Post by hynreck on Jul 20, 2016 17:00:00 GMT
ARCANA AGENCY The Thief of Memories by Paul Gresty
Some time back, nearly 2 years ago, I bought this book as a mercy move toward Megara Entertainment. That might sound like a bullshit statement to some of you, how much of a mercy move can it be? Buying a gamebook, which is something that I adore? It can’t be that hard, right? And right you’d be. Because that’s exactly what went through my head around that time; finding motivation wasn’t hard. Still, money isn’t always easy to come by, and can be hard to part with, what with two young kids depending on me, you know the drill. All the same, I’ve got to start this review somehow, and a little bit of background info always help to do so.
So, back then, I had helped kickstart Megara’s ambitious project of eight The Way of the Tiger books. But there was some struggles along the way and they were looking for more finances. You know. The Shit Happens type. I don’t want to go into further details as this is neither the place nor the time, for this is a non related (to WotT) gamebook review that I’m doing, after all, not an history lesson. But suffice to say if you’re curious most of the tale can be found on the Way of the Tiger kickstarter page, which should still be up, so browse at your leisure.
Now onto the book itself. As a gamebook written by Paul Gresty and first published by Megara Entertainment in 2013, Arcana Agency refers both to the title of this (yet to be) series and the actual place where your characters work, a shady detective outfit dealing mostly in occult matters or other mysterious circumstances needing investigations à la X-Files. But since all this happens way back in New York, October 1932, to be precise, such detective could effectively be called the ancestors to our not-quite-so-modern-anymore Fox and Scully. But you get the point.
If, for some reason, you’ve read the blurb at the back of this book quickly (well, let’s just say you’ve read the blurb online while browsing the latest YouTube massage videos), you’d be forgiven for thinking that this particular book, The Thief of Memories, contains 4 distinct adventures, somehow loosely connected with each other by characters and purposes. It might look that way but the fact is that these stories are really just distinct chapters of the same story and it would make no sense to play them alone or out of order. It would perhaps have been interesting to be able to start from any one of those 4 stories, but this isn’t a videogame and since the book is already fairly complex as it is, I can’t even begin to imagine how complicated it would have been to have that option.
That said, you start with the first short one, The Case of the Unghostly Ghost, who is really just an introduction setting up the 3 main heroes, your "team": Humphrey Brown (the leader), Joe Strelli (the lancer) and Tom Shanigan (the brute). Of course, this is a rough description, but close enough. Then we have two seemingly unrelated stories, The Mystery of the Morgue Marauder and The Mystery of the Murdered Marvelous Mask (yes the author seems fond of alliterative titles), splitting up said heroes before concluding with the main course, The Thief of Memories, the story that brings them all back together for the grand finale. The better you perform in each one, the easier your time will be in the next one, or the one after that; it all adds up to some beautiful cause and effect, very well thought-out. It ends on a slight cliffhanger, as the author promises more adventures to come, the next one being named The Deathless Wanderer at the moment, but who knows what might happen in the future. We’re not in the heydays of gamebooking anymore.
Let’s delve a little deeper. You probably can tell already that I mostly enjoyed my experience. You wouldn’t be wrong. First, the physical product itself is something to behold. If any of you out there ever saw a finished Megara product, you probably already know what that mean. Big hardbound books, full of thick papers and lushly illustrated, all in colour. Quality-wise, it doesn’t get much better than this. But if I wanted to nitpick, the only flaw that I could find, from my perspective, is that, indeed, Megara’s books are too big: while the founder’s opinion is that he wants book that he can lay on a table flat, without the need to hold down the pages and without breaking the proper book apart, I for my part don’t like to read/play my gamebook at a table, so such a big book might hurt the hand holding it in the long run; it is also so big that it doesn’t fit on anything else but a shelf with lots of headroom, and a deep one too, of course. Like I said, it’s all nitpicking: they do look magnificent on said shelf, but mine ends up in the basement cause that’s the only place where I’ve got shelves that can accommodate them. Such a pity.
But back to the physical product. Illustrations are adequate, and done by a varied bunch of artists (Aude Pfister, Lise Rafalli, Mary Nikol, Faiz Nabheebucus), some of them you might know from different other Megara projects, like the aforementioned Way of the Tiger books. Otherwise, most likely everything you need you’ll find it in this book too, and more, from detectives and main characters illustrated bios, stats (yes, your characters stats are fixed at first, they might change along the course of the game, but they are written in for you), map of New York with legend, checklist of codewords, even a foreword by fan favourite author Dave Morris. What’s not to like?
There are some things not to like, but they are far and few and shouldn’t stop you dead in your tracks from trying this gamebook. They’ll most likely come from some game mechanics, as simplified as they are, or perhaps from the author small abuses of “As you know…”. Those awkward moments are mostly found in the introduction story, so if you have less tolerance for those (kind of like me), rest easy in knowing that they’ll mostly be all gone come the next chapter. That can’t be worst than trudging through all those first chapters from the Harry Potter series book 2 to 6, right?
As for game mechanics, here’s how it goes: you’ve got five stats given, Strength, Reflexes, Knowledge, Insight and Charm for each of your detectives and every once in a while, you’ll have to roll against a difficulty to see if you can achieve some kind of feat, all depending on the situation at hand. Say you need to avoid an incoming fist? You might roll 2 dices, add your reflexes stat and check against a given difficulty. If you score equal or exceed the difficulty number, you succeed, as plain as that. Of course, part of it is luck, and if you are attempting something particularly difficult, or foolish, the difficulty number given will reflect that, or should anyway.
Next you’ve got your health levels, five of them: from perfect to soon to be pushing up the daisies. This, to me, felt like the most archaic part of the gameplay. I get it, somehow you need health as an element of danger other than the instant death paragraph, so you can’t feel invincible while wandering around, etc. But this being set in a relatively modern world, managing to reach that last health level, basically going around on life support instead of heading to the nearest hospital, and wait - careful not to stub your toe along the way or you might die - I don’t know, there’s just something wrong about such a system. A loss of credibility. Granted, I’ve always had that problem with gamebooks, whether it be Lone Wolf or Fighting Fantasy, doesn’t matter: I feel like you should never die from banging your shoulder on a door or scraping your knuckles on the floor, you know? And if I ever get around to write a gamebook of my own, yes, I’ll make sure there is a rule preventing that, but well, there it is. Five levels of health here, and the last one you are basically tenderized meat walking, so careful to avoid those puddles on the ground…
Otherwise, you’ve got no limits to the number of items you can carry, and you also don’t have to write down the common stuff, like money, the author being kind enough to inform you right away that you always carry a few dollars with you, like a sensible fellow, enough to go around anyway. Which I found refreshing because those restrictions usually just feels like a fake difficulty and make you feel like your character is too stupid to manage a simple inventory or money… or life itself. And dealing with money in a modern context, not a fantasy or sci-fi world, can lead to some glaring weirdness and mistakes, as blatantly seen in something like Blood of the Zombies. *shivers* But let’s not dwell on that!
That’s about it, really, without going into spoilers territory. I’d like to add for the records that I managed to beat the game with nearly no cheating involved, only some fudging of the dices here and there, after having failed at the story before. Time is of the essence, for all of us, and around my third try at the book (a dreadful first chapter that necessitated a full restart, a more successful second try but some failings on the next two chapters resulting in a less than optimal last story) I was doing much better overall, but “helping” the dices all along so as not to fail on a technicality, cause my patience also needs to be managed, after all.
So yeah. In conclusion this is a good gamebook overall, a good mixture of classic elements we all know about and mostly love, and some good, innovative and modern ones that makes it worth our time to invest in. If you can track a copy, not necessarily an easy task as I believe you have to buy from the Megara website, I heartily recommend it.
Some time back, nearly 2 years ago, I bought this book as a mercy move toward Megara Entertainment. That might sound like a bullshit statement to some of you, how much of a mercy move can it be? Buying a gamebook, which is something that I adore? It can’t be that hard, right? And right you’d be. Because that’s exactly what went through my head around that time; finding motivation wasn’t hard. Still, money isn’t always easy to come by, and can be hard to part with, what with two young kids depending on me, you know the drill. All the same, I’ve got to start this review somehow, and a little bit of background info always help to do so.
So, back then, I had helped kickstart Megara’s ambitious project of eight The Way of the Tiger books. But there was some struggles along the way and they were looking for more finances. You know. The Shit Happens type. I don’t want to go into further details as this is neither the place nor the time, for this is a non related (to WotT) gamebook review that I’m doing, after all, not an history lesson. But suffice to say if you’re curious most of the tale can be found on the Way of the Tiger kickstarter page, which should still be up, so browse at your leisure.
Now onto the book itself. As a gamebook written by Paul Gresty and first published by Megara Entertainment in 2013, Arcana Agency refers both to the title of this (yet to be) series and the actual place where your characters work, a shady detective outfit dealing mostly in occult matters or other mysterious circumstances needing investigations à la X-Files. But since all this happens way back in New York, October 1932, to be precise, such detective could effectively be called the ancestors to our not-quite-so-modern-anymore Fox and Scully. But you get the point.
If, for some reason, you’ve read the blurb at the back of this book quickly (well, let’s just say you’ve read the blurb online while browsing the latest YouTube massage videos), you’d be forgiven for thinking that this particular book, The Thief of Memories, contains 4 distinct adventures, somehow loosely connected with each other by characters and purposes. It might look that way but the fact is that these stories are really just distinct chapters of the same story and it would make no sense to play them alone or out of order. It would perhaps have been interesting to be able to start from any one of those 4 stories, but this isn’t a videogame and since the book is already fairly complex as it is, I can’t even begin to imagine how complicated it would have been to have that option.
That said, you start with the first short one, The Case of the Unghostly Ghost, who is really just an introduction setting up the 3 main heroes, your "team": Humphrey Brown (the leader), Joe Strelli (the lancer) and Tom Shanigan (the brute). Of course, this is a rough description, but close enough. Then we have two seemingly unrelated stories, The Mystery of the Morgue Marauder and The Mystery of the Murdered Marvelous Mask (yes the author seems fond of alliterative titles), splitting up said heroes before concluding with the main course, The Thief of Memories, the story that brings them all back together for the grand finale. The better you perform in each one, the easier your time will be in the next one, or the one after that; it all adds up to some beautiful cause and effect, very well thought-out. It ends on a slight cliffhanger, as the author promises more adventures to come, the next one being named The Deathless Wanderer at the moment, but who knows what might happen in the future. We’re not in the heydays of gamebooking anymore.
Let’s delve a little deeper. You probably can tell already that I mostly enjoyed my experience. You wouldn’t be wrong. First, the physical product itself is something to behold. If any of you out there ever saw a finished Megara product, you probably already know what that mean. Big hardbound books, full of thick papers and lushly illustrated, all in colour. Quality-wise, it doesn’t get much better than this. But if I wanted to nitpick, the only flaw that I could find, from my perspective, is that, indeed, Megara’s books are too big: while the founder’s opinion is that he wants book that he can lay on a table flat, without the need to hold down the pages and without breaking the proper book apart, I for my part don’t like to read/play my gamebook at a table, so such a big book might hurt the hand holding it in the long run; it is also so big that it doesn’t fit on anything else but a shelf with lots of headroom, and a deep one too, of course. Like I said, it’s all nitpicking: they do look magnificent on said shelf, but mine ends up in the basement cause that’s the only place where I’ve got shelves that can accommodate them. Such a pity.
But back to the physical product. Illustrations are adequate, and done by a varied bunch of artists (Aude Pfister, Lise Rafalli, Mary Nikol, Faiz Nabheebucus), some of them you might know from different other Megara projects, like the aforementioned Way of the Tiger books. Otherwise, most likely everything you need you’ll find it in this book too, and more, from detectives and main characters illustrated bios, stats (yes, your characters stats are fixed at first, they might change along the course of the game, but they are written in for you), map of New York with legend, checklist of codewords, even a foreword by fan favourite author Dave Morris. What’s not to like?
There are some things not to like, but they are far and few and shouldn’t stop you dead in your tracks from trying this gamebook. They’ll most likely come from some game mechanics, as simplified as they are, or perhaps from the author small abuses of “As you know…”. Those awkward moments are mostly found in the introduction story, so if you have less tolerance for those (kind of like me), rest easy in knowing that they’ll mostly be all gone come the next chapter. That can’t be worst than trudging through all those first chapters from the Harry Potter series book 2 to 6, right?
As for game mechanics, here’s how it goes: you’ve got five stats given, Strength, Reflexes, Knowledge, Insight and Charm for each of your detectives and every once in a while, you’ll have to roll against a difficulty to see if you can achieve some kind of feat, all depending on the situation at hand. Say you need to avoid an incoming fist? You might roll 2 dices, add your reflexes stat and check against a given difficulty. If you score equal or exceed the difficulty number, you succeed, as plain as that. Of course, part of it is luck, and if you are attempting something particularly difficult, or foolish, the difficulty number given will reflect that, or should anyway.
Next you’ve got your health levels, five of them: from perfect to soon to be pushing up the daisies. This, to me, felt like the most archaic part of the gameplay. I get it, somehow you need health as an element of danger other than the instant death paragraph, so you can’t feel invincible while wandering around, etc. But this being set in a relatively modern world, managing to reach that last health level, basically going around on life support instead of heading to the nearest hospital, and wait - careful not to stub your toe along the way or you might die - I don’t know, there’s just something wrong about such a system. A loss of credibility. Granted, I’ve always had that problem with gamebooks, whether it be Lone Wolf or Fighting Fantasy, doesn’t matter: I feel like you should never die from banging your shoulder on a door or scraping your knuckles on the floor, you know? And if I ever get around to write a gamebook of my own, yes, I’ll make sure there is a rule preventing that, but well, there it is. Five levels of health here, and the last one you are basically tenderized meat walking, so careful to avoid those puddles on the ground…
Otherwise, you’ve got no limits to the number of items you can carry, and you also don’t have to write down the common stuff, like money, the author being kind enough to inform you right away that you always carry a few dollars with you, like a sensible fellow, enough to go around anyway. Which I found refreshing because those restrictions usually just feels like a fake difficulty and make you feel like your character is too stupid to manage a simple inventory or money… or life itself. And dealing with money in a modern context, not a fantasy or sci-fi world, can lead to some glaring weirdness and mistakes, as blatantly seen in something like Blood of the Zombies. *shivers* But let’s not dwell on that!
That’s about it, really, without going into spoilers territory. I’d like to add for the records that I managed to beat the game with nearly no cheating involved, only some fudging of the dices here and there, after having failed at the story before. Time is of the essence, for all of us, and around my third try at the book (a dreadful first chapter that necessitated a full restart, a more successful second try but some failings on the next two chapters resulting in a less than optimal last story) I was doing much better overall, but “helping” the dices all along so as not to fail on a technicality, cause my patience also needs to be managed, after all.
So yeah. In conclusion this is a good gamebook overall, a good mixture of classic elements we all know about and mostly love, and some good, innovative and modern ones that makes it worth our time to invest in. If you can track a copy, not necessarily an easy task as I believe you have to buy from the Megara website, I heartily recommend it.