World of Lone Wolf

 RANKINGS

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1. Grey Star the Wizard - Score = 6.3    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 13

When first beginning this book, what I realized most is how much I enjoy visiting the land of Magnamund. Author Joe Dever (along with Ian Page this time), has done such a great job with this world, that it's a pleasure just to experience it. From the history, different and unique areas, and individual backstories, along with the always fantastic map provided at the front of the book, it all comes together to just.....work. That said, the starting plot of this adventure isn't the most original you will ever see, as we are playing as Grey Star, a human orphan washed up on the shore at an island temple and who is destined for great things. (Having just come off "The Way of the Tiger" series, this set up seems incredibly familiar.) We have since been raised by a group of magical Shianti wizards, and having just turned 16, a quest is put upon us to travel to the mainland and seek out and obtain a sacred relic known as the Moonstone, which contains the combined might and sum of all knowledge of the Shianti race, and which can hopefully be used to help overthrow the evil Wytch King, Shasarak, whose Shadakine Empire now stretches over a vast territory on the mainland. As an aside, what is it with powerful beings pouring all their power and/or knowledge into one single item? I guess "putting all your eggs in one basket" isn't a concern in fantasy circles. Anyway, it's not going to be an easy task as the Moonstone is located on the Daziarn plane, which can only be reached through a Nightmare Gate, and the locations of these gates are not exactly common knowledge. There is however an ancient lost tribe, The Tribe of Lara, who are thought to know the location of the needed gate, so our first order of business (and the quest for this first book) is to find this tribe and obtain their assistance. Having very little information to go on regarding their whereabouts (they are "lost" after all), we decide to begin by sailing to the mainland and just start asking questions. Matters are complicated however by the fact that the mainland is currently under occupation by the aforementioned Wytch King and his Shadakine warriors, so as usual, stealth will need to be the order of the day.  

The combat system here works the same as from the main Lone Wolf series, with the difference between your Combat Score and your enemies Combat Score generating a Combat Ratio that determines how many Endurance points both you and your enemy lose with each roll of a 10 sided dice (or blind jab at the Combat Table if you prefer). Once again the Combat Table is heavily in your favor (I didn't compare it to the one from the main series but I'm assuming it's the exact same) but at least there is no Sommerswerd available this time to screw up the combats right? Maybe not, but hold on a minute. While the presence of the Sommerswerd in the main Lone Wolf series effectively broke the combat system there, this series breaks it in a different way by introducing a new stat called Willpower. Playing as a wizard this time, Willpower points are what you use to cast spells or attack with your magical staff. The big problem is, you can choose to use Willpower points to increase the damage you cause in a combat round. This is not done on a "use a Willpower point to cause one extra point of damage" basis though, this is done as a MULTIPLIER! If you choose to use 5 Willpower points you get 5x the damage that you otherwise would have caused for example. This can easily have you one-shotting pretty much everything in the book, including the more dangerous enemies and I had to read the rules for this several times to make sure I was interpreting it correctly. It's not like Willpower points are hard to come by either. You begin the game with anywhere from 20-29 of these points, and unlike Endurance points, these can actually go above your initial starting value. There are a couple of large increases of these points to be found in the book, with one in particular giving you an increase of half your current Willpower score when you reach that section. All this serves to do is reward a character with an already high amount of Willpower points even more of them! I routinely found myself heading into the back half of the book with Willpower points numbering in the mid to high 30's. 

To make matters worse on this front, you can acquire an item called Tarama seeds, that when swallowed, allow one use of Willpower without it costing you any points. So, why can't I just take a Tarama seed, then use all my Willpower in an attack? "That will be 25x (or higher!) damage multiplier with no Willpower point loss please." And you can get up to at least 7 of these seeds throughout the adventure! You can literally find yourself dealing out 200 points of damage in one hit. 

The book also has a bad habit of not telling you in advance if your actions require Willpower points at all. We already know that casting spells or using your staff requires them, but other times you are told you need to deduct points without having any prior clue they would be needed. For example, at one point I was asked if I wanted to call out to my companion and warn him of an enemy approaching him from behind, or rush back to his side. If I choose to rush back and help him, I am then told it cost me 1 Willpower point when I cracked the enemy with my Staff. But I had already used all my Willpower points to get past an earlier tough fight (before I had discovered the Tarama seeds), so now what do I do? And even if I do know a spell will cost me points, what if I only have 1 or 2 Willpower points left before I choose? I don't find out how much it costs until after I decide, so if it ends up costing 3 or 4 points, what then? 

Where the main Lone Wolf series had different Skills you could choose from, this book is somewhat different in that the Skills you can select from are Magical Skills and I think I may have actually enjoyed these more. There is no Healing Skill here which contributed to the ease of the main books, and as such, you really have to manage your Endurance score carefully all the way to the end. In fact, this is yet another book to add to the list of adventures that I completed with 1 Endurance point remaining. The back half of this adventure reminded me greatly of "Caverns of the Snow Witch" from the Fighting Fantasy series in that you are slowly bleeding out life points as you ascend this mountain/cliff hoping that you will just have enough to make it. A lot came down to a final roll I needed to make right at the end of the adventure before I could escape to the victory section. 

The inventory system from the main Lone Wolf series also returns, with your Grey Star character being able to carry 2 weapons, one of which being your Magical Staff. I'm not really sure what the point of the second weapon slot is though, as loss of your Staff likely means you are doomed, but I suppose there could be the odd time a dagger might come in handy in the future. You also have a backpack that once again has room for 8 items and this was one of the better mechanics from the main series so I'm glad to see it continued here. You frequently don't have room to take everything you'd like to, so you need to think carefully about what to pick up and what to drop. Intriguingly, if you choose Alchemy as one of your starting Magical Skills, you also get to take a pouch along with you as well that has room for 6 alchemy items. And really, once you learn this, who ISN'T going to choose Alchemy as one of their skills as it opens up many more gameplay options. 

Unfortunately, some of the rules in this book are a vague mess. The fight against the Kleasa (some sort of demon) is a prime example. In this battle against this very high skilled opponent, you are told you need to survive for 4 combat rounds. But what if you use the Willpower and Tarama seed combo mentioned earlier and kill him in one or two hits? To me that ends the fight immediately. The "Rules for Combat" at the front of the book seem to back this up too as they state "The process of combat continues until the Endurance points of either the enemy or Grey Star is reduced to zero, at which point the one with the zero score is declared dead. If Grey Star is dead, the adventure is over. If the enemy is dead, Grey Star proceeds." But then when you turn to the next section, the Kleasa is not only still alive but is thriving. So if the point was just to survive for 4 rounds against him, why give him an Endurance score at all? Additionally, before this fight even begins you are asked if you used your Sorcery skill to put up a shield earlier, and if so, you don't lose as many Endurance points each round. But hang on, put up a shield? What the hell are they talking about? I was never given the option to do this nor could I find it anywhere in the book. 

The final brief encounter of the book seems similarly botched. Here, you are confronted by a Cave Mantiz (a giant ant) that is blocking your escape. You are given the option of fighting him to the death or fleeing after one Combat round. The first time I faced him I used Willpower to kill him in one hit, therefore defeating him outright in one Combat round. But despite my proficiency, I then found myself swarmed and killed by other Cave Mantiz. You therefore can't win the book unless you flee. Killing the Cave Mantiz in one hit or fleeing after one Combat round take the same amount of rounds so why does one lead to death and the other to victory? Bah! 

Despite all the above, the book does have its fair share of positives too. The story was quite good with several exciting sequences, including the encounter with the Quoku (giant flying toads) which I found to be the highlight of the adventure.  And while overall I felt the writing was only so-so at best (there are some cringe worthy lines in here), the book did provide a couple of interesting travelling companions, even though none of them survive to the end of the book (wow, this really IS a Lone Wolf adventure!). One of them in particular meets a quite gruesome end at the hands of the above mentioned Quoku, with an illustration in there that I found suitably unsettling, but hey, at least he lasted longer than most gamebook companions. The adventure also ends on an interesting note as you are told that in order to gain the assistance of the Tribe of Lara, you need to solve a riddle they put to you. You are then given the riddle, but it's in the final section so apparently you don't need to solve it until next book. I like this idea as it gives the reader lots of time to think about an answer, although I wonder if an answer will really be required next book or if they will just provide the solution for you, but I guess I will find out soon enough. Overall I also had a good time plotting out my course through the book that would allow me to conserve my precious Endurance points. Knowing that your margin on these points is so tight (unlike the Willpower points), it encourages trying as many different things as you can in order to uncover every place you can either gain or save one or two of these. As such, the adventure had enough of that "solving a puzzle" feeling that I always enjoy and that helped to offset the fact that the book was a bit light on combat and dice rolling. And it's not necessarily a bad thing, but I did notice a preponderance of instant deaths for a Lone Wolf adventure. I mean check it out, sections 315-318 are all insta-deaths! I don't recall seeing a run of deaths like that before, but maybe thats just where Dever and Page were storing them.    

Ranking: Some nice ideas, but with a lot of poor execution. There are several really good moments here, and I enjoyed charting my path through the adventure. I can't give it a higher score than this however because there is a lot of messy game design going on here, and this score might actually be considered generous. This is another example of a book that doesn't seem like it was properly playtested, with the deployment of the Willpower stat in particular seemingly in need of a major overhaul. There are also more than a few editing errors which contribute to the sloppy feel of the book. It's a shame too because with a bit more care, this could and should have been much better. I look forward to seeing if at least some of the issues here get solved with the next adventure. ______________________________________________________________ 

2. The Forbidden City - Score = 6.7    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 4

We pick back up right where book 1 left off, and as I suspected, the answer to the riddle that was posed to your Grey Star character at the end of the last adventure is just outright given to you here, and that is a shame, as I thought the answer was quite clever and depended on you recalling a piece of Shianti physiology that was only mentioned way back at the beginning of the first book. It would have been nice to have to work this answer out yourself, but perhaps the danger there is (as it always is with gamebook riddles I suppose) that if the reader can't figure it out, and the solution requires some kind of code as opposed to just listing options multiple choice style, then the reader would be unable to progress. Using coded references also doesn't seem like a Lone Wolf style design choice in general either. So, we now have won the assistance of the Lost Tribe of Lara (also known as the Kundi tribe), and are given a guide to accompany us to the future location of the Nightmare Gate that we need to enter in order to retrieve the Moonstone. This guide, a shaman known as Urik, becomes our first travelling companion in the adventure but wont be the last. I found Urik's caveman-style dialogue to take some getting used to at first, but once I did I found his ability to rattle off amusing one liners very entertaining. In addition, he is generally quite useful and his advice can be trusted almost without fail. Urik has determined that the Nightmare Gate will appear within Desolation Valley in two weeks time, and as that leaves us with quite a bit of ground to cover, the two of us set off immediately.   

As with the first book, I found some of the rules here to be a bit on the vague side. You are told before starting the adventure that if you completed book 1, you will already have your Combat, Endurance, and Willpower scores. But wait, does that mean whatever scores you ended the previous book with is what you should begin with, or does it mean you already have your initial scores and should start with those? Seeing as how I finished the previous adventure with scores of Endurance = 1 and Willpower = 0 (and as you are forced to use all your Willpower at the end of the last book, anyone bringing their character over will have a 0 score here), having to use these scores to begin the second adventure seems quite dubious. You are given a +10 Willpower boost to start this book, but that still only leaves you with 10 of these, and seeing as how there are numerous choices to make as you go through the adventure where all options require several Willpower points each, Im not even sure completing the quest with 10 Willpower points is possible. I therefore have to assume then that you are to be reset to your initial scores for these stats, but if anyone disagrees or if I have flat out missed something I would love to hear about it in the comments. 

The first half of the adventure has some interesting set pieces that you need to make your way through, including escaping a group of Shadakine warriors and their hunting dogs in a swamp, aiding a rebel attack that is seeking to free a group of slaves, and then helping those same rebels in retaking the Shadakine held city of Karnali. Most of these provide several options to try, and while just using common sense will likely see you winning through them without much difficulty, it can be fun to experiment and see which choices might end up rewarding you with a useful item. However, there is a very disappointing choice that occurs once you manage to lose the Shadakine hunters in the swamp and proceed to make your way towards the city of Karnali which lies on the swamp's northernmost edge. You are asked if you wish to take a more direct, but dangerous route, straight for the city, or if you wish take a more circuitous but safer path that bypasses the more deadlier parts of the swamp. This initially had me thinking there would be two unique routes I could experiment with and that each would be involved and interesting in different ways. This turned out to be far from the case. There is an encounter with a Swamp Giant along one of the paths, but other than that almost nothing of interest occurs on either of them. Both routes are also extremely short, and in fact what is supposed to be the longer path actually seems like it's over in just a few sections!   

Once you successfully aid the rebels in retaking the city of Karnali, you then proceed to the second half of the adventure which consists of an overland trip to the titular Forbidden City, passage through the city, then on into Desolation Valley where we hope to find the Nightmare Gate. The overland trip is fairly short, seeing you have to think your way past some Deathgaunts, before you come to the highlight of the adventure which is the sequence that takes place once you enter the Forbidden City itself. Here you must first make your way through the streets and dilapidated buildings, avoiding "wretches" the whole way who seek to overwhelm you and then presumably rob you (and maybe even eat you as well). Once you find your way inside the city palace, you need to navigate the halls and get past a gruesome banquet encounter with an insane king and his even insaner retinue. The thought of the king's advisers and followers performing a courtly dance to no music I found incredibly creepy. From here we make our way through secret passages and tunnels, picking up some incredibly useful items as we go, and this whole sequence is entertaining. We eventually find an exit that takes us at last into Desolation Valley, where we hope to find the Nightmare Gate. 

Unfortunately, this final sequence isn't the best. Upon lowering ourselves into some catacombs where Urik predicts the Nightmare Gate will be, we are told to prepare to meet our enemy, even though Grey Star would not be expecting any final enemies here would he? I guess he was using his Prophecy skill without knowing it though, because there actually is an enemy we must defeat before reaching the Nightmare Gate. This enemy is the Kleasa from the previous book, and despite how dangerous this creature was made out to be in that adventure (backed up by its very high stats), the method by which you defeat it here is somewhat comical. I mean, if you picked up a magical rod earlier in the adventure, how would you wield it? You would throw the freaking thing of course! I was half expecting the Kleasa to duck, kind of like Superman letting the bullets bounce off him but then ducking when the thug throws the gun at him out of desperation. The means by which this approach actually ends up working seems just as silly as the thought process itself. Still, once this is done we are ready to enter the Nightmare Gate and this is where book 2 ends.  

As with the first adventure, this book sure isn't shy about providing you with more travelling companions, which is already proving to be a staple of this series. In addition to your starting companion, Urik the shaman, near the halfway point of the book you also find yourself joined by two more characters. These being Samu, a former slave you freed during the rebel attack outside Karnali, and Hugi, a thief and member of the rebels who wishes to accompany you to The Forbidden City in search of treasure. I didn't really find either of these characters to be very interesting,  but in an incredibly strange twist, all 3 of your companions make it to the end of the adventure alive! Well, at least I assume Samu and Hugi survive. The book ends with Grey Star and Urik descending into some catacombs and approaching the Nightmare Gate, while Samu and Hugi presumably are providing cover above ground against some large Wyrms that attacked your party on the surface. Come to think of it, Samu and Hugi are probably goners and we just haven't been told yet. 

In addition, I had to include an image of the American cover for this book. Egads! This could very well be the worst depiction of a hero on the cover of a book that I have come across so far. Not that it's necessarily the case in this example (this cover is just really bad regardless), but it's becoming clear from the book covers of some of the various series I've played that the US editions of gamebooks seem to be aimed at a MUCH younger audience than their British counterparts (the US edition book covers from the Golden Dragon series surely must be the most obvious example of this). Personally I chalk this up to American publishers lumping all gamebooks in together with the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure series, regardless of their narrative content or the complexity of their game design. This seems like a huge missed opportunity to market these books at the correct audience, but Id love to get the story from the authors themselves as to if they had any say over these covers. 

If you ever wanted to play a gamebook as Elvis with a mullet and crack people with your microphone stand....look no further. 

Ranking: A slight step up from the previous book. The Willpower issues that marred that adventure still remain to some degree, but are lessened here by not providing umpteen Willpower stat boosts and Tarama seeds (although you likely still have several of these seeds left over from book 1). The writing here also seems a bit better than the first book and I didn't notice quite as many editing errors. The adventure isn't really anything special, but does provide some at least interesting sequences and situations. 

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3. Beyond the Nightmare Gate - Score = 5.5    Tier = OK

Attempts to beat: 5

A decent enough story, but where the heck is the gameplay? Once again we pick up immediately where the previous book left off, having left our travelling companion from that adventure, Urik the shaman, behind as we enter the Nightmare Gate and travel to the Daziarn plane where we hope to find the Moonstone. This series really doesn't want you to take many steps without a companion though as we immediately acquire another one, and lo and behold it's Tanith, the young female witch-in-training and one of our companions from the first book that we thought had died. Apparently she had just been trapped in the Daziarn plane by the Kleasa in that adventure and not killed. She is thus motivated to help us obtain the Moonstone and then escape the Daziarn plane with us. So to begin, we find ourselves whisked through a long tunnel, and deposited onto a plain (a plain within a plane?) made of clouds, with a large Crystal Tower in the distance. Not having anything else to try, we begin trekking towards the tower, hoping that its inhabitants can aid us in locating the Moonstone, and thus begins this quest. 

The opening sequence whereby you need to gain access to the Crystal Tower is probably one of the better moments of the book, but that's not really saying much. After having to first solve a puzzle about how to get the door of the tower to even appear, you then need to make a choice from 5 different creature shaped keys, with only 1 of the keys being the one that will open the door, while the others will call their respective creature to appear and you then must deal with them. Of course, once you know what the correct key is, you will then pick it first time every attempt after that, but for the first playthrough anyway this contributed to making this choice quite tense as I wondered if I had selected the correct key or would need to fight some powerful beast. The adventure starts to go downhill after this though, with a pretty simple floor puzzle following, then on to some long sections of exposition before being given the big means of transport of the book, the Ethetron, a flying sailing ship (complete with bat wings as a sail) powered by the magical mists of the Daziarn plane. There is one of those annoying "choice, but not a choice" moments here where you are given the option of aiding the residents of the tower or not. But it doesn't matter which you pick, either way you end up going to the same section in a couple of page turns and are forced to help them. 

Once you acquire the fantastical Ethetron, the adventure starts to fly past fast and furious. We take a quick trip to the city of the Elessin (to complete the side quest for the residents of the tower that provided us with the Ethetron), then another quick trip to the Paradox Realm where we get to meet the Chaos Master. I presume this is the same Chaos Master that will give us a ridiculous amount of trouble in "The Prisoners of Time" from the main Lone Wolf series, but thankfully we aren't required to fight him here. It's a shame Grey Star couldn't have found a way to destroy this guy right here and now as it may have saved the main series from one of its biggest mistakes. We are also introduced to the Jahksa here, an evil doppelganger of Grey Star sent by Shasarak to presumably hunt down and assassinate us. After this, it's on to a nondescript village to pick up some information about how to enter the realm containing the Moonstone, then on to said realm which appears to be in some sort of void akin to outer space, where we have our final confrontation with the Jahksa, and upon his defeat we finally acquire the Moonstone. 

Something that struck me while playing was that there seems to be some issues with the setting of Lone Wolf books within the Daziarn plane. We see some of the same issues crop up later in the 1987 book "The Prisoners of Time" from the main series. Both that book, and "Beyond the Nightmare Gate" have long stretches of little to no gameplay, and are filled with dense exposition sections. Unlike the main series book though, here there is all kinds of random stuff going on, and while entertaining, the lack of any sort of consistency from location to location can make the stakes involved for the whole experience seem rather low, as anything can seemingly happen at any time, and it doesn't really need to make sense because you are on a different plane of existence. This just seems like an excuse for the author not to have to follow any narrative rules, and can just throw out any situation that pops into their head, which is a bit cheap.

I do have to give at least some credit for the Jahksa, the evil Grey Star double created by Shasarak. There is something about a doppelganger of a hero, except that is evil to the core that I have always found fascinating. A character having to fight their double might not necessarily be something we haven't seen before, but the manner in which the Jahksa was described was very sinister and effective, even though he apparently doesn't have Grey Star's intelligence, as some of the actions he takes are somewhat idiotic. The final confrontation against the Jahksa at the end of the book also contains a huge blunder, as one of the options in dealing with him leads directly to section 350, which we know from previous Lone Wolf books is almost certainly the victory section. Not really much of a decision to be made as to what to do here then!  

As to the gameplay, the shocking lack of dice rolling in the adventure makes this book solely one of the "find the correct route" variety, which puts a lot of pressure on the quest to come up with interesting puzzles and situations. And on that front, I'm not sure it really succeeds. You are often given multiple options to choose from, and if you pick wrong, you die. Thankfully, most of these choices do involve using common sense to get you through, but what I found frustrating is that many times any attempt of experimentation or exploration on the players part results in instant death. One of the exceptions to this being the sequence with the various creature keys mentioned earlier. It's no surprise that one of the better sequences of the book is one that allows for experimentation without causing instant failure for wanting to try different options. 

On my winning playthrough, I made it all the way to the climax of this book not having to fight anything (in dice combat anyway), and I believe I only made one roll at all (to determine if I took any damage when I landed the Ethetron) before the very last sequence. Heck, despite encountering him several different times, you aren't even required to battle the Jahksa in the traditional sense, only having to choose from among different options when confronting him. What a waste! I was eventually required to battle some Chaos-birds (not the most interesting of opponents to say the least) at the end of the book, but if I had the magical power of Elementalism (the only power I don't have) I wouldn't even have had to have done that! This book can therefore I believe be beaten with no combats, and I'm not sure what author Ian Page was thinking on this front. 

Ranking: The story is mostly entertaining, and the writing is yet another small step up from the previous book, but a severe lack of gameplay seriously hampers this adventure. I suppose that's one way around some of the vague rules of the series....just have them not be required! Also, I mentioned in my review of book #1 how much I enjoy travelling the land of Magnamund, but I think I can safely say that doesn't include the Daziarn plane (at least how it appears in this adventure) as it strays too far from what makes Magnamund so atmospheric and such a pleasure to traverse and explore. There isn't anything I would call "bad" at work here, but there isn't much I would call "good" either. As such, it is the weakest adventure of the series so far and squarely on the low end of the OK tier.  

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4. War of the Wizards - Score = 7.2    Tier = Good

Attempts to beat: 4

Well, for the most part, that was an improvement! Yet again we pick up right at the moment where the previous book ended, which makes this series in essence one big adventure divvied up into four installments. We open here still within the Daziarn plane having just acquired the Moonstone and with Tanith still at our side, and are ready to have the Shianti send us back to "the real world" as the book calls it. (Wait, so the Daziarn plane isn't real?) The Shianti oblige by transporting us to the Lissan Plain back on Magnamund. From this desolate and near empty plain, we must make our way south to warn the Freedom Guild (the rebels who we aided in retaking the city of Karnali back in book #2) of the impending attack from Shasarak's army of Shadakine warriors. The Shianti have also provided us with a means of instantly teleporting to Shasarak's location when we feel we are finally ready to confront him, although we are warned not to do this too soon as Shasarak is too powerful at the moment for us to face him and he must be weakened first, presumably by defeating his army. So it's a two part quest then, find some way to defeat Shasarak's large army, then defeat the Wytch-King himself in a final duel. 

One of the more notable things going on with this adventure, and something that makes it quite unique from the others in the series, is that thanks to obtaining the Moonstone, our Grey Star character has now become far more powerful. This is evident in a couple of ways:

- There is a whole new set of 6 spells! Of these, we can select 5 more to add to the ones we already have from the previous books. These are basically souped-up versions of the 6 spells available at the beginning of the first three books, and it's a little strange to allow you to take 5 of 6. I mean if that's what you are going to do why not just let the player take all 6? I actually think it might have been better to go the other way however, and allow the player to select only 2 or 3 of these new spells, as more careful choice would then have to be made and it could open more opportunities for trial and error. Regardless, Im not sure it ultimately matters as from what I can tell, the difference between the basic spells and their souped-up versions stems mostly from the latter costing less Willpower points to use. And this is hardly a problem anyway because.....

- Our Endurance and Willpower scores have been increased to much higher starting values, with a base Endurance of 30 and a base Willpower of 50(!), plus whatever we had left over at the end of book #3 which can be added to this total. This initially makes it seem like you will be using your Willpower points left, right and centre as you proceed through the adventure, but this doesn't really turn out to be the case. My Willpower points never dipped to an even remotely low level and there are even a few increases to be found near the end of the adventure before you confront Shasarak, I guess to make sure you are fully powered up when facing him. Unfortunately, this removes some strategy that the book could have contained had you been provided less of these points at the beginning. Still, the Moonstone IS supposed to be a ridiculously powerful artifact, so it would make sense that Grey Star would see some large benefits for obtaining and wielding it. However, it probably does contribute to making the adventure a bit too easy.   

Unlike the last adventure, this story contains quite a few avenues for experimentation, particularly in the opening act of the book where we can either explore an abandoned ziggurat (a massive stone structure) or travel to the shores of Lake Dolani, before we reunite with Samu, our friend and companion from book #2. Samu is now the King of what remains of his nomadic people, the Masbate, and is eager to aid us in overthrowing Shasarak once and for all. Both routes in the early going are interesting and I found myself going back and forth between them with each playthrough to try new things. The exploration of the ziggurat is especially well done thanks to the encounter with the Demon Horde that manage to enter through the gap we leave in the door upon our entrance. 

I have to say, I found this adventure contains another top notch creation in the form of the above mentioned Demon Horde. This is a group of demons brought forth many years ago by Shasarak to wipe out the Masbate tribes of the Lissan Plain who had been causing him so much grief. At that time the Demon Horde numbered in the many thousands, but have since been reduced in number to the hundreds. While individually they are not demons in the typical sense as they tend to be on the smaller side, their strength comes from their large numbers. These numbers may have decreased over the years but they still count in the hundreds and they can overwhelm most adventurers or groups they encounter. (I envision them moving across the desolate plains in a cloud of dust like a massive Tasmanian Devil). They are fantastically described by author Ian Page as disgusting abominations against nature, with each demon having a unique combination of limbs, eyes, tentacles, etc fused into a grotesque shape. The encounter with them inside the ziggurat in particular is well described and very tense, and made me feel like I was inside a horror movie. They also have access to a portal out on the plains that allows them to briefly escape to another dimension should they ever be in danger of defeat, which has kept the Masbate from finding and destroying them. 

Tanith, the young witch-in-training who was our companion last book, is with us again for the first half of this adventure. She stays with us right up until the point that Grey Star makes one of the coldest actions that he would make in the whole series, when he sends her off to meet her doom. I understand why Grey Star needed to distance himself from Tanith (because her former mentor, the evil witch Mother Magri, could sense her presence and may thus be able to locate Grey Star for Shasarak), but the way Grey Star handles this problem displays the ice cold blood in his veins as he doesnt seem to try to help her out in the slightest. I mean, he could have tried hiding her, or sent her to seek sanctuary with one of his allies (the Shianti spring to mind) but nope, I guess she was just "excess baggage"!   

At this point, the plan Grey Star comes up with to eliminate both the Demon Horde and the Shadakine army in one stroke is pure genius madness. After destroying the Demon Horde portal, the Horde become so enraged that they follow Grey Star as he flees back towards the Shadakine army that is marching on the rebel held city of Karnali. With the Demon Horde thus in hot pursuit, Grey Star can have them slam into the rear of the Shadakine army and watch the two forces wear each other down. The Shadakine army is much larger and ultimately wins out over the Demon Horde, but this bold move whittles down their numbers and allows time for the Masbate to join up with the rebel army. A lot of things needed to go right for this plan to work, including some truly extraordinary timing, but it felt like such a badass maneuver that I was more than willing to go along with it. After this, we finally succeed in defeating the rest of the Shadakine army thanks to some timely intervention by the Kazim, large stone creatures who had their hearts stolen by Shasarak (and not because Shasarak is such a dreamboat, but their actual hearts) and they have been hankering a long time for some payback. With that part of the quest complete, all that remains is the final showdown with Shasarak himself. 

Big mistake pissing off the stone creatures....IT'S CLOBBERIN TIME!!!!

The big showdown against Shasarak is a fitting conclusion to the series and is one of the highlights of the adventure. Shasarak himself has very high stats, but this can be mitigated by various Combat Skill enhancing items that can be picked up earlier in the adventure. The acquiring of the Phinomeal pods in particular are near essential if you expect to close the Combat Skill gap you otherwise have with him. Unfortunately, the Tarama seeds make another appearance here as several more of them can be acquired, which means you have nothing to lose by attempting to use all your Willpower in one shot, thus effectively nuking Shasarak. Still, the encounter is well described and it's not just the Wytch-King himself that makes the final confrontation so entertaining, as while Shasarak has been the villain that has been built up over the course of the series, I believe it's the extremely powerful and evil demon Agarash that steals the show as the main baddie in this book. There is a very good encounter with him on the Lissan Plain as you attempt to close the portal that the Demon Horde routinely uses to escape the retribution of the Masbate tribe. And you get to encounter him again during this final fight with Shasarak, as Agarash is present and watching over the duel, waiting for his opportunity to be able to return to the land of Magnamund should events unfold in a certain way. As a massive Lovecraftian-sized creature (he could even be a god), he is a far greater threat than Shasarak and it's fitting that he must be kept in check should we wish to be victorious.

To round out the positives of the adventure, the quality of writing in this book continues the upward trend of the prose throughout the series and is clearly the best of the 4 books. Passages such as "the eyes beckon with a hypnotic stare, a cloaked welcome to hell's darkest and most desolate chamber" help greatly with the immersion factor. While still not close to the level of writing shown by gamebook authors such as Jamie Thomson, Mark Smith, or Dave Morris, author Ian Page has shown considerable growth as the series as gone on, much like Joe Dever did with the main Lone Wolf books.

However, despite many good things the book has going for it, some of the messy design elements that have plagued the books all throughout the series still have not been cleaned up. You are sometimes given contradictory information, such as being told that your herb pouch holds 8 items maximum during the rules section, then later being told it only holds 6 items maximum. The inventory system overall is a mess really, which is a real puzzler as this element was done so well in the main series and was one of its big strengths. Here though, it's not always clear if some things have to be carried in your herb pouch or your backpack or can be carried in either, and sometimes even how many slots certain items should take up is left vague. And surely your backpack is much larger than your herb pouch, and therefore the "slots" should be able to hold more? And what is the point of keeping track of your Nobles (money) in the series? After book #1, I don't think anything involving the currency ever came up again, and even in that adventure I can only recall them being useful in one situation. Also, while there actually are a fair share of combats in this book (unlike the previous adventure), the plethora of Willpower points you are granted at the beginning of the adventure, along with the ability to once again acquire more of those game-breaking Tarama seeds, will see you easily obliterating your enemies in a round or two. The only chance any of your opponents has is if they outclass you enough on the Combat Skill front to give them a chance to one-hit kill you should you get a particularly unlucky low roll. 

We are also told that defeating Shasarak and closing the final portal to prevent Agarash being unleashed onto the world costs us the last of our remaining Willpower and Endurance points. Wait a minute, the last of our Endurance points? So did we die in the process of achieving our goal? What an awesome ending! Well, no actually. The adventure chickens out on this idea as we go on to the victory section to discover we have somehow survived despite losing all our Endurance points, and boy, the complete schmaltz this book ends with is ridiculous. We awaken inside a tower within the newly liberated city of Shadaki to surprisingly see all our friends standing over us, including Tanith who somehow managed to escape the certain doom we sent her off to earlier, and after what happened in book #1 (and indeed what happens in most of the main Lone Wolf series), having our companions all make it through alive to the end of the adventure is what I call subverting expectations! Then though, it starts to get extremely silly. We jump out of bed and move immediately to the balcony where a huge crowd is gathered and greets us with wild cheering. I guess they had been waiting there for us to awaken this whole time? Oh, and we then learn that we have now been made the new ruler of the former Shadakine Empire and that all people across the land praise us "for their faith and trust in your wisdom and courage is unshakable."  Not bad for a teenager. Why do gamebook authors not seem willing to sacrifice the hero at the end of the story? A hero giving his life to achieve his ultimate goal and save the world makes for a much more epic feeling conclusion and actually makes their accomplishments even more impressive due to the self sacrifice involved. And yes, I would have felt this way even when playing gamebooks as a child.  

Ranking: Easily the best book in the series, but could have been so much better if the sloppy game design shown throughout the whole range had ever been addressed and if the ending had been somewhat less saccharine. It's perhaps a bit on the easy side, and most of the combats are "flawless victories" for your character, but I found it a quite enjoyable ride nonetheless, offering enough things to experiment with to keep it fresh and interesting during my playthroughs. It's something I've found to be rare so far, but it's always nice to have a series go out with its best book and this one accomplishes that, even if it's merely good as opposed to great.