Item - The Renegade Lord

The Falcon series is an oddity among British gamebooks. Instead of fantasy, the genre used in the series is time travel science-fiction, with inspiration drawn from products such as Doctor Who and The Adventures of Luther Arkwright. The game system is also unusual in that there are no monster stats, and all situations are resolved by skill checks, in a manner more reminiscent of the American AD&D Adventure Gamebooks. Finally, the text has smaller print and slightly longer paragraphs than usual in the British gamebook tradition, suggesting a more mature intended audience.

The first book in the series is a blast. The use of mental powers adds a great strategic dimension to the game, and the variety of past and future settings you get to visit makes for a complex and engaging story. I also liked the fact that winning the adventure requires a lot of careful thinking and making use of the background information given to you. The book can be made frustrating by the fact that there are many opportunities to fail due to having bad luck with the dice. If you are not lucky in the skill rolls, you will need to keep restarting the adventure over and over. Moreover, while the adventure offers the reader many locations to explore, this is ultimately a "find the correct path" book in the tradition of Fighting Fantasy, meaning that there is basically just one way to complete the adventure. This may put off people who enjoy more open-ended gamebooks. In spite of its flaws, this is an involving and challenging book which should provide many hours of entertainment. Definitely a favourite of mine.

More reviews by Guillermo

[Rating: 0/10]
[Recommended? NO]

A great number of interactive series fell into relative obscurity at an alarming rate during the 1970s and 1980s - what I generally refer to as the golden age of fantasy literature - and one of the many distinguished-looking-yet-commercially-underperforming works of this kind happen to be the Falcon series. Notable for its technical basis and logic-led design - and primarily remembered as an oddity among gamebooks in that it received a video game adaptation for this particular title - "The Renegade Lord" is, in truth, one of the most jargon-packed science fiction stories I've ever attempted... and that's not necessarily a good thing. In fact, it defined the whole experience of reading through this "adventure" (there's a story buried under it all, though neither an impressive nor fully-fleshed one at that). While one would be pleased to discover the story as a carefully crafted and reasonably constructed entrance into a futuristic setting, there are several staunchly disturbing departures from reality and crossings of the uncanny valley that neither heighten the senses nor engage the intellect in any way. The work reads like an instruction manual, and I'm not kidding - there are moral dimensions to some interactive works, whereas others are reasonably immersive with their intuition and suspension of disbelief - and this one has nothing to redeem the insufferably bland text. The writing quality is poorly masked by the style of presentation, poor production values and utterly weak impact on the reader... and since there isn't an ounce of emotion/immersiveness on display, this self-indulgent story is guaranteed to leave any and every reader walking in cold and walking away shivering with disappointment. Don't be surprised by the narrative's design scheme implementations, either; the difficulty is odd (and is sometimes staged so poorly I became convinced early on that this one was minimally playtested) and the unimpressive illusion of non-linearity is poorly conceived at best (you'll keep circling until you find the right path). The more I think about it, the more I understand why this book may have been written with such minimal involvement or effort to engage - this book is not only a precursor to the game of the same name it inspired but quite likely the only creative thought processing accomplished in making said game; it reads exactly like the worst text-based games of the time, and the approach is evident in the results.

Shallow, hollow, inconclusive - there are a number of synonymic terms that accurately describe this embitteredly weak interactive experience, all of which are true by my account. It's a shame that a book which aspired to bridge unusual genres and innovate theoretically in its worldbuilding could fall so hopelessly flat; I cannot recommend this gamebook from my personal experiences with it. Don't be afraid to pass on this book (and the whole series, if this is any indication as to the others) - find a better alternative out there and, as a result, save yourself from this time travel trek and all the time it might've otherwise wasted. ^^

(Mysteriously disappears into the shadows.)

More reviews by Shadeheart