$9.993 starsRatingsReviews

‘The Sagas Of Fire*Wolf’ Review – Don’t Ask Him About The Asterisk

TouchArcade Rating:

I’ve been even happier than usual with the recent releases from gamebook developer Tin Man Games. They’ve taken a couple of books that I enjoyed a great deal when I was younger and rather than simply present them faithfully as they typically do, they’ve shined them up into even better forms. The Complete Sagas Of Fire*Wolf ($4.99) represents a slightly different challenge, however. In my opinion, the original books that this release draws from are deeply flawed in a way none of the other books Tin Man have sourced for their adaptations are. They’ve made some serious improvements, but in the end, it’s probably something that only the hardcore gamebook fans or people with nostalgia for Fire*Wolf ought to look into. Oh, and the asterisk stands for some kind of grunt that we can’t make in our language. Basically, his parents were hippies.

Photo 2014-10-06, 13 37 12After Warlock Of Firetop Mountain was a hit in 1982, a lot of other gamebooks with RPG elements followed. One such effort came in 1984 from author Herbie Brennan, who previously wrote several books on occult topics and would go on to write the popular GrailQuest series of gamebooks, among others. Sagas Of The Demonspawn, a four-book series featuring a barbarian named Fire*Wolf as the protagonist, had a few points in its favor. First and foremost, Mr. Brennan was and is an excellent writer whose personal interests make for some unique and well-detailed scenarios. Additionally, although it wasn’t the first attempt at carrying a character through multiple gamebooks, with the first book of Sorcery! ($4.99) beating it by a year, there aren’t very many other examples even up to today. The books are also written towards a slightly older audience than most gamebooks, with violent and sexual content beyond the typical PG fare. Think Conan the Barbarian, more or less, because that’s what the author was probably doing.

The game elements aren’t so hot, though, with an awful lot of instant, unforeseeable death, overly complicated stat systems, and a poorly thought-out combat system. One of the main points of a gamebook is to have an RPG you can take with you and play anywhere you can roll a die, but Demonspawn had you doing multiplication calculations on almost every roll for no discernible reason beyond boosting the size of the numbers. Worst of all, the story just kind of loses steam after the first two books. The third and fourth books are longer, but they’re not very much fun. There are a few very unpleasant sequences in them, and the story just starts to collapse under its own weight. The GrailQuest books ended up being quite a bit better, and I don’t know too many gamebook fans that have nice things to say about Demonspawn as a whole.

Photo 2014-10-06, 13 36 52The Complete Sagas Of Fire*Wolf collects all four books together in one app, which is the reason why it’s a little more expensive than Tin Man usually charges. With four full-sized gamebooks included, the cost per book is very reasonable. The books have been adapted using Tin Man’s usual engine, and are very faithful in terms of presentation. You get the usual options like being able to bookmark certain pages so that you can go back to them, or playing on an easy difficulty setting that allows you to unlock any choice or heal yourself whenever you want. It’s more similar to how Tin Man handled their first couple of Fighting Fantasy book adaptations than their recent releases.

The gameplay has been changed a bit to make things less needlessly complicated. The number of stats has been reduced and streamlined so, for example, you don’t have separate stats for charm with men and women. You also don’t need to mutiply dice rolls by eight or anything like that, as this version settles for lower numbers that work exactly the same way. The battle system works like other gamebooks for the most part, though here defense is a fixed number based on your armor, rather than a variable number based on a dice roll. The battles have a tendency to drag on longer than most other game books thanks to everyone’s relatively high number of hit points, especially if either side fails their attack a few times. Apart from combat, you’ll also be rolling the dice occasionally for skill checks and for certain completely arbitrary choices that give you no hint of what you’re actually choosing. The text has been adjusted to remove just about every reference to the old gameplay systems, though one or two mentions of the old calculations did slip through, so don’t get confused if the game asks you to multiply your roll or something.

The changes make for a smoother experience, and the simple act of adding bookmarks helps mitigate the saga’s tendency towards killing you if you wander off the intended path. It’s a bandage on a pretty broken adventure, but it does make it more playable. The Complete Sagas Of Fire*Wolf packs a ton of content for a good price, but with the quality of that content being what it is, it’s hard to say if you’ll even want this much of it. Conan fans will probably get a kick out of it, and if you’re a fan of the original books, they’re even better here. For the rest, unless you’re really starved for a new gamebook at the moment, you’ll probably want to give Fire*Wolf a pass. Tin Man Games did their best here, but there’s only so much you can do when the source has this many issues.

  • The Sagas of Fire*Wolf

    From Herbie Brennan, the author of the GrailQuest series, comes The Complete Sagas of Fire*Wolf! Exiled from his Barbari…
    TA Rating:
    $4.99
    Buy Now