To be fair, this work does do one thing very well, and that is in its descriptions of urban decay and post-WWI malaise. I think only a few works here (Outsider!, The Ravages of Fate, The Word Fell Silent, Flame in the North and perhaps The Diamond Key once I get to it) can claim a comparable level of insight. Unfortunately, though, a large fraction of that can only be seen in the skippable branches (i.e. if you take the train on one attempt and drive on the other, if you see all three of the town's inns, and if you go to the police station, the doctor, the bar, or the docks), and the main path is MUCH less interesting, as you really only need to do ONE thing to finally start fighting the cultists. Worse, unlike many other works on here, where optional encounters give items or information that directly benefits you on the main path, here, it's all irrelevant. In fact, those encounters actually make cohesion WORSE, as they are ignored on the main path. I.e.
SPOILER
What was the point of going to the library to read about the Cult of Gilgamesh and all that if we STILL do not recognize the tattoo at 67, in spite of ref 114 specifically mentioning it?
END SPOILER
And there's a lot more weirdness if you either do things in a slightly different order than intended, or just pay more attention than the author himself apparently did.
SPOILER
It’s weird that a lot of the refs seem to go completely linearly i.e. 37, 38, 39, or 66, 67 and 68, or 91 and 92 or 118 and 119? Isn't that really frowned upon, because on a physical page, you get to see the outcomes of your choices before you take them?
Background says that it is set in the 1920s, yet according to ref 44, it is actually no later than 1918-1919?
It's INCREDIBLY strange that you get a choice of backgrounds, two of which would be highly unlikely to be done by women in 1918s/1920s (even a female doctor would be rare, considering that the British Medical Association didn't accept them until 1892), THEN you get to choose your gender in a SKIPPABLE encounter, and then the subsequent refs assume you are a man anyway. I.e. you can answer that you are a woman, and then STILL get ref 83 with "she has recognised certain speech patterns and words that mark you out as such a businessman." There are also all the references which effectively say you have personally taken part in The Great War: plausible for a female doctor, not so much for the rest.
At 39, it says "but you recognise her by her unique diamond brooch, which she was wearing earlier." – even if you fell asleep and only saw her note?
Travelling circus option in the library only seems to make sense if you got to ref 36.
Options at the docks do not change from day to day, at all. In particular, you don’t find anything on the beach in ref 75, even after you just killed some people there the previous day. Likewise, at 76, you dismiss the mariner even AFTER reading about the "mythical marine creatures" in the library AND after fighting those two/three cultists, who have brooches with the creature.(Perhaps after fighting the actual Deep One as well, but I haven’t tried, considering how unlikely you are to survive that.)
Also at 76, that mention of members of the Resistance sounds REALLY strange in a story set in 1919. I suppose there had to have been some French doing sabotage and the like in the occupied territories during WWI, sure, but why the hell would they need to flee all the way to England, and not to the unoccupied parts of France?
The writing for beach encounter just feels so wrong. You get attacked, and then have no choice but to stay in one place for the whole hour, and the cultist with a rifle just does NOTHING – neither investigating where the first two and trying to shoot you while you are so exposed, nor going back to get more support? For that matter, dead cultists would seem to be some ironclad evidence to present to the police, yet you cannot do anything as logical as that?
Lastly, is there any reason why we can't head directly to that warehouse during the day? Or any conceivable explanation for how the player character managed to kill a cultist on the beach without ruining WHITE robes with blood, sand, etc.? Not that it matters a whole lot, to be fair, since they only seem to let you bypass one fight, and then everybody knows who you are anyway.
I have to be honest, I think this might be the most overrated work on here. After all, it is the only one which is explicitly mentioned in the FAQ, which does raise the expectations for it, rightly or wrongly. I guess that at the time, it benefited from a massive novelty factor, since there was next to no interactive media based on Lovecraft then: even Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was still about a year away, and apparently, there were only really Infogrames' Shadow of the Comet and Prisoner of the Ice. Granted, the great Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem was already out in 2002, but as a lesser-known game on a lesser-known console and strictly speaking, it was "inspired by", rather than directly based on.
Nowadays, though, we have seen a veritable boom in Lovecraft media during the second half of the 2010s, and that includes more video games I can name. The most famous ones, of course, is another "inspired by" console exclusive, Bloodborne, followed by Darkest Dungeon, but there have been plenty more works mining the mythos directly with variable degrees of success, such as the more modern Call of Cthulhu, The Sinking City, Stygian: Reign of the Old Ones, Lovecraft's Untold Stories, Moons of Madness or the freely available Infra Arcana. I could keep going indefinitely, as there are literally dozens more examples: just a few months ago, there was a highly acclaimed Lovecraftian fishing game called DREDGE. My point is that with this benefit of hindsight, there's just so little to it.
Some of the issues with it could probably be blamed on being intended as part of a trilogy that never came to be: hence a substantial fraction of skills being potentially useful in the future yet useless in the here and now. By my estimation, Chemistry, Biology, Navigation and Acute Hearing/Eyesight all fall into this category, while Brawling and Driving are right next to them, since they only seem to have any influence on a completely skippable encounter, and even then, not having them barely impedes your progress.
If you are feeling generous, some others may be written off on the internet still being young and less-useful for doing research at the time: i.e. it's pretty obvious Simon Osborne chose Portsmouth because its name matched Innsmouth the closest, and didn't look much further into it, but I am not sure if it would have been all that easy to bring up Portsmouth's historical maps back in 2004 as it was in 2019, when Yaztromo did that and proved that Portsmouth's actual geography makes the story impossible. Similarly, ref 83 mentions ammo smuggling: much of the German ammunition wasn't even compatible in the first place (i.e. 7.92mm bullets vs. 7.62mm), but I am not sure if it was as easy to look it up in 2004 as it is now.
Many other issues are just bad design, however. I.e. it's equally ridiculous that Knife Use gives you a whole MACHETE, which apparently no-one minds seeing on the belt of your detective/doctor/gangster, and yet, the only difference between that, and being completely bare-handed, is whether you enter melee combat at -3 or -2 modifier, while Cultists' knives are at +1? REALLY?!
And it also seems like there's absolutely no point in taking a Handgun skill, since you can always just take an Elephant Gun (or a Tommy Gun, I guess) and there is no apparent downside - not in the tight quarters, not in terms of ammo (infinite for all weapons), and no-one seems to mind you walking all over the place with those massive firearms. It was funny when at 86, your coat gets taken, and your Tommy Gun is just out in the open, which nobody minds, but this is even funnier with the Elephant Gun.
Integrating firearms into FF is quite a struggle, to be sure, but gun-wielders taking a shot or two at most and then charging into the fray for literally no reason (whether during the ambush on the beach, when it's the cultists who do that, or the next potential fight, where it's YOU who decides to charge a knife-wielding cultist even if you do not have a melee weapon) is a particularly arbitrary way of doing that. Then again, it's also arbitrary that both those first two cultists and the third one seem to be equipped with the same kind of knife, yet you can only loot it from the third cultist - apparently that was the only way to make that encounter seem worthwhile.
One thing I do like is that you cannot render yourself completely safe to any skill checks. I had a run where the virtual dice have really hated me, and so even with 10 Perception and Cybernetics, I still failed three of those checks in a row. For a horror game, that feels appropriate, and the ultimately optimal build to maximize your odds of victory
SPOILER
No points into Targeting whatsoever, but get Perception to 10 and the other two to 9.
END SPOILER
is just the right kind of counter-intuitive.
Proofreading:
SPOILER
7 a harsh, bright white glare (comma?) + A middle aged woman + strong looking man
9 completely off guard.
13 half heartedly
14 something odd- the monitor
21 very well fitting
24 the higher pitched voice
26 It's well stocked
27 animal like
43 extending several inches forward, all the (way?) through your boot + a fast acting tranquilizer
56 of well trained lasers
58 They're 'scientists, all right.
62 comfortable looking beds
77 to actually shoot heror fight hand-to-hand.
78 extra uniform (apparently belonging to someone in the science department (no closing parenthesis.)
80 a very fast acting
90 a middle aged, bearded man
103 as fast as safety will allow before jumping leaping clear the last few feet.
106 The robot breaks shatters into several pieces
109 That's the only for me + That's the only (way?) for me
131 middle aged man
138 Adminster a dose of Neuroxin?
146 to half walk, half slide + a powerful looking
150 in a bone crushing grasp
152 to you?" you inquire
156 approach the still unmoving gate attendant. (hyphen?)
170 the worst case scenario' Well
185 Shaking your head rubbing your arms + that it knocks you backward and while slightly burning your arms and torso
186 before pointing to the woman "Ensign Parker" and the other man (comma?) + still operational?" asks Neilund.
Well, I had pretty high expectations for this after Soul Tracker, which I enjoyed quite a lot, and knowing that this was written some time after. Promisingly, it also has no names like Drago Darkheart, though naming your ship a Norwegian word for Devil is almost equally on the nose. Unfortunately, I found this to be a real disappointment altogether. I would go as far as to say that I hated it by the point I won for the first time, but then checking out the other, dead-end options helped to redeem it somewhat.
One of the issues is actually to do with the way it was adapted. I downloaded the text version to check, and saw that you had TEN FEAR points. Having finished the whole thing, I agree with the earlier comments that's too much, but reducing it to just 4 FEAR points goes way too far in the other direction. In practice, it means that on one of the two paths, your Astro-Geologist keels over and dies after seeing just a couple of dead bodies (yes, I know you are supposed to minimize your exposure to them to win), unless you chug basically all of that Neuroxin almost immediately, and it just feels wrong - not scary, but merely annoying and implausible. I think it would be way better to have it at 6 points, but make a few more events give FEAR points. I.e.
SPOILER
Somehow, seeing the woman who had just pretended to be a medic turn to an alien at 230 does NOT give any FEAR points, even though a very similar transformation at 219 gives two?
And as was already pointed out many years earlier, 161 says it adds a point, but it doesn't. Once it does, 6 point capacity would be a lot more reasonable.
END SPOILER
However, the more fundamental issue is that you are an Astro-Geologist, you were sent out to investigate a ship where, as you are told in the very first ref, potentially every system could be broken...and you go ahead and do that WITHOUT EVEN A FLASHLIGHT, without rubber-insulated gloves (according to ref 105), and, more importantly, WITH NO OXYGEN MASK OF ANY KIND, even though by far the most plausible reason for what happened to the ship is that it suffered a breach and/or air purification broke? A whole instakill skill check only exists because of this stupidity, as well as one of the ways to get captured for a midway encounter, one which REALLY doesn't justify all the railroading leading up to it.
SPOILER
In that encounter, at ref 237, they tie us up and even bother to remove our backpack, yet they somehow do NOT remove our pistol? This is just peak stupidity, even worse than untying you for literally no reason. Plus, having that backpack supposedly removed still doesn't stop you from reaching either the capsule or the solvent. Then, at 271, the alien "staggers back against the wall"…and we just leave, and don’t get to follow up and keep shooting at it on the ground until we are convinced it's dead? Same goes for 216 or 250. For that matter, why do we have to stand and watch and not shoot immediately at 219? Or indeed, why is an alien obviously talking to the other aliens in English at 276?
That's not even to mention just how random that option 271 is. One does have to wonder why, if bottle of solvent worked so well at 271, we can’t use it against the Elders (and presumably the Leader, though I haven't tried checking since it's essentially worthless.) Or the desperate railroading in the Deep Sleep: again, if they could vent a sedative at 179, why even bother with risking one of their own in the first place? Seeing whoever you freed get shot in the exact same way every time is annoying (in a "Hondo, get TF down on the floor!" way), and not remotely scary.
END SPOILER
As I said, it's unfortunate that not only is there only one path to victory, but it's the path that's a lot less interesting and altogether worse-written. It involves more crew interaction (particularly on the dead-end paths) and it feels so constrained. I.e.
SPOILER
At 156, we can open fire at whoever shot at us or chase after them or ignore them, but we cannot try to call out and talk? And then, at 160, we cannot go back to the ship and report that at least one person is already dead? (Even though we do get the option to report at 22.) Further, If we don’t administer Neuroxin to the Communications crewwoman, why do we just leave her in the docking bay? Can’t we restrain her and get her to our own ship? Perhaps leave her there until we return, or even actually leave the ship already with just her, in a sub-optimal, yet ultimately completely plausible ending?
There is also no skill check at 153? And it's interesting you get a skill check to save yourself at 130, even though that's ultimately a dead end, yet all the perception and dexterity in the world won’t save you at 203?
END SPOILER
It also has what might be the worst-detailed ref - ref 134. Mounted on what? Drops down through what? Was it loud or quiet? Is that normal for ships like that to have that kind of thing, or is it jury-rigged? You don't really get many answers.
Haviing finished A Flame in the North, I must now note that it spells that one character's name as Xenophon in ref 43, even though a slight majority of the refs here use Xenophont. Make of that what you will.
And couple more typos, present in the options I didn't remember to check until now.
I should also say that the Talrasian Mage/Defender is a much better defined protagonist now, and his dialogue/internal monologue is actually pretty great when you make the right choices. More importantly, even many of the wrong/less-desirable choices have internal monologue that is convincing, which is no easy thing to do. In general, the addition of a timer, with quite a range of options being "feel-good" but offering you nothing substantial and taking up time, is certainly a step forward from there being effectively no benefits to avoiding rest and speeding along in the first part (other than that one time you get ambushed for more STAMINA than if you had just walked through the night.)
There's clearly been more of an effort to add modifiers and such to battles as well: while they can sometimes go a bit too far (i.e. the Wraiths up until you guess the one option which works the best on them), when they work well (i.e. Acolytes of the Blade). it stands out. (And also makes the ways you get to bypass those encounters, like the really awesome one at 277, all the more precious.)
Further, I was already impressed how even the goblin army in A Shadow in the North actually thought through military tactics properly (in fact, they were smarter than the Wildlings/Starks in A Game of Thrones, never letting their prized trolls go anywhere without armour, while Wun Wun was infamously wasted in a completely predictable manner), but the Necromancer's army takes this much, much further.
The only exception, ironically, is the Titan: the one time where "game" REALLY visibly overpowers "book", and the logic of power curve (bosses must be last) overwhelms the military logic (there is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON not to send out the Titan first, since it is literally completely useless outside of a siege or a massive pitched battle, while the basic ghouls, the fancier chitinous creatures and especially the fliers have far, FAR greater day-to-day utility, and all are wasted pointlessly if a Titan can do the job either way.) That aside, the siege is still an awesome moment: while Hunger of the Wolf also had a pretty good one, with similar mechanics, this is clearly on another level.
Unfortunately, it seems extremely unlikely that we are ever going to get A Light in the North nowadays, almost a decade since these two instalments. It reminds me of a story you probably don't know of (but really should): a free RPG Maker game called A Blurred Line - that one had a more sci-fi/science fantasy setting, but it was also quite dark, and remarkable for having a substantially branching plot, particularly for a JRPG-style game. Like here, it was only done to about two-thirds, and the final third is over 20 years past the initially promised date.
I wonder if for both of these cases, it's the same issue as what befell Berserk and A Song of Ice and Fire - the authors started out without too many ambitions, and readily embraced genre conventions along the way, but once they got going, they became so engrossed in the worlds they made, that to write out an ending which everyone could see from the start, an ending which the genre conventions they used as building blocks had demanded, began to feel like an unthinkable chore rather than as a triumphal conclusion, and so it never happened. Perhaps the parallels with Dark Souls and with The Banner Saga (which is much more group-focused, yet follows practically the same structure of "journey-capital city siege-cleanse heart of darkness") ended up weighing too much. Or perhaps it was the dreaded logic of the power curve again: how do you top fighting a hydra, a Titan and winged undead beings, in addition to the elementals and wyrms of the first part?
As great it is to get another 10 powerful spells, their presence at times becomes overwhelming for the story, and some become inexplicably unusable at certain points. There's nothing as bad as the inability to LEVITATE to escape the bridge trap of the original, thankfully. (Though, I really thought LEVITATE at 135 was meant to be an attempt to levitate across the room, not to pull the lever.) Yet, it still makes for a poor first impression when the very first available ref (604) offers to climb the tower to see further ahead - and you cannot use FARSIGHT, which you were just told is meant to do EXACTLY THAT!
Further, I still don't understand why we can’t cast SHIELD (or ENERGY?) in most one-on-one fights: Fifth/First Finger, Fenric, Asgrim, etc.? Or why you suddenly get the option to attack Iuli with a mug, but not to cast REVEAL or DISPASSION on him - or to cast REVEAL on Kalbeck to see if he is worthy of your trust. (Could probably go for all the suspicious characters like the Talrasian Priest, Lyric or the Fourth Finger, I guess?) Plus, if we can knock out Iuli with a mug, why can't we knock out and interrogate the Fifth Finger, considering SHE LITERALLY GETS HELPLESSLY ESNARED at 212? Or indeed, after she is shot in the leg in 112, it would only require some self-control not to send the final arrow. Really weird, given those internal monologue complaints about the guards not keeping the fourth alive at 360.
To be fair, this might be solved by rewriting the archery option a bit and not making ENSNARE available there in the first place - the ability to make the vines emerge from the cobbles seems to contradict the claim that everything besides the Gold District is built on bedrock, which is rather important to the plot. Similarly, how can Kalbeck and co. buy food with 30 gold, if all the food is rationed?
And by the end, I was hoping that a healing potion could save the horse at 348, but I guess not.
END SPOILER
And some continuity.
SPOILER
You can go from ref 167 straight to ref 100, which is...really strange?
Sometimes, you have to guess which options are mutually exclusive and which ones are not, and it's hardly satisfying. In particular, it's not quite clear why exploring the outbuildings and talking to Iuli blocks you from looking at the top of the tower as well. On the other hand, at 303, you can climb the tower even if you have already done that before.
And while I know that whole tower is ultimately a time-wasting trap option on any run where you actually intend to get the best ending(s), I still find it strange that at 4, dialogue options do not change from reading Iuli’s journal, even though most of them would be asking about the things you already found out about by then. (Dialogue with the woman at Thieves' Guild tavern has a similar issue if you had already talked to the Mechanist.)
END SPOILER
With these comments out of the way, I'll concur with everyone else that this is very much a worthy follow-up to A Shadow in the North, one which retains its strengths and improves upon it as well. The city really is in a desperate situation, as you can see even from afar, with the rain of ash at 101. Once inside, the numerous times you can stumble into traps (or at least tricks/shakedowns) laid by the seemingly friendly characters only underscore that. Same goes for even more minor details, like the way herbalist’s stall is laid out at 159. The "taxation" option, and the response to it, is excellent. And I am not even getting into the "core" encounters required to either escape or to mitigate Necromancer's hordes. Perhaps the only exception is that 110 feels surprisingly idealistic.
I must say, this seems like the primary candidate for a suggestion I voiced earlier, about "intermediate" ending markers. For all the other stories, they would promote some of the endings which currently give skulls even though you survive and are not doing too badly at the end of them, but here, they would demote the
SPOILER
Fenric's ship and Mechanist's airship endings
END SPOILER
Since it's really, really clear that they are not meant to be seen as "successful", even if it can still take quite a bit of effort to win in those ways.
SPOILER
In particular, it seems like the Thieves in the Mechanist's path got buffed relatively to what they were like originally (looking at the FFProject reply earlier in the thread, where a Glaive Thief apparently only had 6 Skill rather than 8?) I don't care about that one too much: although if there were already adjustments like that to nameless thieves here, I think it only strengthens my argument for buffing more important characters like Zamarra's Grauch.
The Prince of Thieves himself, however, is surprisingly difficult due to the timer. I fought him twice with an Enchanted Sword and a Chainmail Surcoat, as well as shooting at him one time and casting IRONHIDE the other - and still lost to the timer. The third time, I resorted to getting Dawnbreaker and setting it on fire, which may be a bit of an overkill narratively.
END SPOILER
Speaking of:
SPOILER
It took me way too long to win in "the cinematic way" because I didn't realize that the Dawnbreaker had to actually be equipped, and not just in your inventory. I suppose I misread "a weapon meant for the Gods" part as meaning that it would always damage you when used, and not just when it set you on fire, and so didn't want to resort to it unless I was going to risk the flame.
I think this is actually one of those things which you will probably NEVER see happen in a written version - a ref would ask to turn to one spot if you have Dawnbreaker equipped and to another if you don't, so a player with Dawnbreaker would either always assume they used it at that point, or at least know to switch next time around. Here, there is no way to tell what exactly the issue was. (At one point, I actually assumed you needed to have Clockwork Drill from the Thieves' Guild and use that on his skull!) Granted, I did also stumble on the Mechanist's machine ending thar way, which is in many ways superior for the city as it gives them far more lasting protection (only downside is that you would probably have no time to hunt down any Fingers and they would continue to be a nuisance for the rest of Novgard.)
So, I think the minimum response would be to modify the failure ref if you have the Dawnbreaker but didn't use it - i.e. "Length of blade is stuck...Of course! The Dawnbreaker! You hurriedly reach for the holy sword but the Titan's arm reaches you first..." A more logical one, though, would be to give the player the option to give away all the other Swords they have once they emerge "with Dawnbreaker on their belt" - that wording itself suggests that should be the weapon the Defender has equipped by default. Perhaps it would even happen automatically - after all, that very ref is about weapons getting distributed from the hall, and it would make perfect sense for the Defender to give away those weapons which are purely dead weight and inventory clutter at that point, with literally no benefit over the Dawnbreaker.
There are things I can nitpick, parts that unbalanced and luck based but holy ****ing the writing is on another level compared to any FF book on this site or otherwise. The gameplay is good but a bit wonky at times, but the writing is leagues and leagues above anyting else
This isn't the worst adventure on here, but it's far from the best. I do wonder if I might have had wrong expectations from looking at its difficulty rating. It is supposedly "medium" difficulty, yet I have completed it just now, on my third attempt. You can get one of the items which guarantees victory when used really, really early, and it takes no real effort to find the solution to the one riddle which will likely block your path a little earlier, either. After that, it's just knowing where to turn to avoid straying too far off the path, which is again not very difficult.
I have had a similar experience with Below Zero Point - again, it's marked as "medium" difficulty, yet I completed it in four attempts, and it was hardly luck - its very structure is such that one of the earliest choices in the whole thing trivializes about half of all encounters at no cost, and once you bypass a couple of instant failure choices, practically all that's needed is to not be stingy at the shops and buy all the stuff with interesting names. Meanwhile, the supposedly "fairly easy" A Flame in the North has a timer mechanic and a very considerable range of choices, many of them seemingly reasonable-looking, which either end the run instantly or collectively leave you unable to win. Its predecessor, A Shadow in the North is easier, but still considerably more demanding than either this work or Below Zero Point. For that matter, The Word Fell Silent is also described as "fairly easy", yet it has both the potential to engage in fights that might be really difficult for certain backgrounds, random events and associated skillchecks which may end your run immediately, and some pathways always end in failure for certain backgrounds.
Some proofreading. (Having won once, I haven't explored many of the remaining choices, at least not yet, so it's best to assume this is only a fraction for now.)
SPOILER
17, 82, 101, 126, 192, 215 – extra spaces before commas
19, 22, 27, 118, 128, 167, 213, 229 – extra space
1 "bringing proof of the Yeti s demise."
28 "its pure- white scales + White dragons are renown for + "
Completed all the challenges! It's been a while since I originally played this, so I needed a few playthroughs to remember everything.
Of all the gamebooks on this site, Outsider! in my second favorite (#1 is House of Horror, just because House of Hell was the first FF gamebook I discovered, and it's still my favorite because of that).
a ghost town in a months' time 402 Investigate "Zarquons exotic goods" + no punctuation at the end of the options 404 in the inns loft. 405 a dying mans last breath + the World-Flame".With that + the intruders grasp 407 the tide "In these dark times + 408 inside of them. there are 409 well trodden 412 eh!" he says "Well + the cawing of the Ravens have fallen silent. 417 over the bridge "Tribute bearer" + common tongue "Follow me" 419 one blood filled breath 422 vicious looking grin "I see 424 grips you tighter "You lie; south road is safe to all those who friends of goblins, west road far more dangerous."Do you 431 into the statues side. 434 the rents in your tents canvas. 435 into the creatures face 436 the King" reads one + is Nigh!" reads + another "The Gods 439 Undeterred you send (comma?) 441 he is" The guardsman cries + his animal "Now do 442 He is right to be afraid you attack, pressing his backwards with your blade (?) + stab him In the chest 443 deflected by the steeds steel armour. 455 over you "no matter 460 the keeps parapets 465 my mind at ease" Thrunvir says 468 The only evidence of its presence the trail of hot dark blood it leaves behind it. 475 attack me" You snarl + with blood "The Necromancer + knows" He + replies "He knows + idle threats" You + respond "Who is this + the world" Frejun + whispers "There 476 closer to the lakes centre
490 You see little in the way of wildlife however (comma?) 491 at the caverns side. 493 to worship me" (missing period). 501 good citizen!" he cries "I presume + continues "The town 502 Investigate "Zarquons exotic goods"? 504 about this" replies the innkeeper "Recently + Lose 1 STAMINA.Eventually + just leavin'" he says "I've 505 the other mages useless attacks
507 a whales head 515 it blasts it way 522 fool" He screeches, his speech barely comprehensible "WHERE IS MY TRUBUTE". 524 told me to" You shrug 531 smashes against the statues side 536
a nasal voice "Magnolio 540 the guards' body crumples to the floor. 556 mortal" A voice + mortal" It + hisses "I have 569 pinning it to the chests floor. + you are sure that (it?) is dead. + serves as Thrunvirs chancellor 581 with pent up energy 591 Greenlander" he snaps "you 599 in your crystals light, 603 gold pieces" he says "This is 611 to the world-flame (capitalization?) 619 towards the waterfalls edge 625 over the waterfalls top 636 By now they are deep in the crowd still clustered around the ridiculous figure of Magnolio. (comma?) 639 how it's going to be" The Guardsman says, as though disappointed "I warned 644 hiding in.The ruffian + and speaks "It is dangerous 646 a muscle" Barks + the man "You can 648 the temples roof 654 who I am" He croaks + mane of his hair "I swear 655 Ragnar wheezes "This road 657 of the fireballs impact 658 The Gods faces 661 to you "If I were you
662 the bars "If you 664 nearby growls "I can't believe it + Thrunvir speaks "It seems 665 picking the doors lock 671 that merchants need wear armour 677 The grass covered tundra (hyphen?) + and the occasionally black basalt outcrop (?) 678 in the creatures head 685 knee deep mud 686 a feather strewn spear
104 the streets" Growls the barman "It'll 105 your question "Recently 106 Sheltering behind a crenellation a guardsman looks towards you. (comma?) + he topples off of the wall. (?) 108 at you "Look 109 You slip between the crack between the doors (into?) 112 to exact as much gold (extract?) 119 mighty catapaults 124 the tribute" you tell him "but he + nods vigorously "I make sure 132 137 a look of pained surprised 140 "Please" he + whispers "spare me. 141 you hear the horses approach. 142 of the mercenaries' horse (why plural?) + Without warning the horse bucks. (comma?) 144 his horses breath 154 towards the valleys mouth. 155 resignation in his eyes "May the Gods save us from righteous men" he mutters 156 burnt out farmstead 165 Say that the goblins plan to march south, not north? 169 over the chests bottom 173 to the gamblers shoulder. + for it!" he demands + the window "Get out of here, sorcerer" he grunts. 174 Frejuns bolt arcs + pushed by Frejuns magic + your shields energy 182 wisp like bodies
205
your question "The world 209 journey" one says 211 by a thousand razor sharp cuts. 212 Here its goblins 223 a double bladed war axe 236 Silence forgotten you grab the bow 238 where I've come from" She whispers. 239 understand?" He + says "I am 240 deflecting the poleaxes head when you can. 242 in one of your spells eddies + As his horse neighs piteously (pitifully?) 243 Without warning the horse bucks. (comma?) 246 booms out over the water "Stop or die!" 254 its now fallen assailant. 255 the World-Flames energies 257 to get as far away from the bonfire and its infernal custodian. (as possible?) 258 Now inside your blades reach 263 his eyes lighting up "How 270 – space after “a food stall”. 273 as the inns patrons dash 279 to its uneasy rest.Before 297 the mountains icy wrath.
304 recruit" one of them + gold pieces" he declares "seven minus” 305 who answers your question "As 306 emotionless voice "For the crime 308 Gods" She states "But beware 321 After an hour or so you heading through the forest you reencounter + as a result a leafy green canopy 322 at last" He growls + surprisingly accurate the common tongue 324 the north. (no capitalization?) + is south" He says; + The trees beckons you 334 Silhouetted by the moons light 338 He see's your advance 343 his now useless lance away + a two handed broadsword. 345 "There he is!" he cries jubilantly, "now do what you've been paid for". 354 You dance rings around it your sword cleaving into its thick hide. (comma?) + against a carriages wreckage + calls out weakly "I am not 357 to face the Fire elemental (capitalization?) 361 in the rooms centre. 362 the bars "If you try 363 Eastern road" You say. + "Aha!" Cries + lighting up "Only a day + no punctuation at the options. 365 The creature that kneels before (us?) 366 the snow-storms that rage continuously around her slopes makes 369 the scorpions poison 370 – no punctuation at the end of the options. 373 and I might not kill you" he whispers. 379 the Wyrms great green eyes 397 sickening smile "Help me!" comes a plea from within them "If there's anyone out there!"
And one surprising issue which had somehow slipped the creator's mind is that your magic usually receives so little reaction from everybody else.
SPOILER
i.e. I would have expected that after you ended up illuminating the goblins at night with fireballs in full sight of all the guards, they would have tried to do ABSOLUTELY ANYTHING in their power just to keep you fighting on their side. Later, you apparently wreck plenty of people's dwellings if you used FORCE on the corrupt guard, and there's again no real reaction. There's even some unintentional comedy when that guard cares neither about your magic shield nor your fireballs, immediately blocking them with his cloak with nary a shrug: it makes him look like Ron Swanson or some other sitcom character who just doesn't care about fancy BS and powers through regardless.)
Similarly, I expected more of a downside to unlocking the western gate, from outright dying to at least seeing the archers take pot shots at you. All because the implications of someone capable of just single-handedly opening up the centerpiece of your defence just walking out there, aligned with who knows what, should by all rights be terrifying to the city.
If anything, THAT would have warranted sending out a knight: as it is, the strangely silent knight who sticks around instead of fleeing for completely unclear reasons (certainly not honour or the like, else he wouldn't have been defending the guard in the first place) is a really strange replacement encounter. The inability to loot anything worthwhile from him is an icing on the cake: I was hoping you could take his gloves or something, and use them to handle Fire Elemental's gift.
END SPOILER
Some minor things which I don't quite get.
SPOILER
How come an earth elemental is just made of rocks, and the fire elemental is fire and charcoal, yet the water elemental is not pure water and actually has flesh which other fish can eat?
Why can’t we try LEXICON at the book in 167?
I am not sure about the point of asking you if you want to enter the Raven Man's place or not AFTER you had already expended the unlocking spell on it.
I also hope there's going to be more context about the mechanical stuff in the sequel, since right now, getting that key for 6 pieces seems like a complete waste in all senses of the word. For that matter, it feels like paying for incense only makes sense if you want to support the temple's work, as the shrines only seem to offer healing, which is not really needed if you planned things out right?
There's some confusion about one character's name: it's Xenophont at 5, 105 and 205, yet Xenophon at 405 and 505.
At 304, the room is said to cost 3 pieces, yet it costs 2 at 104.
END SPOILER
I have also discovered some outright software bugs.
SPOILER
Firstly, at 474, Cast Force instead sends you to 275 – as well as somehow giving you 255 arrows.
And at 648, the option to go temple's interior somehow takes you to 549 instead.
If you defeat the mounted mercenary rider at 42, you are taken to 442, where he is dismounted.Yet, if you dismount the knight at 243 or 343, you are still taken to 44 if you win or 144 if you lose, and he is mounted in both.
END SPOILER
Finally, proofreading. Here, it's going to have to take up multiple comments once again. The issue with the lack of punctuation around quotations is the most prominent, but sadly there's a lot more than that - to the point I ended up intentionally triggering obvious trap options just for testing.
SPOILER
2 are you" The guardsman 4 upon the barkeeps face 5 the Artificers foundry + the Mages College (?) + speaks "Rise + reached Innshelm" you reply "At present + wise" responds Atarxes "every 7 the crenulations (double l?) + attract the goblins arrows 11 A flock of ravens burst (?) 13 but I wondering (am?) 16 But you not focus on them (?) + into the wild mans chest 22 mighty catapaults + an entrance "Graznak is inside 23 then show it to me" Graznak interrupts 36 flutter from the keeps parapets 38 go through?" he says "Well + a day" you shout + you're right" quips one "but + killed!" .They 40 it's going to be" The Guardsman + disappointed "I warned you 44 avoiding the weapons deadly point. 49 across the valleys mouth. 61 "Hello there" croaks + crone "It's good 70 grave news!" You say + go to Frejuns chamber + to put him to the question (to questioning?) 73 The taverns clients lean back 77 Dusting the lakes snow 78 The beasts gaping nostrils quiver 79 its less protected sides + is short lived. 81 of the villagers bodies.
So, by and large, this is very good. While I generally have a preference for dark fantasy, I started with relatively low expectations here, since the background, with its obvious inspirations from Dark Souls, is very familiar nowadays. (Admittedly, when this was written a decade ago, "Soulslike" wasn't really a thing yet, so in some ways it was hit by something beyond its control.) On the other hand, you can draw the parallels with more classic (J)RPG plots as well (substitute "flame" for " crystal" and you have the archetypal early Final Fantasy plot).
Nevertheless, Richard Evans places a lot of effort in wringing every last drop of atmosphere out of the premise he went with. I appreciate a lot that the story is not grimdark in a way so many lesser writers approach these things, with overblown atrocities and tortures all over the place and blending into one boring mess. Instead, it's a far more understated yet unmistakable portrayal of a land where everyone does what they think is right, but is ultimately out for themselves ahead of anything else, regardless of how they choose to justify it (if they bother to). Unexpected details like the surprisingly heartwarming glimpse into the mind of two trolls at ref 121 make it all the more convincing. Same goes for when a mundane event (settling to sleep) which would be brushed over in any other story suddenly gets several extra choices and becomes an exhibition of how far your character's paranoia might have gone by then.
This story's 700 refs are put to a great use as well, as while there are deceptively not that many routes at first glance, they expand into a wide range of encounters. Even the goblin army is far more interesting than usual due to being an actual army, making up for their weakness with remarkable organization, and an act of simply charging a sentry is imbued with surprising weight at ref 418 - and that's before we get to the sheer number of choices available to try besides that cool (yet obviously stupid) thing to do. Most of the other encounters involve creatures you may not expect to see at all, and are more interesting still. There are not just choices thanks to spells, but often additional choices thanks to their implications. The moment when casting a Levitate spell suddenly expanded into a choice of three targets was a good example.
Unfortunately, this work is somewhat uneven. As impressive as those "extra" choices, ones which could have been absent and you wouldn't have guessed it, are (everything you can do while looting a certain corpse, itself in a rather out-of-the-way location, is another example, as the options in a tavern you shouldn't really attend in the first place), there are a few things which feel like glaring omissions, and detract from the impression more than I would have liked to admit.
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In particular, it's incredible that once you have survived the first night, absolutely nobody cares about your sun badge – not any of the guards, who might perhaps have considered it evidence of desertion (granted, you would have presumably been smart enough to hide it, but there is at least one circumstance where your stuff gets searched) and not the royalists at Surlgrad, who absolutely do search you. The first few runs, I kept avoiding the entrance because I was convinced they would shoot on sight if you have the badge (although, ref 36 somehow tells you that there are banners over Surlgrad BUT NOT WHICH INSIGNIA THEY ARE FLYING, which is a frustrating omission if you listened to the merchants earlier). Further, I really expected Frejun to claim that your badge must mean that you have murdered the King yourself once you do present the crown.
Another incredible omission is right at the start of the eastern route. While the reference to Souls' Patches is fun, I really don't understand why you can use Levitate soften the fall at 462, but not when about to fall through a bridge, or to try and and get up over the hut's spiked wall?
Usually published works end up free to the public after 50yrs. Unless someone takes new ownership but if the authors die their work is rendered public eventually. Like with LOTR, and all classical works. That's what I meant. But would would FF look like fifty years from now? Would anyone care? Or would there be something that has replaced it by then. I guess that if it's not possibly important by then as it is now, it doesn't matter. Our kids may pass down the generations of greenspines, jagged lines, and reprints but unless there is movies of FF made? 50yrs from now is just 50yrs and a box full of old weird books in an attic or basement or garage labelled what "My grandparents used to read"
How did one of Obsidian's leaders get a life sentence even after cooperating, yet a traitor to P.I.s who went rogue and got at least two important people killed only got five years?
And if von Rhein's research is so important, and he lives in Berlin, then how was he even able to get to Polaris without any agencies taking notice and attempting to stop him from leaving, or at least to escort him once he's there? Same goes for his assistant, for that matter. It's weird to see him telling the news about the club with no explanation that it's on Polaris, as if everyone watching on Earth or other worlds is supposed to know where exactly it is.
END SPOILER
Process-related weirdness.
SPOILER
I think it says that Energizer Capsules heal 6 Stamina points when you first buy them, yet they actually restore 4?
Does Sighted Rifle actually add 1 Skill?
Gas Mask does not protect from Dire Wolf's Sentinel's gas?
Why does a guy in a thermal suit care about a bullwhip?
END SPOILER
And finally, proofreading.
SPOILER
This story insists of writing "co-ordinates" and "no-where" like this, seemingly in contradiction to modern accepted grammar rules.
1
"Estimated landing time fifteen minutes, en-counting..."
"The correct custom is usually (for?) the guest to ask for 'room service'! "
141
"so well armed."
158
"you have to re-assess" + "It's a good place as any" (as good a place as any?) + "the business (end?) of the city." + "enticing those to dare their luck and risk their money." (who dare to?)
162
"the words 'Access Achieved' flashes repeatedly." (singular vs. plural)
165
"ipping wine from fluted glass" (glasses?) + "to give vent a scream." (?)
182
"terrorism might slowly spread into the Hostile Territories."
197
"was so well protected"
200
"Colonel Aaron Drake is one of few humans ever to have been born on Earth." (???)
218
"a waitresses approaches you;"
219
"A fact that the Polaris Bear took advantage" (of?)
253
"is no-where to be seen"
279
"with some co-ordinates" (twice)
309
" this area is known to" (for?) + "their problematical contents" (problematic?)
314
"What miracle is this? your mind shouts." (quotation marks?)
323
"You've heard tell of such headstrong pioneers" + "of modern day adventurers" (hyphen?)
341
"It's lacquered black chasse" (Its, and chassis?)
343 Your knife blade (apostrophe?)
354
"Bionic hands flex, their steely grip brandish laser scalpels." (?)
357
"how little defensive methods have changed little"
367
"in the Federations secret network" + "was attracted by an alternative lifestyle" (to?)
373
"Chaser lines (up?) his rifle"
376
"You find him sprawled on the paving."
484
"the more of us there is"
END SPOILER
You may have noticed that people are no longer able to agree to disagree. Please don't bring any more divisive political ranting here.
