28) Phantoms of Fear

[hynreck]

OK. Here's some more salvage from my savior Muddy-didly-Wormy. Let's see if I can clear my review out of this mess.


The following bit is not the review, more me answering to previous posters, but I kept it anyway for the bits of info found in it... and for posterity, of course:
I remember this one from my youth since I own a french copy. I remember I liked it quite a lot, even going so far as trying to play it proper, without cheating. But I'll give it a fair fresh review once I get there in my going through the books in order (currently at Caverns of the Snow Witch...). And yea, it's full of that great creepy-ass artwork from Ian Miller. Amazingly atmospheric.

On to what should be my real review:
Les spectres de l'angoisse is a book I've owned for a long time, now. Can't remember exactly when I got it, but I would venture to say no further than 1989... Guess it would help me remember if I'd look at the french publication date, but I don't have the book with me right now (and I still can't do it years later, I'm that kind of pathetic, you know), so that guesstimate will have to do. What I do remember clearly is that I was very fond of this gamebook, having played it enough time that my adventure sheet was (and still is) well worned-out with writings left and right and obvious marks of eraser abuse. I remember it left a lasting impression (other than on the paper), a good one, but before reading it again recently in it's original version, I couldn't remember much from the book itself except the main plot and its most striking feature: the use of dreamland as an alternate universe. It still holds well today. The writing and descriptions - the atmosphere depicted - are a cut above the usual average FF and veer/aim clearly toward a more mature territory just like other gamebooks tried before, namely the Sorcery! series.

Then there's the illustrations... Ian Miller delivers masterful artwork, creepy and original, full of details, perfectly complementing the story. I don't think I've ever seen creepier trees in my life, this side of that one tree in Sleepy Hollow. Miller's work here is one of those happy instance of two artists combining each others strong points to form a cohesive whole stronger than the parts making it; it elevates the book to it's memorable height just like Iain McCaig did for Deathtrap Dungeon or Russ Nicholson for The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

Though it's not a perfect book, as pointed out by members of this board before (from TUFFF; too many instant and unfair death or the way the hero, a wood elf, falls for way too many forest traps that should have been basic 101 training) it is still plenty of fun, with good replay value (especially due to the duality of the end dungeon, with the dream world being offered constantly as an alternative) and the remarkable artwork makes it a memorable experience that's hard to forget.

Of notes: as usual, the french version lacks some illos from the original english version. 4 or 5, like the Cryo-Sphinx, and most surprisingly, Ishtra himself. I guess you can understand how happy I was to finally meet him, even though you can find him on the french cover... without his crocodile suit. Plus the illos in french are reversed and way too dark, loosing quite a bit of details from Ian Miller's work. And a quiz question for you guys out there: Is it supposed to be Morpheus on the original cover? That would be my guess. (I think this was answered as being yes, if I remember correctly)

Yep here's from the man who did:

July 26 07
12. greyarea13: Hey, Hynrek, yup, pretty sure that's Morpheus on the front cover. . Dunno where his sunglasses and trenchcoat are though?

13. hynreck: Yeah, he sure got ugly since last time!! ^_^.

And that concludes that chapter of history.

[a moderator]

More salvage, this time my playthrough from the 'Books in Order' thread.

My character's power of dreaming is mighty handy, providing a conduit for the powers-that-be to give a mission briefing. Much more useful than the sort of stuff that goes through my head when I'm asleep, which is generally weird nonsense like time travellers wanting half-horses while the police repeatedly text me questions about the Jack the Ripper murders. Anyway, having learned that I have to save the world, I go straight back to sleep - but in order to find out more about the mission, rather than laziness and general reluctance to be heroic. Things take on a somewhat David Lynchian tone, as my dream-self follows a trail through a forest that may or may not exist in the real world, encountering a cryptically meaningful black puppy and having to choose between purity and corruption. Dare I face the dream's heart of darkness?

No, I take the scenic route, and get an emPowering vision of somewhere special and sacred before I wake. While I may be making an overly literal reading, I choose to head north as, when I face away from the lake, that's the direction corresponding to the location of the dream-blight. After a lunch break I take a nap, during which I dream unhelpfully about Trial of Champions and get attacked in the physical world. After that I go foraging for Provisions, and have to fight a disgruntled Moose to get a mere 3 portions. Guess I must be a vegetarian, or that was one skinny Moose.

Resuming my journey, I display a shocking ignorance of forest lore by walking straight past a Death Dripper. Luckily, I don't get hit by any of the poison, but it really is shocking that a Wood Elf doesn't recognise a local carnivorous plant like that. For a while I keep going north, but then a creek crosses my path and, knowing how much Mr Waterfield loves putting nasty things in the water (I shudder to think what goes on in his guest bathroom), I take the hint and turn west. The ground soon turns boggy, and as Waterfieldian marshes are even worse Instant Death havens than bodies of water, I turn my weary way south.

It gets dark, and I decide that I'm less likely to have another rude awakening if I sleep up a tree rather than on the ground. However, I fail to spot that a branch cannot bear my weight (what sort of Wood Elf am I?), and the fall convinces me to stay at ground level. My first dream combat follows, and despite having an unfair disadvantage against my opponent (seriously - I'm the expert dreamer, but the odds are skewed 7:5 in its favour), I very nearly win.

Awake once more, I get into a fight against the creature whose home I failed to realise I was occupying (did I spend all my Woodland Lore classes Dreaming? Or did I spend last hight emulating the first Wise Monkey and trying to see no Weevil?), and then set off west again. After a while I reach some hills, and contemplate spending the night in one of the caves around here. Probably not a good idea, but the degree of cluelessness I've demonstrated to date suggests that I'll find a predator's lair to snuggle down in whether I sleep under shelter or al fresco.

Well, I do find a very unpromising cave, but since it's that or marching through the night, I suppose I shall have to whittle nose plugs from a couple of the bones in it to block out the animal smell. As it turns up, my night is trouble-free, and I dream of pools of fire, water and wind. In the morning I discover a dangerous-looking tunnel, and decide to explore it, because if it doesn't kill me, it'll probably contain something vital.

It leads to a cave containing a skeleton with a boulder on its hand. It's a fairly small boulder, which leads me to consider two possibilities: either the lichen on the boulder is an incredibly deadly contact poison, or someone deliberately rolled the boulder onto the hand when its owner was in no fit state to resist (it never occurs to me that the dead man might have just been down to his last Stamina point, and lost it when the boulder fell on his hand - FF heroes have died from less before now, and extreme contrivance can lead to Lone Wolf's being killed by a thrown cabbage). Theory two strikes me as more likely, but I don't much like the chain of reasoning that follows on from it: someone really wanted to conceal or crush something on this man's hand, therefore I should definitely roll the boulder away to find out what's underneath. That's 'twit adventurer about to unwittingly unleash some undead horror' logic, if ever I saw it. But unless I want to convince myself that the boulder itself is lethal, I have to move it.

Better deluded than dead. I shy away from the small boulder of presumed lethality and look to see if there's anything useful on the body. Just a pendant, which doesn't have a number on it, and is an ominous shade of green, so I leave it where I found it. Still not interested in moving the boulder to free the undead strangler hand, or whatever is under there, so I leave.

Emerging from the hill, I find the blighted part of the forest, which is in a woeful state. Something cries out (I'm thinking of one of the noises from the BBC's stock 'alien jungle' sound effects), and I boldly investigate in case it's just an imported Jib-Jib. As Australians know, even the fluffy and harmless-seeming animals can wreck an ecology, and it might appeal to Ishtra's sense of humour to use such an unmenacing creature to bring about the ruination of the land.

The source of the cry remains unclear, but a gust of foul wind comes sweeping over me. Luckily, I did not inhale. Drawing closer to the rot, I reach an enchanted glade that has yet to succumb to the corruption, and drink from its waters in the hope of absorbing some of the Power that sustains it. It only restores a little Stamina, and induces a desire to sleep. Oh boy! At least when the hare went for an inadvisable nap, it had a commanding lead over its opponent. I'm one Elf against a Demon Prince and his armies, and my having acquired nothing more noteworthy than a hatchet on my travels scarcely constitutes grounds for overconfidence.

In my dream, I'm offered the position of Chief Gardener, but I turn it down. Though I wasn't there long enough to deserve a retirement gift, I still get something shiny before returning to the quest. Inside the defiled forest I cannot use the magic with which I haven't been bothering anyway. Skirting a clearing, I am attacked by tree roots, but get an Attack Strength bonus for having that hatchet. Later I find a trail, and decide to investigate the local mutant fauna. However, I find no animals, just a fenced-off thicket of holly. Khul doesn't really do Christmas, so I am curious. Crawling under the bushes, I have to Test my Luck to avoid losing 2 Stamina. Considering how much easier it generally is to replace Stamina than Luck, I resent that. All the more so when I am Unlucky, and lose Luck and Stamina.

Behind the holly hedge I discover a hut, and decide to spy on it rather than march straight up to it. Again my woefully inadequate woodland skills let me down, as I am almost immediately ambushed. Being face down on the ground, with my assailant's boot on my neck, I'm not sure trying to fight back is the smartest thing I could ever do, so I toss away my sword as directed. I've still got the hatchet, if things turn nasty, and in FF there's almost always time to go rummaging through a backpack before combat.

My captor is an insane human. The humiliation of my having been surprised by him just keeps growing. Still, my Power is high enough to restore some of his sanity, and he returns my sword, gives me a present, and offers me hospitality. It's a chance to regain some of the Stamina I lost to holly poisoning, so I accept.

Another troubled night ensues, and I must fight another unbalanced combat against a tree, again losing by the narrowest of margins. In the morning my host introduces himself and provides some frankly implausible autobiographical details. Given the distance between NW Allansia and NE Khul, the likelihood of his having travelled all the way here to retire after a bad experience in the Maze of Zagor is pretty low. I don't recall coming across any references to having a companion back when I read this and got as far as Ishtra's lair, so I'm guessing that my new friend's offer to aid me in my quest will result in his changing his name to Eric Axe-in-the-Head, but if he wants to go out fighting, and save me the bother of gutting a few bad guys, so be it.

As we go on our way, Eric mentions that he got all Guantanamo Bay on a surprisingly well-informed Orc, and tells me all sorts of handy hints about Ishtra's right-claw slime, Morpheus. No Gaiman-scripted Emo-boy, this one, but the source of all nightmares. I intend to have words with him about the one with the giant pickled onion I had back in 1994. *shudder*

Being a creature of the woods, I naturally fail to spot any hint that the deer we see in a clearing is actually a Shapechanger. For unlikely reasons, Eric and I have to take turns attacking it, but in the end we prevail. Continuing on our way, we spot a two-headed weasel (known in some circles as a 'politician'), dodge away from a tree whose bite is worse than its bark, and wind up surrounded by unseen hostiles. Both failed our Forestry rolls, then. Half a dozen Dark Elves attack, and Eric gets his Mungo moment. Almost immediately afterwards, I join him.

[oakdweller]

The Almighty Mudworm has indeed discovered much of my old TUFF review for this marvellous book. The surviving fragments seem to have once belonged to longer paragraphs, so the prose does jump about a bit. Nevertheless, my observations and feelings about the book still shine through. Definitely Waterfield's finest hour.


***SPOILERS AHEAD***
After enduring the tedious and lacklustre writing of the previous two books, the greater care and attention that Phantoms of Fear is given is such a relief. The early moments of the adventure may be rather uncertain of themselves, with the background section and first few paragraphs rattling out reams of fey description which don't really add up to much, but at least the intention of spicing the text up is evident.

A key encounter in Affen Forest is the insane wild man Eric Rune-axe, who is the companion character for this adventure. He may not stay with you for as long as Symm and Borri did in Crypt of the Sorcerer, but he is given far more depth than both of them combined. A man who takes no care of his personal appearance or hygiene, but keeps his battleaxe sharp and shiny, is clearly someone who needs to be handled carefully. Robin Waterfield gives Eric a convincingly capricious demeanour, allowing him brief moments of sanity and lucidity within his madness.

The part where you exit the woods into a serene glade, only to wake the next morning in the ugly blighted forest is superbly handled and expertly delivered - as are the ongoing descriptions of the blighted land as you travel deeper into it. The descriptions of the forest between your village and Ishtra's tunnels aren't just idle snapshots, but serve to gradually draw your attention to the breakdown of natural order as Ishtra's influence takes hold. Reference 259 is effective at doing this, particularly the detail of a pine tree being "throttled by ivy" - in other words, Ishtra is using nature to turn on itself.

The idea of having your real body solid but invisible whilst exploring the dream world, following the same geographical plan is really clever - the chances of colliding with enemies or traps whilst 'asleep' are well thought out too.

 Before starting my recent playthrough, I realised that I'd never actually defeated Ishtra in the dream world before, having always felt compelled to hunt down the six special items needed for a real-world showdown. (The object hunt isn't too hard, even without resorting to cheating, except for the senseless way that you acquire the ice.) So, I decided to venture further into the dream world to charge up my POWER. I started to become aware that I was actually covering uncharted territory, despite having played this book at least forty times over the past two-and-a-bit decades. When I checked my map I noticed several unexplored routes. Hmm, I may have to play this one again sometime soon to check out what I've been missing out on - it could be almost like playing a brand new book.

Ah yes, I forgot to mention the riddle that those dratted pixies force you to answer. As Fiddling Reaver suggests the answer is ridiculous. I didn't so much "work it out" years ago, but rather just ended up counting the total number of words out of desperation. I was stunned when it turned out to be the solution. Only weak part of the book I'd say.

[vagsancho]

A different book, but not amazing. I can not feel it. I can't feel myself as an elven. Not so good as the Robin Waterfield's wounderfull masterpiece Masks of Mayhem.

[hynreck]

Nah, this one is my favourite Waterfield book, very interesting with some innovation, good writing, especially the dream sequences, intense drawings.
Masks of Mayhem looses points for unfair difficulties and one atrocious ending; really, that last part in the lair is lacking, to say the least, and let's not forget that ridiculous premise from the beginning, sending the king alone on a dangerous mission with no equipments and gold to speak of...

[Deleted]

Loved this book, it's an FF book on crack!

[The Count]

I have fond memories of this - one of my favourites and played so many times.

The descriptions and illustrations are so evokative, and there are several routes through that it never becomes a chore to replay. One of the best opening sections in the series.

I'm sure I completed this on the item path with very low stats once, but it could be they weren't as low as I think.

The cover isn't great unfortunately, and despite many claims it is impossible (which it is from one starting point I think), the Trial of Ghosts is difficult though very rewarding to pass, especially when the solution reference doesn't immediately make it clear that you have succeeded.

I think I might give this another play through soon.

[kieran]

Jan 26, 2020 21:48:25 GMT The Count said:

the Trial of Ghosts is difficult though very rewarding to pass

You'd have to be very lucky to pass it without cheating, there seems to be about a bazillion combinations you can try. At least the similar "puzzle" in Space Assassin only had 9 options.

[slloyd14]

Amazing atmosphere, great writing. I liked having spells as I do in all FF books. Shame you don't use them so much. They almost seem like red herrings as I think it is better to save your power for dream stuff. The ending is super hard. Either you have to get 6 items or fight Myurr using power. The dream fights are really unbalanced. Either you win on an 8-12 and lose on a 2-7, meaning you have a 42% chance of winning each round or use power as both SKILL and STAMINA which is full of problems because that leads to a vicious cycle where the one with the highest power just wins all the time so the combat is either tedious before winning or tedious and then you die.

Great story, game needs work.

[IoannesKantakouzenos]

Jan 26, 2020 23:18:17 GMT kieran said:

At least the similar "puzzle" in Space Assassin only had 9 options.

9? How come?

[kieran]

Jul 20, 2022 15:04:43 GMT IoannesKantakouzenos said:

Jan 26, 2020 23:18:17 GMT kieran said:

At least the similar "puzzle" in Space Assassin only had 9 options.

9? How come?

Well, that assumes you don't take a path that heads back to the start from the halfway point. The book doesn't forbid you doing so I guess though your total would probably exceed 400.