rotten trick on the part of the authors. So, we are presented with five options for our allies, but several of these aren't usable which once again belies the initial feeling of choice that the book gives to us. 

3) The battle against Honoric's army - Much like the previous book and its "city governance" element, this adventure adds its own new gameplay mechanic in the form of a "war strategy" system, and I have to say that while not perfect in its own right by any means, I think it works better. The reason why I feel this way is that your choices in this large battle that takes place between your allied forces and the forces of Honoric actually have consequences. True, the choices you have to make in this battle can sometimes seem rather arbitrary as you can strategize all you like, but if you don't think along the same lines as the authors then you can find yourself on the losing end in short order. Somewhat similarly to the decision of acquiring allies from the preceding sequence, here you listen to the various members of your war council provide suggestions on how to deploy your forces before deciding on whose advice to follow. As such, while it can initially feel like careful planning for the battle sequence will pay off, it eventually starts to seem like an exercise in just finding the one correct way through. For example, I may decide to employ my forces in a particular way that turns out not to work, which usually ends up being outright disastrous. Story wise, I am then told what happened and why this didn't work, but I could just as easily have provided an equally plausible explanation as for why it SHOULD have worked. Still, it at least gave me reason to want to go back and try all the different options to see how they played out. The provided maps of the battlefield, showing the deployment of the various units and their composition along with the geography of the area helped greatly with the immersion and the writing was quite impressive as usual. I badly wanted to take part in the deadly cat and mouse game going on between our Woodland Elf allies and the evil Monks of the Scarlet Mantis that you are told at one point is taking place within a small forest located within the battle area as it sounded so juicy, but for the most part you are overseeing the battle from the safety of your command post, with a couple of exceptions. One of these exceptions occurs as this sequence draws to a close, and you get the toughest individual combat of the book when an Old One (pictured on the cover and the same one we had a brush with back in Usurper!) takes to the field of battle on the side of Honoric and you must defeat him one on one. This is another one of those involved and more intricate combats, and while not quite at the level of those seen in previous books in the series, I still thought it was very well done. Just make sure you save your Inner Force points for this fight or extreme frustration may ensue as this creature is capable of one-shot killing you should you run out.

After finally defeating the Old One and winning the battle, we come to maybe the weakest aspect of the adventure, and that is how it concludes. So let me get this straight......we have had this build up going on over the course of 5 books now leading to a final confrontation with Honoric (who is made out to be the greatest swordsman in the land) and after we finally defeat his forces we are told he has retreated and will not cause any more problems for many years. What a gyp! True, we have a brief duel with him before the battle, but this ends somewhat indecisively which makes it incredibly unsatisfying. I dearly hope we get to deal with Honoric once and for all in book 6, otherwise this story thread was badly bungled. I so wanted to get this guy!

So that completes another successful quest and leaves me with some more comments to make about the adventure as a whole. Turning to my question at the end of the last book in wondering about the fates of the various privy council candidates (both those that we chose and those that we did not), we do in fact learn what happened to all of them revealed in a single section where it is listed in almost bullet point format. And disappointingly, who you ultimately chose to be on your council in the last book has absolutely no bearing on this adventure at all. It's a shame we never had a final confrontation with the Lord Steward or Foxglove, but at least the latter could make a return in a future adventure. Dore le Jeune makes a return to aid us in the final battle and his over the top fervor is as entertaining as always, although I was somewhat disappointed that he has four other knights from his order accompanying him. This lunatic eats lightning and craps thunder!  As such, he works much better when he wanders in and wreaks havoc all by himself. 

It's also quite convenient that the Orb you obtained last adventure happens to just exactly fit the socket where your eye used to be, and this is in fact what the Orb is designed for as it allows you (as it has past rulers of Irsmuncast) to view beings on the "spirit plane", which would otherwise be invisible to the normal naked human eye. It does beg the question though, what if the Grandmaster of Shadows hadn't taken out your eye in the last book? Would you be expected to have to then pry it out yourself? That could have made for some interesting narrative. Somewhat strangely, you can also have Gwyneth provide you with a magnificent white charger as your mount. The strange part is she can provide you with this gift twice. A small bug perhaps but not something usually seen from these authors so it stood out a bit. I guess with the two horses you are ready to make a big entrance into battle! 

Thanks to the generosity of Force Lady Gwyneth, this is how I picture Avenger riding into the fray. 

 

Unfortunately, the "turn-to-itis" I briefly saw earlier in the series returns with much fuller effect here as these runs of no option sections are quite noticeable in this book. Oftentimes, even when it appears you are given a choice, you really are not as you are forced to go to one of the section options based upon actions you have taken (or not taken) earlier in the book. This is particularly true of the battle sequence as a lot of what your character decides to do is based upon whose advice you listened to earlier. On the one hand, this does encourage at least some experimentation in the planning stages of your war strategy, but once the battle begins you are already locked into several of your actions. 

Turning to the difficulty level of the book, this adventure actually took me one less attempt to complete than did book 2, "Assassin!", however this book seemed far more difficult. The reason for this I believe is how unfair most of the deaths in this adventure felt. This book includes the frustrating Fate roll that the others have, but in addition to that the arbitrary failures seemed to abound much more here as well. Say the wrong thing in an audience with a potential ally? Game over. Had your forces go left instead of right? You lose. Zig when you should have zagged? Dead. This book feels absolutely littered with situations where you are given 2 or 3 options, with only one of them being correct and the others leading to instant death.

Finally, while I enjoyed the war strategy part of the adventure well enough, the more I played through the book the more I realized that overall it was a bit short on actual gameplay. Once you defeat the invading army of Orcs in the opening of the book, there is a looooong stretch where nothing much is happening from a gameplay standpoint, particularly if you take the path of obtaining the Spires of Foreshadowing as your ally (which seems to be the preferred option as the most information is provided about this potential ally). As such, you can make it to the very beginning of the final battle against Honoric's forces having had only one combat, with only two more combats within the clash between the armies itself (one of these the aborted duel with Honoric, so this is really only half a combat). The rest of the adventure consists mainly of making choices between whose advice to listen to from among your collection of advisers and the members of your war council. There is a fairly interesting part just before the final battle where you infiltrate the enemy camp in an attempt to gather some information about their plans, but even this comes down to discovering the correct path through without arbitrarily dying, although it is narratively very exciting.

Ranking: Another adventure not nearly on the level of the first 3 books. So when choosing in the rankings between "Warbringer!" and "Overlord!", I have to give a slight edge to "Overlord!". Despite its faults, I actually did enjoy the war strategy aspect of "Warbringer!" quite a bit more than the city governance aspect of "Overlord!" as it felt more exciting, but I thought the Sceptre and Orb quest from that book far outweighed in quality the first half of this adventure. This book is still OK thanks to its battle sequence, and it's a pity they couldn't have combined the second half of book 4 with the second half of this book because that might have made for another really strong adventure. 

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6. Inferno! - Score = 3.4    Tier = Bad

Attempts to beat: 3

Good grief! Now this is what I call crapping the bed. This effort by Smith and Thomson must certainly go down in gamebook history as one of the most frustrating, disappointing and infuriating conclusions ever to a series. I'm getting ahead of myself though as the book actually starts out fairly decently, with our Avenger character once more sitting upon the throne of Irsmuncast after having finally defeated Honoric in the previous adventure. We get word at the start of the book that our old friend Glaivas decided to accompany the lunatic paladin Dore le Jeune on one of his expeditions into the Rift to slaughter as many evil creatures as he can. Sounded like a fun Saturday night I suppose. Anyway, predictably they have gone missing and we learn from Cassanda, one of our old adversaries from book 2, that Glavais is being held by Dark Elves somewhere beneath the 7th tier of the Rift. (She claims to have no idea what happened to Dore le Jeune). The Dark Elves are willing to exchange Glavais for the Sceptre of Irsmuncast that we carry. Not willing to give up the Sceptre, but also unwilling to leave Glavais to a horrible fate, we decide to go after him. This is actually a pretty good opening as it's a stealth rescue mission that requires us to go deep into the Rift, which has been built up as this vast pit of unspeakable evil over the course of 5 books now. There is also some added mystery as to what exactly Cassandra has up her sleeve (along with her cohorts, Tyutchev and Thaum, who are surely lurking about somewhere as well), along with what exactly happened to Dore le Jeune.  

I commented in my review of the previous book that maybe the Foxglove character (the former head of the Irsmuncast secret police) would make a return in a future adventure and not only does she return here, she plays a big role in the construction of this book. She shows up alongside Cassandra in the opening segment as her prisoner, with Cassandra using her to gain entrance into the city. It seems that after the Orcs were repelled from Irsmuncast in the beginning of book 4, Foxglove fled hoping to find "succor" within the Rift itself. Her allegiances are kept ambiguous, although Gwyneth is strongly convinced she is a villain, and the fact that she chose to hide out in the Rift itself seems quite damning. It didn't really go her way though and apparently the Black Widow (an evil spider-goddess being, and the closest thing to a ruler in the Rift) has been having her way with Foxglove since then. What this means exactly is wisely left up to the imagination, but suffice it to say that Foxglove is not in good shape. Here though, you make what is probably the most key decision in the whole adventure, and that is if you want to have Foxglove accompany you into the Rift to search for Glaivas or not. When I finished this adventure, it struck me how incredibly short it felt, and I think this is the reason why. You have almost two parallel adventures going on here, one whereby you travel alone and another where you experience all the same things except with Foxglove. My question is, why would you choose to take Foxglove with you? Even if she isn't really an enemy of yours, she definitely isn't a friend either and you will have to worry about her double crossing you at every turn. She also cries, begs and pleads with you that she does not want to return to the Rift where she has presumably experienced many horrors. So what kind of monster would you have to be to drag her back there against her will? This is especially true when the book makes it clear that there is no actual proof that Foxglove had anything to do with the prior Orc invasion. 

Thus, the adventure teases that we will need to travel down through the 7 tiers of the Rift in order to find Glavias. Talk about building something up only to have it fizzle out miserably. Not only do these tiers fly by as you travel through them, some going by in only a few sections and with very little of interest going on in most of them, but we only ever get to the 4th tier where the adventure abruptly ends anyway. This is the beginning of the evidence that this book was all but abandoned part way through. 

Maybe the only good thing the book has going for it is the combat against Tyutchev, Cassandra, and Thaum on the 4th tier, just before the conclusion of the adventure. This is the intricate combat that each of these books has, and can actually play out in several ways depending on if you are alone or if you have some allies with you. Earlier in the book you may have met up with the travelling adventurers that could be befriended back in Book 2, Eris the magician, Tawflr and Thybault the priests, and Vespers the swordsman, and they could be with you for this confrontation against the evil trio. Again, this is likely contributing to the shortness of the adventure as two different versions of several events need sections allocated to them depending on if these guys are with you or not. So, you have to take on all three of these villains at once and even if you do have your allies, they are no match for this trio so it's still mostly on you to defeat them. Even this fight though is cut off halfway through by the appearance of a giant chameleon beast (something akin to a war elephant) being ridden by a contingent of Dark Elves (even though we were told earlier that we were in a small chamber) that crashes into the room and interrupts the combat, and this is where things get very weird, silly, and frustrating. The appearance of this beast causes everyone, including Cassandra, Thaum, and Tyutchev, along with yourself and any of your allies that were on hand, to flee single file into a giant snake statue's mouth. From here you slide down (wheeeeee!) into a void and land in a giant spider web. You then realize a giant spider is coming towards you. The end. And no, that isn't me merely claiming that's how the book ends, it actually says "The end" right there at the conclusion of the section, lest you thought this couldn't really be how the series concludes. (What sane person would think that?). This whole ending sequence feels like it was written on the back of a napkin in under 2 minutes. 

Maybe you could argue that the book just ends on a cliffhanger as a couple of the previous entries did, and a book 7 was always intended? I don't buy that in the slightest. This conclusion was just a huge middle finger to the loyal fans of the series and this book has cost Smith and Thomson at least some of the vast amount of goodwill they have built up with me thanks to their prior books that I have played and greatly enjoyed. Even so, I looked into a little bit and nearest I can tell there was some issues with the publisher, and by the time it all got sorted out, Smith and Thomson had moved on to their Duelmaster series instead and that is the reason why "Inferno!" was put out in such a half-assed state. You know what? I don't care. I don't see that as an excuse for taking people's money. I presume the authors did in fact get paid for book 6 did they not? And why would you want to crap on your followers so much by releasing this anyway? I believe they knew full well this was the last book before they finished it, so why not give it a proper ending for goodness sake! This is a "Mass Effect 3" level of bad ending for those familiar with that video game series. 

This is exactly my reaction as I read the final section of this book.

So, we never learn what happened to Glavais, or Dore le Jeune, or Avenger himself for that matter. It could have been an interesting twist if it turned out that Glaivas wasn't even in the Rift (maybe even that he was already dead) and this was all a ruse perpetrated by Cassandra, Tyutchev, and Thaum (and maybe Foxglove too) to isolate us within the Rift so they could kill us, but I guess I'll never know. Or at least not until I eventually get to "Redeemer!", the long awaited follow up book published 27 years after "Inferno!".  The fact that they felt the need to release a sequel to this book almost 3 decades later speaks volumes. By the way, is that title a reference to Avenger's god, Kwon the Redeemer, or to the authors trying to redeem themselves for this slap in the face? I was also hoping Honoric would make an appearance here so that we could give him a proper send off as opposed to his lame exit in the last book, but alas it's not to be, as he is nowhere to be found. This confirms my fear from the previous review that his story line was badly botched. What a shame. 

I have been asking myself since finishing the book that if I had known there was a book 7 released immediately after this one, and which concluded this particular quest, would I have been so hard on this adventure? Maybe not. Ending notwithstanding, this adventure was still nowhere close to good, but knowing going in that this was the conclusion of the series (at least until I get to "Redeemer!" at some point in the future, which likely wont be for a while) had me expecting this book to end with some form of closure. I can't even imagine what it must have been like playing this book when it was first released, then waiting patiently for the next book to come out in order to find out what happens and then have it take 27 years to arrive!  

As if all the above wasn't bad enough, if I felt the previous book lacked in gameplay, I was in for 4 tiers of "you ain't seen nothing yet". You hardly touch the dice at all in this adventure, making decisions about which tunnel to take as you head down deeper into the Rift in your search for Glavias. There are a couple of combats here and there you could stumble into, such as one against Cassandra in the opening sequence or another against some Trolls as you head into the Rift, but these are easily avoided and really only seem to come up if you do something foolish. In fact, I believe you can make it all the way to the aborted fight against Tyutchev without rolling the dice once. Indeed, because the book only took me 3 attempts, I can't say for certain that it's impossible to beat the whole adventure without using the dice at all. Yet even more evidence of a total rush job. But hey, at least no do-or-die Fate rolls this time! 

Ranking: While perhaps not the overall worst gamebook I've played, it's surely the most disappointing by a mile. Its got a good hook to start, and some of the encounters are suitably horrific, but there is hardly any gameplay to speak of and the ending is absolutely atrocious. In fact, I would say this ending section IS the worst one I've come across so far because of how much it angered me. It probably sounds like I'm being too harsh on Smith and Thomson here in this review, but seriously, this book had me fuming when I finished it. And books that anger me are what I reserve the Bad tier for. It really would have been far better if this book had never been released and "Warbringer!" had marked the end of the series. 

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Hall of Famers chronologically

1 Avenger!
3 Usurper! 

Sort of a tale of two series. The first 3 books were the best opening trifecta of adventures I've played so far, with books #1 and #3 being Hall of Famers and book #2 really not too far off that level. After that, the authors start to try new things, which is admirable in some respects, but unfortunately moves away from what made the first 3 books so good. Even so, books #4 and #5 were on the high end of OK, although book #6 was a total disaster. However, 2 out of 6 books being Hall of Famers is still a fantastic ratio, if even strangely disappointing seeing as how the series began.