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A review by tiggum
Rune War by Joe Dever, Brian Williams
2.0
This one is pretty forgettable. In fact, I had forgotten it. I owned this one as a child but, reading it now, I remembered absolutely nothing about it. Part of that is, no doubt, because I used to only ever read them in order so if I died or got bored or distracted part way through the series then I'd never get to the later ones, and this was one of the last Lone Wolf books I acquired, so I probably only read it a couple of times. But part of it is also probably down to it just not being very interesting.
It's especially disappointing because it seems, at first, as though you're getting something new and different - a chance to lead some soldiers into battle. But then you actually get a special mission that's just like every other mission you've ever been on; go to the place, infiltrate the fortress, smash the thing.
There's nothing wring with this one, it's just more of the same. The problem is that by book 24, more of the same is getting a bit old.
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The collector's edition bonus adventure in this one, The Traitor's Reward, is a fucking embarrassment. I have no idea what's going on at Holmgard Press but they dropped the ball hard on this one. And it's a real shame because there's a lot of potential there. The Loyalty mechanic is underutilised and perhaps ill-conceived, but the fact that you can pick your side and that affects not only the ending but also several things along the way is pretty impressive. In fact, player agency is a real strong-suit of this particular adventure. There are a lot of meaningful choices and it's just a shame that, in practice, most of them come down to "how do you want to die?"
Aside from the extremely obvious lack of proofreading, the one other major flaw is the ridiculous number of cheap deaths. Many of them can be mitigated by using particular abilities, and you're usually likely to have at least one, but even when you don't die outright you often take damage. And I don't think anyone bothered to follow through and work out how much damage the average player is likely to have taken as they go, which is why even a little bit of playtesting would have gone a long way.
This book was not ready for publishing. How they had the gall to charge money for this, let alone market it as a "collector's edition", is beyond me. "Collector's edition", to me, implies that you're getting something of a higher quality standard, not a piece of half-baked shit.
It's especially disappointing because it seems, at first, as though you're getting something new and different - a chance to lead some soldiers into battle. But then you actually get a special mission that's just like every other mission you've ever been on; go to the place, infiltrate the fortress, smash the thing.
There's nothing wring with this one, it's just more of the same. The problem is that by book 24, more of the same is getting a bit old.
---
The collector's edition bonus adventure in this one, The Traitor's Reward, is a fucking embarrassment. I have no idea what's going on at Holmgard Press but they dropped the ball hard on this one. And it's a real shame because there's a lot of potential there. The Loyalty mechanic is underutilised and perhaps ill-conceived, but the fact that you can pick your side and that affects not only the ending but also several things along the way is pretty impressive. In fact, player agency is a real strong-suit of this particular adventure. There are a lot of meaningful choices and it's just a shame that, in practice, most of them come down to "how do you want to die?"
Aside from the extremely obvious lack of proofreading, the one other major flaw is the ridiculous number of cheap deaths. Many of them can be mitigated by using particular abilities, and you're usually likely to have at least one, but even when you don't die outright you often take damage. And I don't think anyone bothered to follow through and work out how much damage the average player is likely to have taken as they go, which is why even a little bit of playtesting would have gone a long way.
This book was not ready for publishing. How they had the gall to charge money for this, let alone market it as a "collector's edition", is beyond me. "Collector's edition", to me, implies that you're getting something of a higher quality standard, not a piece of half-baked shit.