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xyzzysqrlI've beaten this one a few times and lost several more times and while there are a slew of characters I HAVEN'T completed the quests for, I think I'm good with calling this one for reasons I'll go into below.
Way back in the Goldie Oldie days, in the beforetimes, the Fighting Fantasy gamebook line existed. There's two things that are important to know about these: First, they're solo adventures where you choose your own route through a dangerous maze of obstacles and battles, and second, they're British, meaning their idea of a grand adventure is one that kicks the player in the groin and laughs about it.
There's this whole weird social humiliation thing going on over there, I dunno.
Anyway, Warlock of Firetop Mountain manages to be (IMO) the best Fighting Fantasy adaptation by dint of expanding on the content of the book. You have about a dozen or so adventurers, each with their own personal goal inside the aforementioned mountain, and usually (but not always) with the alternate goal of murdering the warlock in charge. You do some battles, you solve some puzzles, you hope to find your personal goal, and then you murder an old man and win.
So the game has some strong variety, but it's not enough to keep you marathoning it, because you will always visit the same places in the same order because the book was written in a fairly linear sequence, as many books are. The opening routine is going to get very dull, and how far "the opening routine" extends depends on which characters you play and what they need to accomplish.
There's a bonus gauntlet mode, where everything in the entire mountain is trying to kill you personally and you earn points based on how far you get. That's kinda cool. It's not quite enough.
Still, as I said, I finished this repeatedly and I will keep playing it when I have nothing else to do. That's pretty good for a book published the same year I was born.
Way back in the Goldie Oldie days, in the beforetimes, the Fighting Fantasy gamebook line existed. There's two things that are important to know about these: First, they're solo adventures where you choose your own route through a dangerous maze of obstacles and battles, and second, they're British, meaning their idea of a grand adventure is one that kicks the player in the groin and laughs about it.
There's this whole weird social humiliation thing going on over there, I dunno.
Anyway, Warlock of Firetop Mountain manages to be (IMO) the best Fighting Fantasy adaptation by dint of expanding on the content of the book. You have about a dozen or so adventurers, each with their own personal goal inside the aforementioned mountain, and usually (but not always) with the alternate goal of murdering the warlock in charge. You do some battles, you solve some puzzles, you hope to find your personal goal, and then you murder an old man and win.
So the game has some strong variety, but it's not enough to keep you marathoning it, because you will always visit the same places in the same order because the book was written in a fairly linear sequence, as many books are. The opening routine is going to get very dull, and how far "the opening routine" extends depends on which characters you play and what they need to accomplish.
There's a bonus gauntlet mode, where everything in the entire mountain is trying to kill you personally and you earn points based on how far you get. That's kinda cool. It's not quite enough.
Still, as I said, I finished this repeatedly and I will keep playing it when I have nothing else to do. That's pretty good for a book published the same year I was born.
