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Post by petch on Jan 6, 2022 22:57:43 GMT
This is that awkward outlier poll that I mentioned at the start of this whole thing. As Jamie Thomson is the only FF author to date to have collaboratively written with two different writing partners, this is the only poll which will feature the works of three authors: Thomson himself, as well as his co-writers Mark Smith and Dave Morris.
Poll closes at 10pm Sunday 9th.
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 7, 2022 9:05:26 GMT
TOD wins on atmosphere.
SOS wins on gameplay.
KOTL wins on being easy, accessible and RPG-like.
All three win on world-building.
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Post by terrysalt on Jan 7, 2022 9:25:49 GMT
Pure nostalgia vote but I read Sword of the Samurai so many times as a kid. Talisman is good too but I don't really remember much from Keep.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,472
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jan 7, 2022 9:57:09 GMT
Talisman for me. The whole Greyguilds section is brilliant - rich world-building, a variety of options, great characters. The beginning and end of the book aren't anything special but they're still decent.
Sword is very atmospheric, but it has a bunch of niggles that let it down imo: one of the skills is borderline useless; the two paths add to replayability but make the book feel short; one path is too linear, the other too unforgiving; the Tourney of Planes is an awesome idea but as far as I can tell there is no logic as to which allies you should use; and the finale is well structured but feels a bit of an anticlimax.
Keep is well written and has loads of good ideas but none of them really work unfortunately.
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Post by nathanh on Jan 7, 2022 23:35:41 GMT
Keep and Talisman both score very highly on my list, although I have recently been reading Talisman again and I think I might have overrated it slightly, so I'll go with Keep. Both very nice books though.
For Sword I don't find the setting particularly interesting, and the structure is also not very exciting, but it is reasonably fun to solve. It gets an average score.
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Post by The Count on Jan 8, 2022 20:12:25 GMT
All three are very similar
Talisman has an amazing section once it gets going, but it falls away at the end
Sword also gets off to a strong start but again the ending is not as good as the rest
Keep has the ridiculously short path effectively wasting what turns out to be the wonderful side quests, the stupid in jokes and making you a bit of an idiot at the vampire inn
Overall, I prefer Keep despite the faults as it is more consistent and you can take a number of paths through it
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Post by schlendrian on Jan 9, 2022 15:22:53 GMT
Going by entirely objective criteria, Sword hands down has the most Samurai. Talisman comes a close second because of the dinosaurs, though.
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 9, 2022 16:11:00 GMT
Going by entirely objective criteria, Sword hands down has the most Samurai. Talisman comes a close second because of the dinosaurs, though.
I don't recall there being dinosaurs in Talisman? Did you mean Robot Commando or Portal Of Evil, or was there a part I missed/forgot? I'll grant you Talisman has a Dragon which is pretty cool!
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Post by a moderator on Jan 9, 2022 16:36:22 GMT
There's a Triceratops-versus-Tyrannosaurus fight in Talisman, starting in section 4. It's on a path that avoids the Hogmen, though, so encountering it denies you the opportunity to create a shield from Dragon scales, and you'll wind up roasted and given the post-Greyguilds restart option.
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Post by vastariner on Jan 9, 2022 21:33:04 GMT
Talisman of Death; awesome cover and an absorbing world to explore. Maybe limited replay value because you constantly get the chance to re-set, theoretically you could go on to infinity on initial play.
It is intriguingly complementary to WOTT, in that you can never quite get to kill Cassandra or Tyutchev, and you don't get to go to Greyguilds in WOTT. Also came as a bit of a surprise how different Time was in WOTT than in FF.
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Post by petch on Jan 9, 2022 22:40:08 GMT
The two Smith / Thomson collabs proved the most popular choices here. Not much between them in the end, but it is Talisman of Death that goes through to the final.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Jan 16, 2022 17:06:53 GMT
Sword is very atmospheric I've never forgotten the atmosphere on the approach to the village of the charcoal burners and what then happens in that village. Atmospheric, horrific and memorable. the Tourney of Planes is an awesome idea but as far as I can tell there is no logic as to which allies you should use If there are clues, I've not worked them out either. I don't mind a game of 'rock-paper-scissors' but I do have to know the rules of the game beforehand, otherwise the whole thing is a stab in the dark. |
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 16, 2022 18:19:30 GMT
Sword is very atmospheric I've never forgotten the atmosphere on the approach to the village of the charcoal burners and what then happens in that village. Atmospheric, horrific and memorable. the Tourney of Planes is an awesome idea but as far as I can tell there is no logic as to which allies you should use If there are clues, I've not worked them out either. I don't mind a game of 'rock-paper-scissors' but I do have to know the rules of the game beforehand, otherwise the whole thing is a stab in the dark. I'm not sure myself but this is what I think about the allies: I thought it's best to use all the allies? The logic being the things they want match their personalities and priorities. |
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Jan 16, 2022 18:30:21 GMT
I'm not sure you understood our point, Charles X. - paragraph 138 is the start of the battle and assume you have all the allies available on one of the paths... talk us through how you work out who to deploy against what enemy...
I see no actual logic to the choices you have to make. WHY does the tatsu fail against the giant toad? WHY does the phoenix fail? I thought toads would hate extreme heat and flame... none of it makes a lot of sense. It's all guesswork.
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 16, 2022 18:31:43 GMT
Keep is well written and has loads of good ideas but none of them really work unfortunately. The other problem about Keep is the (low) difficulty level, together with the fact you can beat Lord Mortis without throwing dice. It's a superficial gamebook which does a few things right on paper, but isn't half as well-designed as it appears to be. I was surprised Morris's only FF gamebook was placed so low in Wilf's gamebook ranking, but I think that's where it deserves to be. |
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 16, 2022 18:43:36 GMT
I'm not sure you understood our point, Charles X. - paragraph 138 is the start of the battle and assume you have all the allies available on one of the paths... talk us through how you work out who to deploy against what enemy... I see no actual logic to the choices you have to make. WHY does the tatsu fail against the giant toad? WHY does the phoenix fail? I thought toads would hate extreme heat and flame... none of it makes a lot of sense. It's all guesswork. It made sense to me at the time, unfortunately I do not have SOTS anymore and have not played it for a bit, however I think there are reasons given in the text which I found satisfactory. I recall often working it out through process of elimination, using guesswork about which ally the enemy might have a hope of survival against, compared with which ally I imagine might be most effective ('Achilles Heel'). A Toad comes from all sorts of environments, a giant, magic Toad could magnify that advantage many times over. |
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,472
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jan 16, 2022 20:41:26 GMT
The other problem about Keep is the (low) difficulty level, together with the fact you can beat Lord Mortis without throwing dice. It's a superficial gamebook which does a few things right on paper, but isn't half as well-designed as it appears to be. I was surprised Morris's only FF gamebook was placed so low in Wilf's gamebook, but I think that's where it deserves to be. Yeah, the idea of a book where powerful characters can race to the end while weaker characters need to do subquests to power up first is good in theory but many of the subquests are too hard for weaker characters leaving them pointless. Alarm was a good idea too but it's barely used. As for Resolve, not sure how the authors didn't realise it would become a formality after a couple of rolls but it should certainly been picked up in playtesting at any rate. |
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Post by terrysalt on Jan 16, 2022 21:32:47 GMT
I'm not sure you understood our point, Charles X. - paragraph 138 is the start of the battle and assume you have all the allies available on one of the paths... talk us through how you work out who to deploy against what enemy... I see no actual logic to the choices you have to make. WHY does the tatsu fail against the giant toad? WHY does the phoenix fail? I thought toads would hate extreme heat and flame... none of it makes a lot of sense. It's all guesswork. The only part of it I could maybe see a case for is that the fire ally defeats the stick insect. Even that is a bit of a stretch but I could see someone figuring it out. The other 2 are a mystery to me. I think you just need to trial and error it. |
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Post by schlendrian on Jan 16, 2022 22:06:58 GMT
I couldn't find any logic either. Iirc, Thomson has a very similar set-up in the 4th Fabled Lands. A wizard duel, where you can cast walls of either thorns, fire and water. There, he errs on the side of the duel being trivially easy, as you know beforehand, what wall your enemy will cast, and you don't need much brainpower to figure out the correct counter.
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Post by vastariner on Jan 17, 2022 7:34:06 GMT
I don't think there's meant to be "logic" in there that you can work out; it's simply that the toad is better at being waterproof than the tatsu/phoenix are at setting fire to damp things. But obviously the hydra is way more powerful than the toad and adapted to the same environment.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Jan 17, 2022 15:49:14 GMT
Storm from X-Men murmurs to herself while playing Sword of the Samurai.
"...what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else."
*Sends Eleanor the Enchantress in against Graalsch. Sees her get eaten*
"Huh."
There's no logic to it. Especially as we're told that you manage to slay it personally if you run out of allies. Even assuming it's fire-proof (which is hard to guess as toads are not), the tatsu has talons and teeth at least as potent as the tiger, and is presumably (?) much bigger. And can fly.
Also, Graalsch eats the whole Golden Company if you send them in! The book mutters about them using 'flat swords and maces' (unlike your samurai character) but come on.
I don't resent this all that much as the battle is fun and appeals to my geeky sense of finding the right neat solution to each problem in turn, but it could have been handled better to reduce the 'guess the answer in my head or die because I say so' factor. Maybe Smith and Thomson just really love toads.
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Post by schlendrian on Jan 17, 2022 16:24:03 GMT
A redeeming factor is that you don't automatically die if you get to the tournament with all allies but no clue of the right order. You will get the toad right no matter what and then at least get the chance to defeat the rest with your sword.
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Post by a moderator on Jan 17, 2022 17:16:37 GMT
A redeeming factor is that you don't automatically die if you get to the tournament with all allies but no clue of the right order. You will get the toad right no matter what and then at least get the chance to defeat the rest with your sword. But if you lack the ally required to kill the toad, you are forced to waste your other allies against it, and then automatically die. |
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Post by CharlesX on Jan 17, 2022 18:05:06 GMT
So it truthfully is just me who gets the logic in the choice of allies? If only I still had the book here with me.
In defence of Sword, does it help to think of your enemies and allies as magical, super beings who have powers more than normal for their species?
The puzzle is difficult, but to me, it wasn't exactly 3 2 1.
It really really doesn't matter, because Sword is still an amazing gamebook.
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Post by bloodbeasthandler on Jan 17, 2022 18:46:58 GMT
So it truthfully is just me who gets the logic in the choice of allies? I'm afraid it does look like that's the case! In defence of Sword, does it help to think of your enemies and allies as magical, super beings who have powers more than normal for their species? No. We all already know that. The puzzle is difficult, but to me, it wasn't exactly 3 2 1.  Ted and Dusty agree with you. They say you actually had a chance to work out their cryptic clues, and they (along with the rest of us) are keen for you to tell us how you figured out a big cat beats a toad when a dragon, or a sorceress firing out lightning bolts, or a fire-covered bird of prey does not.  Sword is still an amazing gamebook. Yep, it's still a good one! |
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