Full of Problems – GA2: The Siege of the Necromancer Review

First let me say that I have loved the two of the Gamebook adventures, #1 and #4. They were not perfect games, but they had a good balance and interesting storyline and good writing. This game book title, however, should be avoided. it has major problems. 1 BALANCE The only thing that makes this game book hard is that it lacks any balance. You encounter attack after attack with hardly any armor and then rarely find anything to bring back your vitality points. Often the correct path is through these fights. And the plot line is so narrow, you almost always have to fight the same creatures, no matter what choice you make. 2 FAKE CHOICES This book is riddled with choices that are not choices at all. No matter what you choose, you end up on exactly the same pages. Examples: No matter what choices you make for the first dozen or so decisions you will end up at the same four doors, with the exact same equipment. The only variance is how pathetically weak you are from the many battles that are impossible to avoid. At one point you are asked, do you want to get into the boat, or get under the boat for shelter. If you choose to get into the boat, you falter and end up tipping the boat over and are under the boat...and on the exact same page if you had chosen to get under the boat. This type of thing happens again and again and again. 3) OBVIOUS CHOICES MISSING At the page in the book were you are given four doors to walk through, only two of those rooms gives you the option to back up and go back through the door you came through. In the other two rooms, Nothing happens to the door you came through, it is just not one of your choices. You have entered a one way decision making tree. This feels very unnatural for this part of the story as you are supposed to be exploring and looking for anything that might help you. Sometimes the game gives you the obvious choice of exiting and trying another door, but most of the time it does not. 4) WRITNG NEEDS EDITING In one of the first pages you see basic mistakes like using the word "dark" twice in the same sentence and several more times on the same page. A good editor would catch this and suggest a few options to make the writing flow nicer. Avoid is one.
Review by TBobo on GA2: The Siege of the Necromancer.