Soul Tracker

Darkheart summons the massive SN and it gets sucked back in the portal. I survived with 1 health left :-D

I ended up in a similar spot to C-Star, but in the end I happily live ever after with Angela and defeat Darkheart. I'm not sure it makes much sense trying to save Darkheart, I would have liked a choice in that... and I would have chosen to let him float off to his doom, honestly. I lost so many times and he doomed the world enough that I figured he deserved at least one eternal soul damnation.

I managed to have enough drive (and luck!) to get the dream sequence at the beginning, and chose the park -> blow up lab -> football game -> get TWO rods -> .... route.

I've seen the dream sequence once, but apart from giving some backstory, does it actually change anything?

Yes, the ending where you live happily with Angela is the "true" path. You can ultimately get to it no matter where you choose to explore in the beginning- club, park or coffee shop.

the dream sequence gives a little back-story, but is not necessary to complete the game.

I.e. in Outsider!, you had to assume that Black Aria, the jaded, violent, yet still intensely principled assassin protagonist, is actually the type of guy who would let a necromancer who had slaughtered dozens, if not hundreds of people, live and keep doing that indefinitely, and also learn from him, even after finding out that he was lying about being your father. Then, you also had to assume that the option to summon ghosts you are explicitly warned about would not be an immediate insta-kill, contrary to pretty much every other option like this in that gamebook.

Here, what you actually need is to obtain two rods of this setting's unobtainium, not one, but there is effectively no way to find out that this is even POSSIBLE to do, or that this is the thing which was actually holding your trio from succeeding when you get DESTRUCTION: 3. The game is really good at making dead end pathways look just as viable as the successful ones (making the player think they were smart by picking the obviously correct item past five wrong ones, only for that entire pathway with Pieno (?) to be a trap was a particularly strong move). There is at least some logic in picking up an ID card from a corpse -even if there is no way to know that guy in particular would drop it, or that not having an ID card was a big obstacle when you show up to that stadium and find that a Coordination check seems to work as well.

There is no real internal logic in which pathway at Lochton Heath would actually allow you to win. In order to understand that in the first place, you have to assume that the choice of how to split up would actually lead you in radically different directions. The only "hint" is external, that being one's understanding that the narrative obviously wants Mark and Angela to be together, rather than anything about the location or their situation specifically. I kept assuming that the responsible thing to do would be to go alone and let the two less combat-experienced allies cover each other with gunfire, so as to avoid losing either of them when choosing to go with one and letting the other travel alone.

when the INFIRMARY: 4 scene and the sudden speech is quite reminiscent of the Defender's philosophy scenes in and around that tomb in Outsider!

* How come Drago's secretary immediately detects your weapons, even if it's just Glocks, but the crowd in the library does not mind them? How come you have the option to avoid surrendering the weapon in the nightclub, but not in VORTEX: 1, which doesn't seem to mention any security nearby (and one of the failure refs suggests more of them only got added later on.) Then again, they also don't bother to steal your completely unique weapons in spite of having every reason to, so there's that.

* How come you cannot just head back to the Doc right after you discovered that map under the table? It's such a frustrating thing, and for some time, I really thought some combination of starting stats/equipment had to allow you to protect the map, and this is what you would need to win.

* Machine gun fire from Ned Healy does not alert any guards in the library?

* KERNEL: 1 - Van Clank himself came up with those weapons, so why didn't he make one for himself?

* For HUNTED: 2, even max Awareness doesn't protect from failing to notice riders' approach? (Not that it seems to matter.) Plus it says riders have sunglasses, but then we can see the Leader's dark, impassive eyes?

* In REVIVAL: 1, it's funny that our Mark, who had fought SNs many times, and just recounted everything the doctor had done for him in JOY: 3, including having designed these hyper-advanced weapons, TWO OF WHICH ARE BASICALLY SUITCASE WMDs now rudely dismisses a different supernatural concept as "just speculation."

* It's also funny that he still considers it safe to return to his own home in spite of the little matter of the city's most powerful politician already after him.

* In INFIRMARY: 2, would the attendant's job really be boring after the events of the previous day? Also, interesting that according to REGENERATION: 1, Teneto has well-functioning universal healthcare?

* In INTERN: 3, why would mark be surprised that a rod which is as hard as metal is cool to the touch...exactly like any metal?

* YEARN: 1 "changes in the wave particles " ... even when taking quantum mechanics into account, that sentence seems rather dubious?

* "Centrenium is one of the oldest elements in the universe. Most scientists believe it is formed by a rare but naturally occurring process here on earth." - these two are mutually exclusive, since lots and lots of elements are billions of years older than the Earth. For that matter, nearly all heavy elements are predominantly of extraterrestrial origin as well?

* I am disappointed that plant killer doesn't seem to be usable on Rhodendra Azula?

* I am even more disappointed that the supposed ability of the Thompson to melt a wide path never appears to be used for anything, and that it doesn't rescue you in "QUIXOTIC: 3" , when that seemed obvious.

* For a while, I assumed that blowing up the lab would matter a lot more than it actually does. I even considered that blowing it up would draw away more of the guards from campaign headquarters, and so allow you to gun down the steed right there and still have a chance. It seemed more immediately logical than the true paths. Oh well.