aggsol
Wanderer
Bored...
Posts: 95
Favourite Gamebook Series: Lone Wolf
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Post by aggsol on Jul 21, 2019 10:05:02 GMT
After several decades I am reading book 2 again German, this time the Mantikor release. I did not remember so many random decision even worse in my memory I liked this one very much.
While I kinda understand that on the ship wind, weather and the sea are kinde random. I find that very lazy work for the carriage ride. The Who-Dun-It elemnt is great, as a kid it took several attempts to find the assassin. as an adult it is kinda obvious.
If only book 1 and 2 would exist, it would be great adventure and those would have sparked a lot of fan fiction. With the release of book 30 a while ago, this is just the humble beginnings.
The German edition comes with an additional adventure. is that German exklusive (afaik like some of the Italian ones) or was it released elsewhere?
The cover motive is kinda weak in this edition. The Swedish one is way more engagin. Even compared to the original.
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Post by lordomnibok on Jul 21, 2019 10:38:49 GMT
After several decades I am reading book 2 again German, this time the Mantikor release. I did not remember so many random decision even worse in my memory I liked this one very much. While I kinda understand that on the ship wind, weather and the sea are kinde random. I find that very lazy work for the carriage ride. The Who-Dun-It elemnt is great, as a kid it took several attempts to find the assassin. as an adult it is kinda obvious. If only book 1 and 2 would exist, it would be great adventure and those would have sparked a lot of fan fiction. With the release of book 30 a while ago, this is just the humble beginnings. The German edition comes with an additional adventure. is that German exklusive (afaik like some of the Italian ones) or was it released elsewhere? The cover motive is kinda weak in this edition. The Swedish one is way more engagin. Even compared to the original. I have an early print which does not include an extra story. I love FotW. I didn't find the carriage moment lazy, but I guess it's personal taste whether you like that approach; I was fine with it. FotW is up there with my favourite Gamebooks, thanks to the beautifully constructed story. I have great memories of this book.
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Post by a moderator on Jul 21, 2019 11:46:39 GMT
There's a mini-adventure in the Mongoose Publishing reissue of Fire on the Water, but no extras in the original release. If it's the same adventure (English title The Crown of King Alin IV) in the German edition, I hope the translator managed to fix some of the mistakes in the text. I go into a little detail about the errors when I played the adventure for my blog here.
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aggsol
Wanderer
Bored...
Posts: 95
Favourite Gamebook Series: Lone Wolf
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Post by aggsol on Jul 24, 2019 20:58:22 GMT
There's a mini-adventure in the Mongoose Publishing reissue of Fire on the Water, but no extras in the original release. If it's the same adventure (English title The Crown of King Alin IV) in the German edition, I hope the translator managed to fix some of the mistakes in the text. I go into a little detail about theĀ errors when I played the adventure for my blog here. No, they did not fix the mistakes. The whole story feels cramped and the pacing is just wrong. It tells too often what I have to think and do. The skills are a fun idea but not as useful as they might be. for the FotW itself, I did manage to lose the seal of hammerdahl and miss the magic spear. Those render the book unfishable...
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Post by a moderator on Jul 24, 2019 23:13:58 GMT
I'm not too happy about the edit to the Mongoose reissue which makes acquiring the magic spear essential. Indeed, while there is the occasional Mongoose edit that improves on the original, I think there are a lot more that work to the books' detriment.
Mind you, without the original/reissue comparisons, my Lone Wolf playthroughs would be a lot less snarky.
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Post by gmchampskees on Jul 24, 2019 23:43:47 GMT
I'm not too happy about the edit to the Mongoose reissue which makes acquiring the magic spear essential. Indeed, while there is the occasional Mongoose edit that improves on the original, I think there are a lot more that work to the books' detriment. Mind you, without the original/reissue comparisons, my Lone Wolf playthroughs would be a lot less snarky. Mongoose have ruined Book I and II through their changes imo. Although Dever's books tend to have a relatively linear progression, these two books offered an alternative route that allowed LW to avoid fighting high CS enemies by having a selection of non-combat skills. Completely turned me off the new editions. Out of curiosity, which ones do you feel have been improved and why?
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Post by a moderator on Jul 25, 2019 2:45:37 GMT
Being able to recover items like the Sommerswerd and the Dagger of Vashna at the end of The Cauldron of Fear (if you had them confiscated) is the most obvious improvement. Beyond that the improvements are mostly minor stuff - clarifying the odd unhelpful ambiguity, making a descriptive passage a little more evocative, things like that. But even with little tweaks like that, the changes that are not for the better seem to be in the majority. And then there's the 'fix' to The Chasm of Doom that removes a mistake on one path through the book while simultaneously creating a mistake on two others...
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Post by lordomnibok on Jul 25, 2019 8:08:09 GMT
I've only read the original FotW, so I didn't realise significant changes had been made to the later prints of that book.
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