Item - He-Man and the Memory Stone

This book is aimed at a very young audience, and thus the writing is simplistic and the gameplay extremely easy; it generally takes under fifteen minutes to complete the book successfully, and nearly every path leads to victory. It's written in third person, present tense, which is a bit strange, though probably as good a choice as any. The book fails to be particularly exciting and it is a bit disjointed at times, but the cheesiness of the He-Man universe is kind of amusing and the book has a fairly high replay value despite being so easy to complete since there are so many different ways to win. The simple combat system also works fairly well for something so random. If you roll very well, He-Man wins the combat outright; otherwise, he either loses life points or gets a bonus on the next roll. Simplistic, but more interesting than "Roll 4 or higher or else you die."

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Feels more like an actual gamebook than Steeleye and the Lost Magic by the same author. It's a very typical "journey to the villain's castle and defeat him" story, only the main villain this time around is Skeletor. By the way, the author barely bothered to give Skeletor (or any of the characters, for that matter) an actual personality, meaning that if you're looking for an authentic Masters of the Universe flavour you'll be disappointed.

The combat system is very simplistic, which can work if you're not in the mood for something more complex. Despite the book's many shortcomings, I appreciated the fact that the choices require reasoning in order for the player to be successful. Overall, this is by no means required reading but can work if you're looking for a short fix of fantasy adventuring.

More reviews by Guillermo