Ratings and Reviews by End Master
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Slightly off key, March 4, 2021A couple things off the bat that stand out about this one. One, this one doesn’t take place in Orlandes, it doesn’t even take place in another major land like Rema. It instead takes place on Isla Des Misticos, which sort of sits in-between Orlandes and Rema (And Drymar which is the third major land the GA books have not had an adventure taking place in)
The other major stand out, is you play as a female protagonist, as opposed to a male one which has been the case for nine of the past books (The tenth, Lords of Nurroth allowed you to choose).
You belong to a rather insular community that lives in the forest called the Mystics that defend a wellspring thought to be the source of all life. You’re the daughter of the last of the Spellsingers which are basically singing wizards. Due to Orlandes starting to colonize the island and steadily encroaching on the previously unblemished nature, your mother has decided to stop them by becoming one with the wellspring.
Unfortunately for you, she means to do this by sacrificing you in the process. Naturally you escape and the rest of the game unfolds from there. Along the way, you’ll soon discover that you also have the power of a spell singer, and you’ll gain various songs throughout. And you’ll need them too, to overcome some of the difficult encounters.
There are several paths you get to choose from fairly early as you’re making your escape so the encounters will be varied. You can fight a serpent man sorcerer, help defend a village, be captured by a traveling circus or even help underwater monsters. This book tends to take the protagonist on a wide variety of situations. Mostly seeing the effects of “civilization” on the island since you’ve never been out of your forest.
Assuming you manage survive the initial escape, you’ll eventually encounter someone who will help you more directly and even act as a new “family.” From there you’ll encounter more struggles like a plague gripping the island and eventually a showdown with your mother of course.
While the story in general is intriguing and the combat is fair, I have no complaints about this book other than it had some pretty bad crashes which I hadn’t had an issue with on previous Tin Man games. In fact it crashed to the point where I had to actually uninstall the app and reinstall it to get to work again.
Would have been a much higher rating without the crashes.
City of Thieves GA style, March 4, 2021Not a sequel to a previous book, but definitely back to Orlandes because the GA books still haven’t explored ALL the major regions of the land yet. As by the title, this one takes place in Nurroth which is located in the northern region of the land and is considered to be quite the hive of scum and villainy (Basically like FF’s Port Blacksand), so it’s even more appropriate that your character is a thief. Not an adventurer that does some thieving when down on his luck either (Like in Catacombs) you’re an outright thief.
This book is also the first to add more customization. For example, you get to choose if you’re male or female and you get four abilities that you can add a few points to at the start.
Story start off as you going about your one of your thievery jobs, afterwards you get hired for another one which naturally turns out to be more complicated than you signed up for.
One thing that stands out about this game is there are a lot more fitness and ability checks than actual fighting. In fact you should probably avoid fighting if possible since your equipment isn’t exactly the most powerful. (Though there’s one exception to that) This can make some of the actual combat difficult, but it sort of emphasizes the fact that you’re not a warrior or adventurer in this one, you’re a thief that relies on other abilities rather than combat.
As the story progresses, it goes on a bit about the city’s background from time to time and how it’s semi-held together by various clans which can barely stand one another and are on the verge of open hostilities. There’s a call back to Revenant Rising and how Saul was a member of one these clans. As if the internal conflict wasn’t enough, there’s strife with the city of Falavia as well. (Which makes sense given Saul laid siege to it at one time)
The funny thing is there is obviously of lot of stuff going on here, however as you’re a simple thief, you don’t really play a part in a lot of it most of the time. This story in the scheme of things is actually fairly short.
You can profit from being an honest thief, you can profit from treachery, you can uncover the actual secret plot and try to play a bigger role on the world stage, you can just complete the job in ignorance, and as always you suffer an ignoble fate if you really screw up. While there is one “true” winning” ending, this is probably one of the few GA books that has multiple “lesser” winning endings.
Despite this one being a little smaller in scope, I actually enjoyed this one most out of all the GA books. The multiple endings, different branches and even using different stats give this one a lot of replay value especially since it’s on the shorter side.
No major downsides to this one.
Another sequel so soon?, March 4, 2021With the ninth GA outing, this one continues the adventures of the protagonist from Slaves of Rema and plays a bit of catch up from the events in that book. From there is goes on about what you’ve been doing since your escape. Acoleii is the major Reman city state that’s been causing problems for the southern cities of Orlandes and has been mentioned in passing in a few past books about its increasing hostility.
Of course since you managed to escape from that city, now you’re considered important enough to go on a diplomatic mission to another major power in the Rema province called the United Emirates of Akbir to make sure Orlandes doesn’t have more hostile governments to deal with from that area of the world.
You start your adventure off in a Reman city state called Callae and it’s from here you must travel to the Emirates. You won’t spend too much time in Callae before you’re making your trek across the desert. As you might expect there’s plenty of danger here, environmental and the usual kind. There’s a few different ways to cross it, others being more difficult than others.
Survive the desert and then your mission continues in Amin al Joddah where you’ll have to locate your contact and hopefully expose the Acoleii plot to muddy the waters between Orlandes and the Emirates. This is where a few key important objects and information come in handy.
Much like Slaves of Rema, this one is probably about fair as far as difficulty level. Combat can be tough in places since armor is generally expensive and finding it isn’t common. Upgrading your weapon is a little easier, so this is one of those games where you might be able to his hard, but you better take out the enemy on the first try if they’re rolling a lot of dice to attack. The last fight is especially difficult if you aren’t really equipped for it, but it’s doable thanks to having some help if you have nothing else.
This one is also similar to Curse of the Assassin in that it’s a bit more story heavy, however I liked this one better since it felt a bit more focused on a single plot line. (And it doesn’t end on cliff hanger!) Plus it’s always nice to get away from Orlandes once in awhile to see other parts of this world.
Highly recommended, especially if you liked Slaves of Rema.
Back to the basics, March 4, 2021Eight books and the GA series is already making sequels to past adventures, well it was bound to happen eventually.
I guess they decided the last book was a bit too difficult so they brought back the “middle of the road” Adventurer mode and six bookmarks for classic mode again.
As with most sequels, the book plays a bit of catch up on what happened to you in the first book (Which it’s assumed you won, since you wouldn’t be in the position you’re in for this one right?) It also goes on about what you’ve been doing since which is a lot better than when you started in the first book. You have a new girlfriend that’s one of the Archduke of Orlandes’ daughters now rather than drinking yourself into a stupor.
The book not only does call backs to the book that it’s a direct sequel to, but also to major events that occurred in other books (Slaves of Rema, Revenant Rising, etc) to further create a sense of a changing world. Probably goes on a bit longer than most like, but I don’t really mind stuff like that.
The story starts off with you discovering a childhood friend has died and you investigating his apparent murder. This leads to more backstory about how this dead friend and some of your other old friends used to have an adventurer party until you all split up.
The investigation will eventually lead to traveling back to your old village, involving a visit to your parents (and the old friend’s parents to inform them of the news) and branch into three different paths depending on what other old friend you decide to seek out.
While this one starts out with a simple plot, the storyline itself gets more complex as it goes on. You’ll be uncovering more mysteries to fighting creatures thought to be just folklore. The book in general is much more packed with writing, at one point I read over 15 pages or so before moving on to a choice! Combat almost takes a backseat to the story most of the time, especially since you don’t do much equipment upgrading or item collecting. Most of the stuff you’ll be collecting that’s needed is information.
In fact, it’s entirely possible to “win” but still lose. Even with a complete victory, there’s still a bit of a cliffhanger, which is a bit annoying given they haven’t continued this series in a long time. However combined with three different companions you can potentially travel with, there’s more replay value here than past GA books.
If you don’t mind a more story oriented GA book then you’ll enjoy this one.
Lolth is that you?, March 4, 2021Moving to yet another location of Orlandes, this one takes place in one of the more southern cities of the land called Miramar, or at least it starts off there. You’re also playing a character of a bit more status in this one rather than some down on your luck wannabe adventurer. You actually work for the Duke of Miramar and the story basically starts out with stopping an assassination attempt on him (via venomous giant spider) and him sending you out to hunt down the suspected culprit which is an explorer named Cortez who went out with three ships and never came back years ago.
This book is a lot more difficult than any of the past six that came before it. First off, it eliminates the “middle of the road” adventurer mode and goes back to classic and casual. And classic has been ramped up in difficulty by only allowing three bookmark save points rather than six.
Also this book adds a new stat called Phobia (Which reminds me slightly of FF’s House of Hell FEAR stat). It starts automatically at a lowly seven and you’ll be testing it quite a bit because your phobia is, you guessed it, spiders. And you’ll be facing all sorts of them this adventure since it would be odd not to given the title of the book.
So the adventure starts off with having to figure out the roots of the assassination plot and equipping yourself for the adventure. Keep in mind you can mess up and fail to discover the proper information and get a premature ending, though you get a couple ways to discover the plot, so failing in this way isn’t excessively easy.
Assuming you succeed you get a couple of options of traveling to your destination, either by ship or land. Always nice to get a bit of a difference in paths to reach your destination. Regardless of which path you pick (and assuming you survive all the different dangers which can be pretty varied) you’ll eventually reach where Cortez last travelled to and where you being the last stage of your adventure.
The jungle and the temple are both filled with quite a few fitness checks, some of which will lead to an instadeath result. The fights are about average because by this point you should be well armed and protected, but there’s always the spider related enemies that can potentially make combat more difficult due to the phobia check.
All throughout the game there are a few items you sort of need to collect along the way to make even winning achievable. While it’s possible to get through the game without a certain item, it makes the final combat very difficult.
It’s a tough book overall, but I found it to have a more interesting adventure than some of the others in the series (Even if it does have a similar basic plot of another book) The colorful artwork in this one really works well too.
Definitely one of the better GA books.
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