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Post by petch on Jul 17, 2023 11:31:07 GMT
63 - Sky Lord
Prior to starting your adventure proper at reference 1, the early indications bode well for Sky Lord. The rules preamble sets the scene with a nice little potted history of the game's setting, and even, unusually for FF, gives you some background on your character, giving you a sense of place and purpose. The Mission Background adds some political intrigue and fleshes out its principal antagonist, so you have some understanding of their character and motivations - again, not always the norm in FF and a very welcome touch. And then? Then someone gets a pineapple surgically grafted to their head.
Make no mistake, Sky Lord is silly. Deeply, profoundly silly. After those opening sections, there's a major tonal shift and Allen keeps the wackiness coming more or less throughout. Sometimes it works. I couldn't stop myself from grinning at the bandolier-sporting cosmic jellyfish who talk like Mexican banditos, or a craft operated by the most abstruse control system ever devised, by squeezing jellies, biting chew-bulbs or screaming as loud as you can. Sometimes it doesn't, like the truly headscratching pitch/roll/yaw space battle. And sometimes it feels like Allen is making things up on the spot with no regard for self-editing ('That is easy! A backwards time-loop, with half a twist, should do the trick!'). Clearly, it's not to everyone's taste, but at least it is trying to be inventive even if it doesn't always work, and me personally, I'd rather take quirky and different over bland and safe any day.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,462
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jul 17, 2023 11:54:42 GMT
I generally like the silliness of Sky Lord. If only it was more fun to play.
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Post by CharlesX on Jul 17, 2023 11:56:28 GMT
I'd forgotten Sky Lord's author was Martin Allen - a bit like the late Irwin Allen who did a lot of very campy, very crappy, and rather fun sci-fi and fantasy, Lost In Space being the chief one. But that's just a coincidence. Next up - whether Mark Smith was remotely related to the author of The Book Of Mormon, Joseph Smith.
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Post by CharlesX on Jul 17, 2023 11:57:46 GMT
I generally like the silliness of Sky Lord. If only it was more fun to play. Agreed - if they even just altered the ship-to-ship combat difficulty I would probably put Sky Lord about average instead of well below that.
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Post by CharlesX on Jul 17, 2023 16:15:51 GMT
Thanks for the kind words guys, I'm enjoying doing this (but I am worried it will only be a matter of time before I run out of interesting things to say and start repeating myself!). I'm very happy for people to disagree with my rankings, it's all about personal preference after all and the world (not to mention this forum) would be a pretty boring place if we were all in agreement. I do feel bad about having so many of Sir Ian's books so low as he's given so much to the series over the years, not just by contributing gamebooks but by his ongoing work to keep the brand alive. But as I've said before, I've a massive affection for the series and there are things I like about even these books towards the bottom of the table, and fortunately Livingstone is prolific enough that we'll be seeing plenty of his stuff closer to the top end too. But on that note... 67 - Blood of the ZombiesStepping back a bit as I missed this..
If difficulty is a big issue as it is for most I'm wondering whether the App version with its medium difficulty setting sufficiently rectifies this issue. My understanding is it is seriously inadequate and about as hard as Spellbreaker without effectively cheating by using bookmarks.
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Post by petch on Jul 17, 2023 16:53:07 GMT
62 - Crystal of Storms
There's much to admire here; in a series that had been going (albeit sporadically) for the best part of forty years, nailing a setting and atmosphere that feels genuinely fresh is a challenge to say the least, but Pratchett did just that with her steampunky floating kingdom. It's presented with whimsical charm, and the climactic battle against the war golem is a cracker (there's evidence of Pratchett's experience in video game design here I think, with the encounter taking shape over several boss fight phases).
What jarred a bit with me was the juvenile tone. I don't mean juvenile as in puerile (which, as I've established from my comments on The Gates of Death and Sky Lord, I don't really have a problem with, manchild that I am), I mean in that it was very obviously aimed at children. Now this is in no way a fair criticism of Pratchett, who was doubtless writing to a brief and keeps her tone consistent throughout, but it's more one of the series as a whole that sometimes seemed inconsistent with which age range in the children's market it was aiming for; this came across as very out of kilter when compared to the much more sophisticated language employed by the likes of Jon Green or Paul Mason in their books. Something that irked me where blame could be aimed at the author though was the sheer number of wasted references used in basic question-and-answer conversations. As your character works for law enforcement, this mechanic could have been used more creatively to extract key information on your quest out of your subjects (Cracker the gamebook!), but as it is, you're just presented with the option to ask one of the questions in the same list one after the other until you've gotten everything you want or got bored, and worse still Pratchett repeats this same process multiple times over the course of the book, and none of the info you can glean is especially useful in gameplay terms.
61 - Revenge of the Vampire
I like Keith Martin, me. There's an argument to be made that he understood the gameplay aspect of gamebooks better than any other of the series' contributors, with his use of puzzles, hub-and-spoke approach to design and plethora of combat-modifying equipment on offer encouraging replay so you can try exploring in a different order, to see if the knowledge or powerups you can pick up on different routes changes any outcomes or simply makes other, more formidable parts of the adventure more manageable.
Thing is, by this point his distinctive style and approach, which felt fresh and innovative when he first started to employ it back with Vault of the Vampire, had all started to feel very overfamiliar. You knew what you'd be getting with a Keith Martin book by now; a long, complex journey to a big souped up final boss with inflated Skill and Stamina scores, and your magic swords and the like to collect on the way to help you overcome said fight. This is still a fun adventure, but its been-there-done-that feel isn't helped by facing off against foes you've overcome previously in the series, not to mention its notorious glitches and bugs.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,462
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jul 17, 2023 19:42:23 GMT
I mean in that it was very obviously aimed at children. Now this is in no way a fair criticism of Pratchett, who was doubtless writing to a brief and keeps her tone consistent throughout, but it's more one of the series as a whole that sometimes seemed inconsistent with which age range in the children's market it was aiming for; this came across as very out of kilter when compared to the much more sophisticated language employed by the likes of Jon Green or Paul Mason in their books. From Scholastic's point of view, those books are no longer part of FF. If you consider Ian Livingstone's recent offerings, they also seem more aimed at children than his Puffin books - it seems to be Scholastic's vision for the series. In fact, I find Ian worse on that score than Pratchett as it feels a bit like he's talking down to the reader which I think Pratchett largely avoids. I think you hit the nail on the head with the question asking though. It's pretty dull. There's also no real gameplay reason to uncover the mystery anyway. In fact, you're probably better not bothering. Revenge sees Keith add one aspect not seen in his previous books - abrupt and unfair instant deaths. I dunno what he was thinking of but killing players instantly for seemingly harmless actions like opening a door was not a positive addition to the Martin formula. I do think Revenge has a good atmosphere though and manages to feel a bit less mechanical than some of his other books.
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Post by vastariner on Jul 17, 2023 23:10:27 GMT
Given that I bloody love The Fast Show and was not enchanted by Gates of Death, then almost surely not. Do you . . . like . . . gamebooks, Ted? I wouldn't know about that, Sir. This week, oi arr bin mostly playin Keep of the Lich Lord.
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Post by CharlesX on Jul 18, 2023 7:25:09 GMT
Do you . . . like . . . gamebooks, Ted? I wouldn't know about that, Sir. This week, oi arr bin mostly playin Keep of the Lich Lord. When I play Midnight Rogue, I'll nick anything! I'm a geezer! I'm a little bit wuah, a little bit wuay!
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Post by Wizard Slayer on Jul 18, 2023 8:02:40 GMT
...and then I took my magical Ice Sword of Elokian which gave me a Skill of 16, evaded the lightning bolts with my Shield of Warding, absorbed the fireball damage with my Ring of Tasrin, then fought and banished the Skill 14 Stamina 25 four-metre tall twin-headed Night Demon Relem before escaping the Tower of Destruction by parachute as it exploded, thus saving Allansia and probably all of Titan.....Which was nice.
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Post by petch on Jul 18, 2023 8:24:44 GMT
This week, oi arr bin mostly playin Keep of the Lich Lord. When I play Midnight Rogue, I'll nick anything! I'm a geezer! I'm a little bit wuah, a little bit wuay! When I wrote Eye of the Dragon I...ramble...ramble...three hundred and thirty five thousand gold pieces, like a giant marshmallow...ramble...ramble...an underground labyrinth....ramble...ramble...An evil wizard! Aaargh! Pa-pow, pa-pow...ramble...but then the whole time you see, I was really rather drunk.
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Post by petch on Jul 18, 2023 9:58:20 GMT
60 - The Port of Peril
I'm not sure if there's a specific allocation of time that needs to pass in the absence of a thing before that thing can be qualified as 'nostalgia'. If I was in a band - I'm never going to be in a band as I'm deeply, deeply uncool - but if I was ever in a band, how long would I have to leave it before I'd be able to tour all of my old material and call it a nostalgia set so I wouldn't have to bother writing anything new? I'm asking as, in this hypothetical future that's never, ever going to happen, I need to know how I can get away with maximising my earning potential while doing the bare minimum amount of work.
In this case, I think Livingstone can very much be allowed to say he is writing under the banner of nostalgia. While he had written two other contributions to the series since the end of the Puffin run, Eye of the Dragon was an expanded version of an early proof of concept piece and Blood of the Zombies was an entirely different beast to his usual output, so The Port of Peril can be said to be his first wholly original Titan-set title since Return to Firetop Mountain some twenty five years previous. Does he pull it off? Well, almost. There are enough of the old Livingstonian touches on offer here to make this a retro treat for long-time fans of the series.
But yet, something feels a bit lacking. For me, it was that from the book's title and the premise that you'd be facing off once again against Zanbar Bone, I was expecting a sequel or revisit of sorts to the classic City of Thieves, and the prospect of having another book set primarily in one of FF's most iconic locations was enormously exciting. In the event, it was only a small section of the book that takes place in Port Blacksand, and it's not a surprise that this was by far the strongest bit. As for the rest of it? Mmm, it was alright.
59 - Curse of the Mummy
Jon Green is a dude. Joining as a regular contributor towards the end of the Puffin run, what was clear to me was that he had joined as a fan of the series. He obviously had a familiarity with the other books as he magpied some of their ideas that he thought would work in his own - a touch of Keith Martin's alphabet code here, a Steve Jackson-style hidden paragraph trigger there, oh look and there's a Stephen Hand approach to implementing special skills. He took these ideas but still made gamebooks that were identifiably his own, as his passion and enthusiasm for the series shone through with carefully and lovingly constructed game worlds and intricate, deeply considered design.
All this being said, I do find Curse of the Mummy to be comfortably the weakest of his contributions. While he does authentically capture the ancient civilisation atmosphere he was going for, the oppressive subterranean environment that takes up the bulk of the book stymies his usual descriptive flair somewhat. Worse, though, is the dispiriting amount of (very tough) combats you need to win through to succeed. Green's early works were notorious for their difficulty, but here that difficulty comes almost entirely from Green throwing an inordinate number of powerful opponents at the player, as well as a lot of pass-or-die attribute tests. There's even one bit where you could potentially have to face fifteen consecutive Skill 9 Stamina 12 mummies one after the other. Yeesh. Fighting Fantasy's combat rules were designed to be quick and simple to pick up and play, not to give you RSI from excessive repeated dice throwing.
'Mr Green, sir,' spoketh the courageous young adventurer as he entered the study. 'I have come to rid the land of the curse of the mummy.'
'Very well, lad,' replieth the venerable sage. 'Into the meatgrinder with ye!'
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Post by pip on Jul 18, 2023 11:48:33 GMT
62 - Crystal of Storms(...) none of the info you can glean is especially useful in gameplay terms. This also really bothered me. All these references typically give you tons of background information, but nothing more, making this feel like a gameBOOK rather than a GAMEbook. The use of keywords was also wasted on flavour text that is similarly useless in gameplay terms. Nearly all (maybe all? I'm not sure) keywords you can write down end up taking you to a reference that is almost identical to the one you'd read if you didn't have the keyword, with slightly different text and no gameplay change.
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Post by a moderator on Jul 18, 2023 12:18:20 GMT
The use of keywords was also wasted on flavour text that is similarly useless in gameplay terms. Nearly all (maybe all? I'm not sure) keywords you can write down end up taking you to a reference that is almost identical to the one you'd read if you didn't have the keyword, with slightly different text and no gameplay change. One of the positive things about the flawed but in places good The Legends of Skyfall series was that the author usually made an effort to rephrase things in parallel paragraphs. A location that is described in different sections depending on (for instance) whether you're travelling eastwards or westwards through it will essentially look the same regardless of direction of travel, but the words used will vary.
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Post by petch on Jul 18, 2023 16:44:54 GMT
58 - Battleblade Warrior
Aaaaand it's about here that I start to run out of things to say. I'm past the books at the bottom of the list, the ones that I think are the most problematic or flawed. And I'm not quite at the halfway point, where I start getting to the books I can get properly enthusiastic about. I'm in the wilderness betwixt the two, where I find the ones I don't have particularly strong feelings for one way or the other. So then, Battleblade Warrior. It's okay. It's fine. It's, um, what's a synonym for okay...alright. Yes, it's alright.
I'm being unfair. There is some good stuff here. Escaping the besieged city at the beginning is pretty thrilling, and I like that you can either escape by stealth or battle your way out. Katya, your travelling companion, suffers an entertainingly grisly fate. The orc funeral is fun. You can try to ride on the back of a pterodactyl, which is pretty cool. And the solution for the final puzzle is quite cleverly concealed in the Background section. There you go. That's quite a lot of good bits, actually.
57 - Assassins of Allansia
This is another book where I've shifted my view a fair amount after considering the comments of my more learned peers on this forum. My initial impression was that this was great, at least a mid-tier entry to the series. I still feel that way to an extent; Livingstone evokes the old magic much more successfully than in The Port of Peril, and the titular assassins are lots of fun as opponents, each carrying their own distinct threat and keeping you on your toes as you know they can crop up at any time.
There are a couple of flaws here that are too major to ignore, however. The first is that the book's main parameter for success is the elimination of all of these assassins. Now, Livingstone doesn't make this clear until the very end of the book, so up until then, the common sense choices would seem to be to try to avoid the hired mercenaries paid to kill you at all costs. But no, you have to wander blithely into every ambush and trap, like a cow meandering contentedly into its own slaughterhouse, so you can take each assassin out, and the sheer volume of counterintuitive or plan stupid decisions your character needs to make to ultimately triumph means that this frequently doesn't feel very rewarding to play. The other issue is the ending. In another attempt to appeal to us fanboys and girls, Livingstone tries to tie the ending into the events leading up to the beginning of one of his most fondly remembered works, Deathtrap Dungeon, the implication being that your character in this book is the same one who takes on The Walk in Deathtrap. A worthy idea, but if you're going to try to link books together, you need to be able to ensure that the events of the two don't contradict each other otherwise it just becomes a nonsense. And sadly, they do conflict, big style. I have enjoyed though, some of the theories that have been put forwards to try to reconcile them: that the 'you' from Assassins is not the 'you' from Deathtrap at all but is in fact one of the other contestants; that this is in fact another year of the Trial of Champions from the one presented in Deathtrap that also just happens to include another barbarian contestant also called Throm; and (this one is my own theory) that a barbarian called Throm did something to piss Baron Sukumvit off some time in the distant past (maybe he banged his wife or, I don't know, did a poo on the steps of his mansion or something) and so incensed was Sukumvit by this slight that he utilised magic cloning technology that he has secretly been researching to create a whole horde of Throms that he keeps imprisoned, and every year he sends one into Deathtrap Dungeon so he can enjoy over and over again their horrific death, like an especially nasty episode of The Itchy and Scratchy Show. But sadly, none of these theories holds up to any scrutiny and we are simply left with the unavoidable conclusion that Livingstone just messed it up.
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Post by CharlesX on Jul 18, 2023 17:49:08 GMT
58 - Battleblade WarriorAaaaand it's about here that I start to run out of things to say. I'm past the books at the bottom of the list, the ones that I think are the most problematic or flawed. And I'm not quite at the halfway point, where I start getting to the books I can get properly enthusiastic about. I'm in the wilderness betwixt the two, where I find the ones I don't have particularly strong feelings for one way or the other. So then, Battleblade Warrior. It's okay. It's fine. It's, um, what's a synonym for okay...alright. Yes, it's alright. I'm being unfair. There is some good stuff here. Escaping the besieged city at the beginning is pretty thrilling, and I like that you can either escape by stealth or battle your way out. Katya, your travelling companion, suffers an entertainingly grisly fate. The orc funeral is fun. You can try to ride on the back of a pterodactyl, which is pretty cool. And the solution for the final puzzle is quite cleverly concealed in the Background section. There you go. That's quite a lot of good bits, actually. That is a really good review of Battleblade Warrior. Aside from the minor gripe the "only eat when instructed" rule arguably doesn't give you enough opportunities to eat, that's Battleblade Warrior - average, not bad, but not as good as you might hope. Assassins of course has the glaring gameplay error where you can lose all your objects down one path, which would include your silver pendants, and the anti-poison earring, and as that's the only path by which you can obtain the anti-poison earring that makes the earring (and path) absolutely useless. The bajillion cursed items are also too Livingstonian, or at least for me.
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sylas
Baron
"Don't just adventure for treasure; treasure the adventure!"
Posts: 1,679
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy, Way of the Tiger
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Post by sylas on Jul 18, 2023 21:19:33 GMT
I also think Battleblade Warrior is only okay at best. The main problem is that despite having some great ideas, they just aren't strung together that well and the majority of the things you do lead to nothing but the final location. It has neat concepts but not executed in a meaningful way.
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Post by vastariner on Jul 18, 2023 21:29:33 GMT
57 - Assassins of Allansiathe common sense choices would seem to be to try to avoid the hired mercenaries paid to kill you at all costs. But no, you have to wander blithely into every ambush and trap, like a cow meandering contentedly into its own slaughterhouse, so you can take each assassin out, and the sheer volume of counterintuitive or plan stupid decisions your character needs to make to ultimately triumph means that this frequently doesn't feel very rewarding to play. Surely taking out the assassins IS the common sense choice? It's not as if they'd give up if Plan A fails. They'd bide their time, wait for the others, and then get you at the end - which indeed they will if you don't kill them all...
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Post by petch on Jul 19, 2023 8:37:02 GMT
57 - Assassins of Allansiathe common sense choices would seem to be to try to avoid the hired mercenaries paid to kill you at all costs. But no, you have to wander blithely into every ambush and trap, like a cow meandering contentedly into its own slaughterhouse, so you can take each assassin out, and the sheer volume of counterintuitive or plan stupid decisions your character needs to make to ultimately triumph means that this frequently doesn't feel very rewarding to play. Surely taking out the assassins IS the common sense choice? It's not as if they'd give up if Plan A fails. They'd bide their time, wait for the others, and then get you at the end - which indeed they will if you don't kill them all... Yeah, you may have a point. When you first find out about the assassins coming for you though, you flee Snake Island as you hear there's another assassin on the way. If you knew you had to take them all out, a smart move might have been to fortify yourself on the island and let them come to you so you can take them out one by one. Instead, you're making your way to Lord Azzur to try to smooth things over, and you're not told until you actually reach him of the requirement to have eliminated all of the assassins he set on you.
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Post by petch on Jul 19, 2023 10:14:00 GMT
56 - Trial of Champions
Sir Ian gives the readership what they want with another visit to The Walk. I love the opening to this one, the Arena of Death is absolutely brutal and really establishes Lord Carnuss as a thoroughly hateful and sadistic nemesis - even if you overanalyse it, his plan for finding his champion has more holes than Swiss cheese. If he's so desperate to stick it to his brother by finding someone who can beat the Trial, why go to all that trouble of arranging an elaborate eliminator tournament only to send its victor into Sukumvit's dungeon so thoroughly unequipped? For that matter, why only send one champion into the dungeon? As far as I can tell, there's no limit to the amount of participants who are allowed to enter. Surely Carnuss could have hedged his bets and sent a number of the strongest competitors from his Arena in, increasing his chances of one of them winning through? Stupid Lord Carnuss. I'm glad you get to kill him.
The dungeon itself is just as deviously designed as before - arguably more so, as this time around you need to collect nine macguffins in order to win through rather than just the three. While it's still terrific fun to solve thanks to its imaginative traps and encounters, it's not quite as successful as your first foray into Deathtrap Dungeon for a few reasons. By this point, Livingstone seemed to have abandoned any pretence at trying to balance the difficulty of his books in terms of gameplay, and sending you into the dungeon with no provisions or other means to restore your Stamina, and only limited opportunities to replenish it as you progress through, was just mean. I kind of get why he was doing it (part of the premise of the book is that Sukumvit has modified his competition to make it deadlier than ever before) but this seems like a very artificial and unfair way to bump up the lethality.
Part of the joy of Deathtrap Dungeon was discovering the horrible demises of your fellow competitors. Livingstone bumped them off in a variety of gruesomely creative ways. That aspect is largely missing here as you only have four other rivals, and the only one who seems to have had much thought put into their fate is the dwarf noble (imprisoned in a hellish limbo); as for the others, the elven prince gets a rehash of one of the deaths from Deathtrap, and the other two are just treated as wandering monsters. Finally, this was the first time I noticed a maddening habit Livingstone developed of putting very stark, barebones descriptions into his dungeon corridors. 'You arrive at a T-junction. Do you go left or right?', or 'You pass a door. Do you enter it or carry on?', that kind of thing. I know there's only so many ways you can describe plain stone corridors, but at least in Deathtrap Dungeon he put a bit more effort into bringing the environment to life, and this often felt lazy by comparison.
55- Robot Commando
In terms of appealing to your target demographic, nail on the head right here. So, you get to pilot massive robots? To herd dinosaurs? And what's that on the cover? A whacking great robo-man wrestling a T-Rex? Oh SJ the Second, you have reached into my childhood dreams and made them flesh.
He's a good game designer, is SJ2. While this is possibly a little too forgiving, with three different victory endings, and multiple ways of reaching each, and a whole variety of different robotic mounts and vehicles you can commandeer, there's a ton of replayability to be had here. Unfortunately, despite all of this promise the execution falls a little short due to the key plot point that the entire planet's population bar yourself has fallen victim to sleeping sickness; as a result, most of the locations you can visit come across as desolate and empty, and the overall tone of the book feels a bit cold rather than engaging.
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Post by CharlesX on Jul 19, 2023 10:36:31 GMT
Well, as a bit of a fan of Trial Of Champions I think in fairness a limit on the number of competitors isn't specified but isn't not specified either, so that makes a kind of logic. What makes very little logic is that you cannot go in with a potion or provisions, as you could in Deathtrap Dungeon, something Sir Ian only exacerbates by including many tough opponents such as the overpowered Fire Demon along with pretty limited opportunities to heal. Yes, the "go left or right with no clue at all" was getting uncreative by this point. At least in say the Knightmare gamebooks the doors had different handles or in Deathtrap Dungeon you could hear things from different pathways.
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Post by pip on Jul 19, 2023 12:41:49 GMT
I agree Livingstone didn't seem to try as hard with Trial of Champions as he did with Deathtrap Dungeon. If he could write corridor descriptions like seeing the footprints of people going in different directions, or hearing buzzing behind a door, etc. in DD, why was he apparently unable to do the same thing in TOC? Those kinds of descriptions don't help you figure out what you should do, but you are presented with a choice that is fun to make, instead of a bland coin flip situation like "left or right?". I also agree that the interaction with the other contestants was disappointing compared to DD. I'm glad he didn't recycle the Throm situation as that would have been too predictable, but surely he could have thought of something more to do here.
That being said, I actually like the book, as there are still many memorable and creative encounters, and IMO it is ultimately fun, flaws and all. I reckon our perception of this book would be more positive if it wasn't the sequel to one of the most beloved FF entries.
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Post by petch on Jul 19, 2023 15:54:50 GMT
54 - Fangs of Fury
Fangs of Fury starts similarly to Battleblade Warrior, with your protagonist needing to escape a besieged city. I'm torn between which of the two books I think handles this best. On the one hand, the escape in Fangs is more drawn out, tougher, and so it feels more like a genuine achievement when you manage to leave the battle lines behind. That's good. On the other, such are the limitations of Sharp's writing that on some paths I wasn't entirely clear when I had got through the siege and had reached the next stage of the adventure. That's bad.
Yes, the familiar problems with Sharp's sloppy writing are still present here, but luckily so are lots of vibrant ideas and set pieces that rescue this from mediocrity. Tracking the falling of the Citadel walls gives you a sense of urgency, and is a much more visually engaging mechanic for the passing of time than the simple Time boxes or the like used elsewhere. There are semaphore-like cyphers to decode and mini games aplenty involving the various types of Cubes and Gems you can collect. My favourite of these is the collection of White Cubes by scanning the illustrations you come across for hidden images of them, it's such a simple yet clever concept that greatly adds to the immersion.
53 - The Warlock of Firetop Mountain
Ranking this one was tough. It is, after all, The One That Started It All and so on that basis alone it is debatably the single most important entry in the whole series. Then again, subsequent books can be said to have expanded, developed and improved upon the building blocks Warlock laid. Either way, there's enough on offer here to make this stand up as a solid entry in its own right. As I understand it, Livingstone and Jackson divided up the writing duties, with Ian being primarily responsible for the first half and Steve the second, and it's Ian's bit that is comfortably the strongest. It oozes with atmosphere, from the memorably vivid description of the mountain itself ('the steep face in front of you looks to have been savaged by the claws of some gargantuan beast') to the lived-in feeling of the orcish garrisons in the outskirts of the complex. Steve's part is a lot more problematic, with the bulk of it comprising of the Maze of Zagor. It's not so much that it's a poorly designed maze - it's suitably intricate and labyrinthine - it's more that it lacks any peril, with almost the only danger to the player being that they get so bored with being lost in a tangle of nondescript 'You are standing at a T-junction' references that they give up. I'd question, too, the wisdom of putting an item (the Eye of the Cyclops) that can instakill the final boss in the same location as one of the keys that you need to win; it can render that long-awaited confrontation with Zagor very anticlimactic. These are nitpicky criticisms, sure, especially considering the sheer originality of the whole concept, but it's little things like this that make me rank other books above this one.
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Post by petch on Jul 19, 2023 17:02:16 GMT
64 - The Gates of DeathAh, the phenomenon of the celebrity author. Writing ability is not a necessity (indeed, in the case of a few Love Island contestants who have entered the fold, I don't doubt their writing ability so much as their ability to write), as long as the name being slapped on the cover is recognisable enough to shift a few units. Oh what a glorious age of literary enlightenment in which we do live. If anyone from Scholastic is reading this, a few ideas for future FF celeb collabs: - A tell-all memoir from Katie Price about what really happened that night she had a lock-in with a dozen dockhands at the Black Lobster - Richard Littlejohn's To Blacksand in a Handcart, in which he bemoans the influx of Caarth lizardmen and other subhuman effluent flooding mainland Allansia, taking the jobs, and eating the children of, good, decent, honest, hardworking Libra-worshippers - Russell Brand's My Fighting Fantasy Wantasy where he spends 399 of 400 references talking about himself A quick tip for anyone who may be tempted at some point in the future to do some research on terrible books for comedy or illustrative purposes: don't do it on your Amazon account unless you want your 'Amazon Recommends' section to fill up with utter crap. Oh man.
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Jul 19, 2023 20:06:11 GMT
64 - The Gates of DeathAh, the phenomenon of the celebrity author. Writing ability is not a necessity (indeed, in the case of a few Love Island contestants who have entered the fold, I don't doubt their writing ability so much as their ability to write), as long as the name being slapped on the cover is recognisable enough to shift a few units. Oh what a glorious age of literary enlightenment in which we do live. If anyone from Scholastic is reading this, a few ideas for future FF celeb collabs: - A tell-all memoir from Katie Price about what really happened that night she had a lock-in with a dozen dockhands at the Black Lobster - Richard Littlejohn's To Blacksand in a Handcart, in which he bemoans the influx of Caarth lizardmen and other subhuman effluent flooding mainland Allansia, taking the jobs, and eating the children of, good, decent, honest, hardworking Libra-worshippers - Russell Brand's My Fighting Fantasy Wantasy where he spends 399 of 400 references talking about himself A quick tip for anyone who may be tempted at some point in the future to do some research on terrible books for comedy or illustrative purposes: don't do it on your Amazon account unless you want your 'Amazon Recommends' section to fill up with utter crap. Oh man. It may be helpful to go to your browsing history and play Mr Deletey.
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Post by CharlesX on Jul 19, 2023 20:17:50 GMT
At one point (I think it was Author ranking) I voted Warlock Of Firetop Mountain as one of FFs best. It's very probably a top half gamebook lifted by higher-quality writing, original concepts, and some memorable encounters. But no way is it one of the best in the series, nor even close, which is why I feel sorry for say Chinese where I understand most other FF is either very rare or more likely just not in print at all. I would say gameplay is much more an issue for older players and those with more experience than some (other than those gamebooks requiring very ridiculous dice-rolling).
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Post by thealmightymudworm on Jul 20, 2023 6:39:42 GMT
57 - Assassins of AllansiaThis is another book where I've shifted my view a fair amount after considering the comments of my more learned peers on this forum. My initial impression was that this was great, at least a mid-tier entry to the series. I still feel that way to an extent; Livingstone evokes the old magic much more successfully than in The Port of Peril, and the titular assassins are lots of fun as opponents, each carrying their own distinct threat and keeping you on your toes as you know they can crop up at any time. There are a couple of flaws here that are too major to ignore, however. The first is that the book's main parameter for success is the elimination of all of these assassins. Now, Livingstone doesn't make this clear until the very end of the book, so up until then, the common sense choices would seem to be to try to avoid the hired mercenaries paid to kill you at all costs. But no, you have to wander blithely into every ambush and trap, like a cow meandering contentedly into its own slaughterhouse, so you can take each assassin out, and the sheer volume of counterintuitive or plan stupid decisions your character needs to make to ultimately triumph means that this frequently doesn't feel very rewarding to play. The other issue is the ending. In another attempt to appeal to us fanboys and girls, Livingstone tries to tie the ending into the events leading up to the beginning of one of his most fondly remembered works, Deathtrap Dungeon, the implication being that your character in this book is the same one who takes on The Walk in Deathtrap. A worthy idea, but if you're going to try to link books together, you need to be able to ensure that the events of the two don't contradict each other otherwise it just becomes a nonsense. And sadly, they do conflict, big style. I have enjoyed though, some of the theories that have been put forwards to try to reconcile them: that the 'you' from Assassins is not the 'you' from Deathtrap at all but is in fact one of the other contestants; that this is in fact another year of the Trial of Champions from the one presented in Deathtrap that also just happens to include another barbarian contestant also called Throm; and (this one is my own theory) that a barbarian called Throm did something to piss Baron Sukumvit off some time in the distant past (maybe he banged his wife or, I don't know, did a poo on the steps of his mansion or something) and so incensed was Sukumvit by this slight that he utilised magic cloning technology that he has secretly been researching to create a whole horde of Throms that he keeps imprisoned, and every year he sends one into Deathtrap Dungeon so he can enjoy over and over again their horrific death, like an especially nasty episode of The Itchy and Scratchy Show. But sadly, none of these theories holds up to any scrutiny and we are simply left with the unavoidable conclusion that Livingstone just messed it up. Assassins was the first book I thought of when the question of the targeting of these books was raised. I can easily imagine that a lot of 10-year-old boys would just love this to bits. It's a great title and a gripping premise. The cover is excellent – menacing and believable. It has collectable scorpion pendants. There's the sinister imposter woman. There's the guy you can get the jump on, firing arrows into the inn (even if that doesn't really work). The flaws, if noticed, would be mere details. If someone was asking whether Assassins would be a good first FF book to get their child into the series, I'd have no hesitation in saying yes.
The structure and ending do let it down though. The assassins are all trying to be the first to meet you with with lethal force. It shouldn't be easy to just amble past them unless you are actively trying to do so. Far less should it be necessary to wander into a random farm and grab an obvious bait. As for the final sections, it's pretty weird that IL decided to say "See, life-long fans, I'm just like you. I love the world of the classic early books – but I draw the line at [wrinkles nose in disgust] re-reading the Background to my own book."
...the Sukey and Thrommy Showwww!
That is a really good review of Battleblade Warrior. Aside from the minor gripe the "only eat when instructed" rule arguably doesn't give you enough opportunities to eat, that's Battleblade Warrior - average, not bad, but not as good as you might hope. Assassins of course has the glaring gameplay error where you can lose all your objects down one path, which would include your silver pendants, and the anti-poison earring, and as that's the only path by which you can obtain the anti-poison earring that makes the earring (and path) absolutely useless. The bajillion cursed items are also too Livingstonian, or at least for me. Dear God yes – some of it reads like Livingstone doing a parody of himself, especially early on. Oh you want to walk down the road? No, you fool! It's lava covered by an illusion spell. Lose one foot (-4 Sk -8 St) Oh you want to eat some cheese? No, you fool! This is the Cheese of Bastard which makes your teeth fly out of your head and bite your own ears off (-2 Sk -4 St)
Oh you want to put on a shirt? No, you fool! This is a shirt woven from dragons' bumhair which singes your nipples off and causes you to smell like partially-digested-princess flatulence (-1 Sk -3 L)
(Those may not be the exact ones in the book, but close enough.) I always think that a poisoned or cursed item is more effective if it is unexpected.
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kieran
Baron
Posts: 2,462
Favourite Gamebook Series: Fighting Fantasy
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Post by kieran on Jul 20, 2023 9:13:04 GMT
As I understand it, Livingstone and Jackson divided up the writing duties, with Ian being primarily responsible for the first half and Steve the second, and it's Ian's bit that is comfortably the strongest. It oozes with atmosphere, from the memorably vivid description of the mountain itself ('the steep face in front of you looks to have been savaged by the claws of some gargantuan beast') to the lived-in feeling of the orcish garrisons in the outskirts of the complex. Ian wrote the first half and Steve the second but then to ensure a consistent writing style (at the editor's behest), Steve rewrote Ian's half. So the pre-river section is essentially Ian's design with Steve's prose. So I guess he should get credit for that oozing atmosphere rather than Ian. I do actually like a lot of Steve's half before the maze. The were creatures, the undead, a bit more freedom to explore etc. Pity the maze is dire.
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Post by petch on Jul 20, 2023 9:27:15 GMT
52 - Legend of Zagor
The most Keith Martin-y of all of the Keith Martin books. Stripped of a journey between locales, with almost the entirety of the adventure being based in Castle Argent this really does become a series of hubs punctuated by an awful lot of combats, and so can feel very mechanical and be a bit of a slog to get through. This is a prime example of where the tiny little boxes supplied in the in-book Adventure Sheet are insufficient to allow you to keep up with the sheer amount of record-keeping necessary - I think I'd filled up two whole sides of A4 by the time I'd gotten to the end! But it is in the game aspect of the gamebook that Martin's strengths shine through, and while there is a lot of fighting, it's rare to find an encounter without some kind of special combat modifier applied, giving each one a unique feel. Providing four different player characters for you to choose from to take on the dungeon was a nice touch, although it's only really playing as the wizard Sallazar that switches the experience up to any significant degree. There are checkpoints as you move between hubs, usually guarded by some kind of sub-boss, so you get a sense of progression as your character collects more powerups and takes on ever more dangerous opponents. This does make it feel rewarding to complete, although it undoubtedly is a commitment to try to take it on in the first place.
51 - Midnight Rogue
Not for the first time, I feel my critical faculties are deficient in allowing me to provide an adequate justification for the ranking of this one. Similarly to Battleblade Warrior, there's nothing especially wrong with Midnight Rogue, but then there's nothing that pops out as being particularly outstanding either. It's solidly middle-of-the-road stuff. What's made me rank this several places above Battleblade is the originality of some of the ideas on offer here. Its premise is pretty irresistible - a return to Blacksand is always welcome, and the opportunity to play as a miscreant makes for a refreshing change of pace from your usual altruistically-minded hero. There's an attempt to include an encumbrance rule, which makes sense in the context of the book - as a thief you have to remain nimble and light on your feet so you can't be weighed down by a backpack full of goblin's knucklebones, mouldy cheese or whatever other crap you happen to have come across. There's a nicely considered Special Skills system, although it can be rendered a bit moot as Davis generously includes a number of items that you can find that in effect allow you to claim a missing skill, so depending on your initial selection of skills and the route you take through the book, I believe it's possible for your character to accumulate the complete set of Special Skills, making you some kind of omnithief. A polymath of roguery. An ubermensch of nicking stuff. The main problem comes in the second half of the book, which moves away from the urban environment and into a dungeon setting. The end twist concerning the true nature of the place is quite a neat one, but the dungeon itself in execution is unfortunately fairly bland.
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Post by CharlesX on Jul 20, 2023 11:17:45 GMT
Legend Of Zagor is one of those books I want to like more than I actually do, and what is a flawed generation and magic system along with several errors and ambiguities do not help things. I enjoy Midnight Rogue, where Battleblade Warrior feels as average as it is, not only because of the well-written start but the dungeon section has original, exciting encounters, a great, well-executed premise, and a taxing end (in contrast to the instakill in Warlock). A slightly harder-than-average difficulty doesn't really affect my view (although it does with Seas Of Blood, because that is more pronounced).
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