Relics of the Lost Age Reviews

It's a very harsh game that weighs hard on your previous choices without warning. choose to shoot someone: you're only good at guns. the puzzles are also really convoluted and not fun.

Fantastic stuff! I played some of the series while it was on dashingdon, and I adore the detail and love put into it. The passion really shows and inspires me to wanna make my own game

An incredibly boring and overly heavy-handed title. The modern LGBTQ+ themes are so off-putting and shoehorned in that you're constantly taken out of the immersion of a decent story. The companions are boring and irritating, the message of racial inequality being bad is hammered into your brain (I don't need a CYOA to tell me that racism=bad) to the point that you find it hard to care, most conflicts are brought down to the same few options every time, and character customization beyond skills is nonexistent. Yeah, Nazis suck. Yeah, racial inequality was rampant at that time and it was awful and it totally makes sense to have it apart of the story. But to make it 90% of the events was a terrible decision. This game is just an homage to LGBTQ+ and racial equality in the most blatant and immersive breaking way. So glad this game didn't take off; it didn't deserve it.

This story is well written and there's lots of adventure. But I would have enjoyed this more if the stat checks were less demanding and relentlessly punishing. The romance is barely there, the author instead preferring to focus on archaeology and historical facts, which are well-researched. Personally, I wouldn't recc this but it is one of the better Hosted Games I've read.

I personally loved this game as a whole and would definitely recommend it, with only a couple of things I'm so hot on. First off, as the author warns you when you first open it up... this is a rather mature game. It doesn't try to sugarcoat the ugliness man can dish out to their fellow man. Whether it's Nazi racial prejudice, southern bigotry toward African-Americans, colonial policies toward natives etc. So if you're more sensitive to these things, be careful. The writing is generally very good (with a caveat): I liked practically everyone I came across in this game, from your student/sidekick; to an... shall we say eclectic pair of adventurers you meet rather early; to a former acquaintance who has rather sadly devoted her talents to some evil people for substantial reward. It's a very satisfying length, enough you probably won't finish the game in one sitting. The stat system was fair; it never felt like the game was demanding too high a skill level from me to perform a task, and I loved the 'specialism' system. Think carefully about which you want to take. Something I didn't like in this game was the puzzles, which isn't really the game's fault but... sometimes it feels like the author doesn't explain how to work things out very well. Without spoilers, there's a puzzle which involves math derived from a biblical passage you can easily get the wrong idea about from how the working is explained. Also, the caveat I talked about earlier was that the antagonists are... well, forgettable. The Nazis can barely be distinguished from each other, villains in a later chapter in Louisiana are the same type of detestable, hypocritical degenerate etc.

About halfway through this and am enjoying the story and characters which are well written. Am a fan of the Indiana Jones films and the 1930/40s era so a lot to like here for me. The only downside is the overemphasising of modern issues and attitudes in what is a period piece that for me do not really fit with the time period or story. I am enjoying it enough that I will finish reading and then move on to the next in the series.

It seems like a good idea. Sort of an Indiana Jones story set in the past. Unfortunately, I found the writing style to be not engaging. I had difficulty envisioning my character and the other characters, as the descriptions were sparse. Then there were pages to read, but the story just lacked oompf. Also, I was not feeling Sam, at all as my sidekick. It felt like too much energy was put into this old relationship, and I lacked investment. I think it would be more interesting to have found the sidekick character along the way, rather than to be saddled with one, that I didn't get to choose. I know choose your own adventures can be done well, and this one, may pickup eventually but I just didn't feel super interested in continuing. It felt the key elements, of who my character was, and what was going on, were already decided for me, and I was just tagging along.

I've played well over a dozen titles under the various Choice of Games banners, and aside from the incredible Tin Star this is the best of the lot. The rails are a little visible, but they're there for a good reason and you're still given a number of ways to solve various problems, all of which make sense based on your character build. The game is quite well-designed in that regard. It tests both your ability to make use of your character's strengths as well as your (the player's) ability to remember details at points. Unlike another review or two here I do not believe the game was overly heavy-handed with the insertion of modern topics into the setting. With maybe one or two small and not-especially-distracting exceptions, everything makes sense with the presented setting and overall Indiana Jones vibe. Furthermore, it's not like you're especially railroaded into RPing an exact level of wokeness beyond "nazis/racists bad", which, well, they are. Special shoutout to Act 4, which is some of the most exhilarating gameplay in one of these I've experienced in a long time. (At time of review I have done one full playthrough. This number will almost assuredly increase.)

Imma badass archaeologist beating nazis every turn, with some political views attached. Hell yeah.

First let me start by saying that all of the current world issues that some may feel are relatable to this story, are saddly not the authors fault, but our failure as a society. All the ugliness that we can shamefully still relate to today, were definetly present in the time period as presented in this game. The fact that they are still raising their ugly heads and afflicting millions of people in our society today is not the authors fault. That being said, if reminders of the historical roots of current modern day racism and hatred bother you, you would do well to skip this one. For myself I found the story line to have moments of intense action and interest, and then other moments of long drawn out situations I really wasnt expecting or wanting to read/play through. There are alot of different genres covered in this story, everything from high adventure ala Indiana Jones, to Private detective / clue finding / case solving (part I least enjoyed) to Romance (i didnt find a good match for me in this one, the only available male character (that wasnt already involved with someone else) was a no no for me. After he killed a second person right infront of me I had zero interest in helping him in anyway and certainly didnt want to persue any kind of a relationship with him,) To Combat Simulator / Survival. The whole combat part bothered me alot as for the first part of the game I was always presented with and chose non lethal options that worked for a good portion of the game. The suddenly after I start being upset about a companion Im with turning around and needlessly killing people, the MC starts killing people too, without ever asking me if I was willing / wanting to do that. From there on the MC ends up killing dozens and dozens of people, with me having to choose how Im going to go about doing it. Its all in self defense, for the most part, although there are several times where you can choose to kill because you want to, sometimes the MC would just turn around and kill some one all on their own. It left me feeling very unhappy. I had a real hard time trying to juxtapose a story line where the ugliness of one group of people towards other groups was a running theme, at the same time I was being asked to handle situations where I was responding to violence, with extreme violence / killing of my own. All in All I think if your not triggered by historically accurate depictions of racism, and If you dont have any qualms with killing lots and lots of people in a fictional narrative, you will find a long and varied story line to read though. If you do find either of those things disturbing though, your going to want to find something else to read.