Fighting Fantasy Legends Reviews

[h1] Making some books from the 80s come alive as a Roguelite game[/h1] [i]Quick warning: For the authentic version, you have the Digital Gamebooks in Tin Man Games' Fighting Fantasy Classics and they also made a fancier 3D version of the first book (The Warlock of Firetop Moutain) which is a bit more fleshed out that the version available here.[/i] This is based on three specific gamebooks but this is defintely doesn't play like a book. You have to understand that the feel and atmosphere of the original stories, as well as some locations, enemies are present but the gameplay is very different. The three Gamebooks used are from the Fighting Fantasy series: -The Warlock of Firetop Moutain (written by Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson) -Citadel of Chaos (written by Steve Jackson) -City of Thieves (written by Ian Livingstone) It's supposed to be a choose you own adventure where you pick your path and fights (if possible), roll dices to have your stats and try to kill the big baddie and any monsters on your way while collecting some items amidst many trapped ones. Those books are classics but here, they are presented in a different way. The game has an overland map view of Allansia, the world where the adventures happen. You can travel to various town/cities although only one is fleshed out (Port Blacksand which is the City of Thieves). Dungeons, such as the Firetop Moutain or the Citadel of Chaos are also present on the map but as soon as you enter them, the main part of the game starts. This is where you can encounter the biggest difference that can also shock some long term readers of the series. While the layout is more or less kept, the art is completely different but it's actually very nice to see your character walking in the city's streets, dark dungeons or dangerous enemies' castle. You have sometimes crossroads or multiple choices in some locations like in the books. Just pick one and keep going. Some encounters will be the same as in the books while you will have plenty of random ones but still not out of place. You can replay the main parts (City, dungeons) as much as you want (especially if you fail) and only story-wise important enemies or events won't appear/happen twice (as it doesn't make sense). You can also complete each story any order you want (although you will have to start with Port Blacksand always). The fight system is completely different from the books and instead you roll a certain amount of dices, depending on your skill level and each dice that shows a symbol counts as 1. For example 1 damage if you roll 8 SKILL dices but only 1 symbol shown, or if you get 3 LUCK symbols out of 10 luck dice, then you would beat the luck challenge that you just faced. You also gain XP by defeating monsters and passing SKILL/LUCK tests, which allows you to augment the symbols on your dices. Some armor and weapon can provide you with one additional dice with more or less symbol (for damage or for negating the enemies' attack damage). Speaking about those, everything is based on "cards". The game sort of shuffle cards, enemies, traps, items that you keep getting randomly (or at story-related points). It's different and can seem a bit weird at the beginning but you get used to it. Difficulty is much easier than the gamebooks, unless you enable perma-death (which is totally optional) as you can just restart and grind XP to get stronger. You can also easily get in a down spiral of doom! Each time you die or sometimes by events, you can get an INJURY and a CURSE which blocks out a symbol on your die. It can only be removed by vising specific towns in the overland map (so outside the dungeons) and paying there. The CURSE can actually make you fail any LUCK rolls even if you got more than the required symbols out. Dying repeatedly and being without money will make the game unplayable so a good early start is required and it can happen only with real world LUCK! Raising the difficulty will actually make your opponents use some leveled up dices themselves so they will hurt more. The SKILL and LUCK tests are also made harder. The difficulty is just right at medium and hard level, with luck you just keep being stronger so everything will be a cakewalk for you after a while. Easy mode is good just to get to know the system and discover the adventures. In the end, I recommend it to die hard fans of the Fighting Fantasy series. It's nice to feel like you are walking in a dungeon, opening doors and being surprised by what's behind. It's more interactive than flipping pages indeed but the absence of the original artwork might seem like a missed chance. Obviously it was impossible to get the same art for every monster and item so it's understandable. It also begs to incorporate more story to the world map but I guess it was never done. If you want a simple Roguelite game with roots from great books, this is perfect for you. It's also not too long and hopefully with a few hours, you can sort of beat the game.