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.
Not sure if they're on your list but Jamie Thomson's two Eternal Champions books fix many of the issues you raise about the combat system. You can’t spam moves so easily, you can vary battles in repeat playthroughs by choosing a different fighting style, and Inner Force can be used to make rolls easier.
ReplyDeleteWay of the Tiger is a very good series from a world-building perspective I find it a bit too unforgiving and repetetive. Some of the later books have errors too although apparently they were fixed in the recent reprints.
Yes I do have the Eternal Champions books on my list but still not totally sure what they are about. I take it they are a gamebook attempt to recreate video games such as Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter which were so popular in the 90s? Thomson is proving to be quite an adept designer so Im interested to see how he manages to tie those improvements in.
DeleteThey're actually based on a short-lived fighting video games series from the 90s developed by Sega. It never quite hit Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat levels of fame as it lacked that "pick-up and play" feeling they had. You really had to learn how to play each character as their moves were extremely situational and none of them played similarly to one another. It also had bugs and balancing issues. But the story, characters and overall presentation were excellent- making it a good franchise for adaptation I guess.
ReplyDeleteIf we assume that all of those worlds are somehow connected , it would explain the presence of a Ninja in Deathtrap Dungeon.
ReplyDeleteI remember coming across this book years ago in a second hand store. The previous owner had left his own hand drawn adventure sheet inside. It was a perfect duplicate right down to the shuriken stars !
Interesting idea. Smith and Thomson could have included in one of the books from this series that you were actually the same ninja from Deathtrap Dungeon. Showing how the ninja made it through the dungeon, complete with playing the trick about "leave your weapons" etc. There would need to be a plausible reason for going from Orb to Titan I suppose, and the ninja would have to be shown to actually have survived even if he didnt win the trial. But it could have been cool to play the contest from the ninja's perspective. I wonder if there are any amateur adventures out there that attempted this.
DeleteI would have assumed that by definition, a Ninja is also an assassin.
ReplyDeleteAlthough of course, you are playing as a ' good ' Ninja.
I was going to make a comment about them going even simpler and just calling the book "Ninja" but it looks like someone actually did call one of them that later on. :)
DeleteI think I tried and failed to get through the Goblins Teeth Mountains so many times as a child before realising they were optional. Not sure I've ever beaten them!
ReplyDeleteThe do-or-die rolls really let down the series imo. Though they're nothing like as bad as the Freeway Warrior series for them.
Im looking forward to seeing if Freeway Warrior can top Freeway Fighter in that genre. But yeah, nothing quite like having an hour and a half of progress squelched because you happened to roll under 7 on one single roll!
DeletePretty much agree with every word of your Usurper review. I think Smith and Thomson did a bit of a Joe Dever with the final fight - tried to balance it for both new players and veterans and just made it too hard for both. Good book though, probably my favourite of the series.
ReplyDeleteThis series sure does have a lot in common with Lone Wolf doesnt it?
DeleteDid you play The Way of the Tiger books as a kid Kieran? Usurper was the only one I actually owned growing up but I remembered absolutely nothing about it and Im pretty sure I never even played it. I think I was "Fighting Fantasy or nothing!" back in those days. A shame because I missed out on some other great stuff.
The only one I had was Assassin. I played it a few times, but I didn't really like it. Too difficult and too dense. In my mid teens I picked up Usurper and Warbringer but I can't recall ever playing them. I was in my 20s before I got the whole series and I've never got past Warbringer. I haven't got round to getting the new Book 0 and Book 7 either. Guess I'm just not that big a Way of the Tiger fan! I did review the first 4 books on gamebooks.org if you're interested.
DeleteFighting Fantasy and Fabled Lands were probably my 2 favourite series as a child but I had a smattering of favourites across other series - the first two Lone Wolfs, Sagard, Alea Jacta Est, The Crystal Maze, Eternal Champions, the first Grailquest.
I do remember being very impressed with the cover of Avenger with its striking use of red and yellow colours.
DeleteBack in those days, you either bought or borrowed any new gamebook and this was firmly in the ' borrowed ' category along with Demonspawn.
As with so many other series from the 1980's, Way Of The Tiger is now very highly priced on ebay.
Thanks I will check out those reviews. It might be a bit until I get to it but Fabled Lands is definitely one I am looking forward to playing. I mean how can you not when its from those two authors! Did you ever pick up Book 7 that was released a few years ago? It looks massive. I cant seem to find any info on if they plan on finishing Books 8-12. It would be a shame if they didnt, but maybe Book 7 didnt sell that well.
DeleteYes, I have Book 7 but haven't got round to it yet - it is absolutely massive!
DeleteThe Book 7 Kickstarter was a bit of a fiasco - from what I can tell, the guy who ran it embezzled the money to finance a card game which flopped and then he couldn't afford to send people their rewards. I lost £30 on it, which wasn't really the end of the world but others lost hundreds.
Dave Morris has recently been hinting at doing a Kickstarter for books 8-13 (yes, apparently he had a Book 13 in mind too) all in one go but will be running it himself this time. Not sure if Dave and Jamie would be writing it or whether Paul Gresty or someone else will have the honours. Nothing confirmed yet though, but fingers crossed.
Is it just me or do those adversaries on the cover art seem a tad overpowering for a mere Ninja ?
ReplyDeleteNow that you mention it, I cant decide if defeating a demon from hell by repeatedly kicking him in the face is ludicrous or totally awesome! Haha!
DeleteFor some reason, the Ninja doesn't even appear on the cover of book 6, replacing him with a clone of Red Sonja.
ReplyDeleteNow Im interested to learn what the context of that cover is. For now it reminds me of the stalemate scene from the movie "Dragonheart".
DeleteI really like the concept of Book 4, but the execution is poor. I did lots of experiments with different privy Council members but many of them are pointless and your decisions have next to no impacts on proceedings. There's a lot of bugs too - for instance the book seems to forget one of the viable options for City Watch and forgets one of the other options isn't viable. I wish they had ditched the second half of the book and made the first half work as it is such a unique concept with some great characterisation.
ReplyDeleteJamie Thomson's Can You Brexit is pretty similar but unfortunately has many of the same problems.
I dont think a ninja gamebook was probably the best place for the idea. It sounds like it would have been more suited to Fabled Lands if Im understanding the concept of that series correctly? Agree about the bugs too. I also take it that your Privy Council choices make no difference in future books either?
DeleteDont know much about Can You Brexit but I will give that one a look too!
I suppose it's a bit of a palette cleanser after 3 ninja-ey books in a row. Though I imagine if it was your first experience of the series you would be a bit non-plussed and disappointed.
ReplyDeleteNo, it wouldn't really fit Fabled Lands terribly well either, there's rarely anything very indepth in Fabled Lands.
I kinda rage quit after repeatedly dying in Book 5 but from what I did see, Privy Council members do appear but your actual choices in Book 4 have no impact on how they interact with you.
The gamebook element of Can You Brexit is very slight. Most of the choices are zero impact "choose what order to receive your briefings in". You'll only make about 10 significant choices in a playthrough.
It would seem that appearances can be deceiving for despite the Harryhausen style cover with the crumbly cliffs and lurking Kraken, OVERLORD is actually about political chicanery and administrative duties...er - YAWN.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally , just how does a mere slip of a ninja go up against a giant kraken ? By dancing on its head perhaps ?
Its funny but in all the gamebooks Ive played so far that included a Kraken, I dont think any have really done the creature justice.
DeleteIs there a do-or-die shuriken roll in the opening sequence in Book 5? Maybe I'm thinking of that Fate roll. Either way I died so many times in that linear sequence at the start that I just gave up. I probably should have just cheated!
ReplyDeleteThere was a moment where you hurl a shuriken and if you didnt use Inner Force with it you automatically lose. Probably just my imagination but it felt like there were more insta-deaths in book 5 then the previous 4 combined.
DeleteSo did you never get to the war game sequence then? I was hoping to hear your thoughts on it.
Sadly not, I did get as far as the recruitment phase but don't think I ever got past that. I should really give the series another go.
DeleteThank you for the reviews on gamebook.org as I enjoyed hearing your thoughts on the books. I was glad to find I wasnt alone in being underwhelmed by Overlord as it seems to get high praise elsewhere from what I can see.
DeleteCall me old fashioned but I prefer it when YOU are just the humble adventurer, making your own way in the world without armies or scores of servants to assist you.
ReplyDeleteThis series seems to become less and less fun the farther you progress.
Id have to agree with that last statement. While I can appreciate them trying new ideas, I want to feel like a ninja!
DeleteWhich gamebook series are you planning to explore next ?
ReplyDeleteIm missing being in Magnamund so I think its time to try "The World of Lone Wolf" :)
DeleteThe Greystar series ?
ReplyDeleteI have dim and distant memories of playing the first one.
Just discovered yet ANOTHER gamebook series from the 80's with the unpromising title of ZORK.
I always felt this series was a downhill slope. First book -- fantastic! Second book -- nice follow up. Third book -- interesting. Fourth book -- Bureaucracy? Really? Fifth book -- Rather monotonous. Sixth book -- Downright depressing and pitiful. Perhaps Mark Smith and Jamie Thomson were running out of steam or were on deadline or had too many irons in the fire. It certainly feels that way.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear that book #7 was released, something needed to "redeem" (thank you, Kwon? :) the slow decline of this series.
Nice to know others felt as ripped off by book 6 as I did. Looking forward to eventually getting to book #7 and book #0. Need to wipe away the bad taste that last book left!
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