Ratings and Reviews by End Master
View this member's profile
A plodding trek through some ruins, February 26, 2021This one takes place in the northern portion of Orlandes near (and in) the ruin of Tarnath Tor which was supposed to be a great city a couple centuries ago until it suffered an orc (called orcuns in this series) attack which resulted in the wizards casting some major spell to protect the city, however something went seriously wrong which it’s a ruin.
All of this doesn’t matter to you at the moment though because you’re taking the role of yet another down on your luck adventurer that has failed to find your fortune. In fact the game starts out with you hanging upside down by your feet after a group of bandits massacred the caravan you were traveling with.
Thankfully instead of finishing you off they leave you for dead which allows a young wizard to stumble upon you who sets you free and essentially starts you on your quest. He explains what exactly happened at Tarnath Tor all those years ago (Basically a magic accident) and says he wants you to help him gain access to his wizard tools. Given that you don’t have much else going on and the potential for adventure and loot is great, you accept the quest.
I should point out that this book has one of the longest intros so far. I think you have to flip through about fourteen pages before you even get to a point with choices. The book in general though is long on background and description mainly due to the fact that Tarnath’s fate is a bit of a mystery as far as what happened there all those years ago.
The first act involves traveling to Tarnath Tor which starts off getting yourself prepped for the adventure buying equipment and such. Might as well spend all the money the wizard gave you because it’s the only part you’re going to be able to stock up. The trip to Tarnath Tor is rather uneventful in the scheme of things. There’s a couple paths to reach the destination, but like I said, nothing really stands out.
When you finally reach Tarnath, the adventure improves a bit. You’ll run into stuff like animated statues, zombies, a goblyn tribe, a lich etc. Some of which can kill you instantly if you don’t have the right equipment, though there is the option for negotiation with a few encounters and even playing monsters off against one another if you’re feeling treacherous.
Eventually if you manage to navigate your way through the ruins correctly you’ll soon find the young wizard’s tools, along with discovering the whole story behind the fate of Tarnath which will eventually lead to dealing with the final encounters.
Despite the book surrounding the exploration of a mysterious ruin brimming with danger and the remnants of powerful magic, it’s rather average. While this one strays slightly from GA’s usual theme of getting revenge on those that wronged you, it doesn’t really provide too much of a compelling reason for the adventure in the first place other than chance. And while there’s a good reason provided later, it comes so late in the book, you don’t really care too much about it by that point other than finishing the task out of a sake of completeness.
I didn’t hate the book, but it’s not one of the more memorable ones.
More of a sewer system than catacombs, February 25, 2021This one goes directly back to the city of Orlandes rather than just the land. This time you’re a small time adventurer that supplements your living with some thievery which in the scheme of things isn’t too much different from what you do as adventurer except stealing from the inhabitants of a dungeon isn’t considered breaking the law.
Instead of getting busted by the city militia though, you get caught by the criminal organization that runs the city which is even worse. While you protest that you weren’t actually stealing, you aren’t believed and you’re thrown into the Orlandes City sewers as a sacrifice for the shadow god cult that the crime organization seems to also have ties to.
From there you have to survive the sewers and try to make your way to the undercity which lies somewhere deeper and is a beacon of “civilization.” This part of the game is fairly tough since you’re literally weaponless and without armor. Granted the opponents you come across aren’t excessively tough, but a few bad rolls and you’re dead. Doesn’t help that when you do manage to acquire a weapon, there’s at least one random roll event that can deprive you of it. Might as well restart if that happens.
Despite all that, there isn’t necessarily any more combat in this one, it’s just that it's more dangerous to engage in it. This one seems to make more use of fitness checks as well.
When you get to act two which is the Undercity itself, you’ll get a bit of a breather and a chance to heal and restock items and equipment, though I certainly hope you managed to get into a few fights and loot the bodies before you got into the city because things start costing money here.
As with most of these books, you’re going to seek a bit of revenge on the ones who threw you into the sewers to die in the first place, but you’re going to need some help if you want to make things easier. Hopefully along your trek through the sewers you encountered some folks that could help you with the final showdown of infiltrating their headquarters, because despite the fact that you can go it alone, it probably isn’t a good idea.
While there are a couple paths that can lead to the ultimate victory ending, this is one of the harder books due to the lack good equipment from the beginning and you typically don’t get the best armor that allows you to roll six dice for defense. Also, there seems to be a bug where the game won’t recognize upgrading your armor, leaving it fairly low throughout the game. This bug doesn’t make the game impossible, but it makes it more difficult than it needs to be
Despite this really annoying bug and that it might not have as “epic” of a feel as some of the other books, it’s still worth playing through.
Death is not the end, February 25, 2021Going back to the Orlandes for this setting. This one takes place in a more central region of the land near the city of Falavia. There’s references to familiar cities and lands mentioned in previous books, though this one specifically makes mention of one of the more infamous names in the series namely Makros the Unearthed who is a great necromancer. Your buddy Saul in the story convinces you to go rob his lair. Not really the greatest idea.
There’s a couple different pathways to the lair, but ultimately you’ll get to the treasure that your buddy convinced you to go get and then he’ll promptly betray you which will result in your death. And that’s where act two kicks in.
You wake up thanks to Makros who isn’t pleased about his amulet of invulnerability being stolen. (There’s a call back to GA2 when he makes mention of someone stealing his staff in Myr) He’s raised you from the dead to got fetch it for him since he’s got more important things to do than to bother with hunting down petty thieves. He makes it clear though that since he raised you, you’re under his command, though at this point you’re looking to settle a score with your ex-friend who is attempting to use his new found power to try to take over Falavia as the first step in conquering Orlandes.
The plot of this one is another revenge focused one, with “saving the world” as an after thought. Makros doesn’t really care however about your traitorous friend’s ambitions, he just wants his property back.
The game’s rules change a bit here since you’re dead and all. So healing potions don’t really work, but honestly combat is pretty easy since you’re given a very powerful sword that will heal you when you kill someone, plus you can heal by meditating from time to time. There’s another thing that can act like a healing potion of sorts if you can find it.
The first part this act mostly involves traveling to Falavia, while second is dealing with Saul’s actual siege of the city. There’s more than a few paths here, however only one is going to allow you to move on to the last act, because even if you manage to get revenge on Saul and save Falavia, you still have Makros’ magic enslaving you.
Assuming you figure it out, your last challenge will be breaking Makros magic that binds you.
I liked this book quite a bit. Not many of these sort of books that let you play as the undead. More world lore expanded on for this series and the challenges in this book are about right. I have no complaints about this book and found it to be a solid adventure for this series.
Are you not entertained?, February 25, 2021For the third outing, the GA series moves away from its Orlandes setting a bit and focuses on another part of the world known as Rema which at one point used to be the equivalent of this world’s Roman Empire. Not so much any more by the time the books take place, but it’s still considered a major power.
You’re from one of the southern Orlandes cities that does a lot of trading with the Reman city states, one of those things you trade in are slaves. You’ve also been mildly sheltered all your life (Despite being trained as a soldier), so it’s a big surprise when your ship gets captured by the Remans and they take everyone as slaves. This would be considered an act of war, but that’s the least of your concerns when you’ve just been thrown into the arena as a gladiator.
The main plot is to survive the arena and escape back to your home city of Bosque in Orlandes. The first act is mainly escaping the arena with the help of other slaves, second act involves catching a boat ride back home and dealing with the problems that pop up with that. You’ll also discover some other sinister plots along the way. The book has a couple of winning endings depending on how you handle the first choice of combatants for the gladiator fight. The book in general has a few branching paths which will eventually link back up to the main path, so there’s still replay value here.
I already liked this one more than the last two books, mainly due to the pseudo Roman setting and slightly different set up for adventure. (You’re trying to escape from something rather than trying to kill something) I was reminded a bit of Trial of Champions from the FF series, but this one was WAY better.
While this story starts you off as slave, the book is actually pretty fair with the combat, skill checks and item hunts. I suppose this could be considered one of the “easier” books. Though I don’t consider that a bad thing and there’s still plenty of instadeath endings if you aren’t careful. I particularly liked the non-standard ending where you turn into a mer-person.
One disappointing thing is I was hoping the gladiator bit was going to be longer. Perhaps even a non-standard ending where you just end up preferring the life of one anyway (Eventually gaining your freedom via combat) However, that’s a very minor thing I was disappointed in since the rest of book is excellent.
Some improvements over the first, February 25, 2021The second book in the GA series already makes a few changes by changing the mode options a bit. Making “Classic” a bit more lenient with the bookmarks and adding an “Adventurer” mode which acts as a middle difficulty option between classic and casual.
Everything thing else remains the same mechanics wise.
This one takes place in a different part of the GA world, the other side of the continent of Orlandes in fact. You’re a miner heading back to to the city of Myr to see your family again, but along the way, you’re already hearing stories of a necromancer taking the city over. Naturally you’re a little concerned about this.
Doesn’t take long before you’re already in the thick of battle as goblyns (Yes, it’s spelled that way since the GA series tends to have all the same familiar fantasy races with just slightly different names) have been pillaging the area and as you soon learn, attacking the city of Myr. A majority of the adventure involves you getting into Myr and stopping Erid Buul who apparently is leading these goblyns as just one step in his plans.
If the first book resembled a fantasy version of a revenge action flick, this one resembles a fantasy version of Die Hard. You’re basically going through the half ruined goblyn infested city of Myr trying to get to your family and stopping Erid. He’s a bit more of a traditional “conquer the world” type, but he’s really only in the beginning stages hence why you still have a shot at beating him.
The name of the book gives away some of what you’ll be facing, which is the undead, but that isn’t necessarily apparent until a little later since the main force is goblyns. In fact you may start to wonder where the hell does the necromancer part come in given the severe lack of undead in the beginning, but they start showing up a bit more later.
Perhaps in an effort to pad it out a bit more, the game drops a lot of background when examining different tapestries or sculptures. There’s also quite a few places where you get multiple choices of doors or paths and they either ultimately loop back to one or you can’t open the doors at all. I felt like this could have been handled better.
This game also has a terrible oversight. There is a character that will help you if you provide him with certain information. This particular character pops up in a few different locations probably in an effort to make sure you don’t miss him (Still possible though). Now it’s entirely possible to gain the needed info before you actually meet him. However if this happens, you don’t get the option to tell him and you’ll be in a walking dead state. It’s pretty annoying.
The game decides to throw a bunch of difficult combat at the very end which can be pretty tough if you haven’t gotten the strongest weapons and armor.
While this one improved upon the GA system, the basic plot felt about as compelling as the first book, so I’d rank it about the same. It’s another solid adventure despite some of the mistakes that were made.
The beginning of Tinman’s original series, February 25, 2021While Tinman games is well known for reissuing the Fighting Fantasy books and updating them, I feel like their original Gamebook Adventures series which put them on the map in the first place doesn’t get near enough attention as it should.
It could of course be due to the rather uninspired name “Gamebook Adventures”. They really should have come up with something better, but hey at least it’s accurate I suppose.
Boring series name aside, there is no doubt that they did A LOT of world building even before they put out the first book. In pretty much every one of these books in the main menu area you can look through an extensive index of the world’s history, races, major cities, creatures and even a map.
While I know “info dumps” irritate a lot of people, they managed to implement them well enough here so as not to get in the way of the actual story. I actually appreciate more of this kind of thing since it make me care more about the adventures.
Honestly, with as much world building that was done in the GA series, it’s the closest thing to a “modern successor” to the FF series. The stat system is different, but I feel like what they did works better in this format than the FF stat system. The games typically give you the option of a “classic mode” and “Casual mode”.
Classic mode allows you to play more like a traditional gamebook, though you do get “3 bookmarks” which act as save points. Casual mode pretty much allows you to make choices even if they would be inaccessible to you and you have unlimited healing and bookmarks. It’s more so you can just enjoy the story.
And of course it wouldn’t be a Tinman game if you couldn’t unlock artwork and various achievements for things.
But enough with the basics of the GA mechanics and background, let’s get on with the first book in the series.
This adventure plays out more like a revenge action movie with a slight twist rather than a traditional “You’re an adventurer, go kill this evil overlord.” plot.
You start out drowning your sorrows in alcohol at some tavern due to your girlfriend breaking up with you. Hardly the typical beginning of an adventure! It gets going from there though as soon as you leave the tavern.
You’ll get mixed up in a plot that involves someone going around assassinating nobles and on top of everything else they’ve captured your ex which is the main motivator for you to get involved in the first place.
The first part of the adventure mostly involved finding out who to track down and where they’re going. This mostly takes place in the city of Orlandes. There’s a few branching ways this can be accomplished, the paths will link back up though assuming you’re successful. If you aren’t successful in acquiring the necessary information, you’ll be treated to some non-standard endings of your failure.
Second part of the adventure is traveling to the assassin’s place. There is one place in particular that you don’t want to miss out on visiting. In fact in this section, it’s probably just best to explore everything. (Well that’s good general advice for most IFs!)
The last part involves getting to the assassin’s lair and the final showdown with a twist added. While I won’t spoil it (Though it’s easy to guess) the twist sort of doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. Or rather the plot seems a bit convoluted as far as the villain’s grand plot is concerned and it seems like it would have been easier to try a different approach than what they actually did.
Then again, this is a revenge action story, so maybe it just works that way.
In any case, it’s a solid first outing for the series. The story isn’t the most original, but the writing is fine. It isn’t perfect, but then neither was Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
Previous | 21-30 of 263 | Next | Show All