Fabled Lands

I'm a sucker for old school hardcore CRPGs, including games like the good old Realms of Arkania. This game plays a homage to GameBooks, even based on one of the good old classics of the same name, and it does it beautifully. The game takes it's rules seriously and give you a huge amount of freedom to direct your story and get the consequences your actions deserve (unless youve got some sweet bonus on a skill check that gets you out of trouble and oh boy is it amazing). Overall, I'd say that if you like harcore, unforgiving old school CRPGs and/or gamebooks this is a must-buy, if you only like Ubisoft-style handholding games then this is not for you, but I recommend to give it a try so you might at least experience what an actuall RPG is supposed to be.

A renaissance of the beloved gamebooks is presented through this PC game. I like the combination of board games, gamebooks, and computer games. Overall: Pleasant and relaxing entertainment, to which the eye-pleasing art contributes. The charm of this game is in its unpretentiousness and still an excellent experience.

I somehow managed to miss the game books in the 90s. I have also missed D&D. Where did I live, right? Anyway… this thing is amazing! I get to play a game and tell people that I read a book, how awesome is that?! As to the game itself – the story is good, the fights require you to put some thought (mindlessly attacking gets you killed). The world is vast and there are things to explore at every end of the map. You can make decisions that affect your whole gameplay, so you need to be strategic in your decisions, even around quests. This has the nice side-effect that it has a lot of replayability. The art is magnificent, the music is epic. Overall an utterly enjoyable indie gem of a game.

If you know the classic series of gamebooks, then you generally know what this is: four of the OG six books in one package. Have no fears that this makes sweeping changes to the world or the lore: it is basically just UI tweaks and some gameplay alterations (stashboxes share inventory, for example). The biggest change is the addition of saves (even quick saves) and the ability to set the difficulty. I approve of both of these. Let people play the game they want. Besides, who didn't "quick save" a few rolls back in the day? If you do not know the Fabled Lands series from the 90s, it is a set of gamebooks where quests and events were handled in a "If you open the door, go to 607" format, across multiple books with ways to travel between them (!). The bulk of play being exploring and trying out things with several innovations to have backtracking and to go beyond a "One True Path." "What happens if I get the 'Voice in the night' encounter? What happens if I explore the coast without the medallion?" "How much can I make transporting metal cargo?") The OG experience was a solo RPG that went on about as long as you wanted it to go on until you finally were done. Perhaps the biggest turn off for people more used to other fantasy games is there is no real end-goal. Just explore until you are done clicking on the screen, basically. Which is where my one-star-gone gripe comes from. The original gamebooks had codewords that you checked off (the pen-and-paper equivalent of quest triggers/flags). Each book had its own set (with the same starting letter). This meant if you were looking for "Crag" you knew it was the third book. Here, that element is hidden, so you can spend a lot longer trying to figure it out. And one of the books tied referenced and used in some of the quests is not in this core set (or currently DLC). Might have been nice to have "future DLC" quests/references highlighted in red or with some other indicator.

really regretting picking this one up, which is a shame because it feels like it could have been something interesting with some more work - a good novel-themed rpg would really scratch an itch. Clunky is the word I'd use to describe most of it, and all the rpg elements here are a miss. Character creation is limited to picking from a bunch of archetypes with no real customisation beyond that. there is no level advancement or visual changes after character creation at all. Combat is extremely one dimensional and not at all tactical - it may as well have stuck with a text only approach and not bothered with the combat at all. Game has horrible gameplay loops that rely on dice rolls despite not actually offering other options or outcomes. so you can literally spend half hour walking back and forth from town to a spot where a monster would be encountered, until the game lets you roll high enough to activate the encounter. You'll be doing this kind of thing a lot. The writing is simple and without depth, but charming enough and I personally like the art style but there just isnt enough of it. The game feels like it wants to be a free mobile game rather than a paid computer game. Game lacks any actual overarching story plots, which would be fine it it wasnt without any procedural generation. Every playthrough has to hit the exact same notes to resolve. It gets boring, repetitive and tedious really fast.