Lone Wolf HD - Review @ TechRaptor

Mark Richard (TechRaptor) has reviewed Joe Dever's Lone Wolf HD Remastered - some snippets:

Lone Wolf is a series of Gamebooks or Choose Your Own Adventure novels spanning as far back at the 1980s. In them the reader plays a character named Lone Wolf, last of an ancient order of warrior monks battling an ancient enemy, journeying through a medieval fantasy world stuffed with choices to test their wits and courage. I always found Lone Wolf preferable to the Fighting Fantasy series due to continuity reasons, as stats and items carry across adventures to create a real feeling of progression. Gaming loves choice and progression so a crossover between mediums only seems natural.

Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf HD Remastered doesn’t stray far from its origins. The majority of playtime is spent turning digital pages of an entirely new book written by author Joe Dever himself. One could call it an interactive novel with a combat system bolted on if inclined to quibble over classifications, but let’s not tread down that road. For all intents and purposes this game is an official Lone Wolf novel, made for iOS and ported onto PC. This partially means there’s not a lot of interest in the main menu aside from the appreciable option to switch between fonts, because a legend isn’t worth telling unless it’s written in ancient Elvish lettering. (…)

Turning the book’s pages reveals beautiful artwork, complimented by music that captures that epic fantasy feel and conveys the character’s sense of isolation, taking advantage of the chosen medium by introducing the world of Lone Wolf through new senses. A codex has unlockable entries that help flesh stuff out further for those wondering what a Giak is or are interested in the lore.

It’s not long before Lone Wolf presents a multiple choice event, the first of many that can lead to advantages in combat, hidden loot, or a sticky death. Tempting as it might be to use the same type of solution to buff up the related attributes and build a specific playstyle, not playing smart purposely or otherwise often gets punished. All the attributes have a variety of equally important uses anyway, so it’s perhaps better to build a playstyle around items and combat skills rather than attributes. (…)

Final Score: 6/10 (Good)
Summary: An acquired taste for fans only, somewhat weighed down by design issues.





More information.

Gameplay video (55danutz)

I'm a big Lone Wolf fan. I read all the books in the 80's growing up and now have all of the "Collector Edition" remakes that first Mongoose Publishing and now Mantikore-Verlag are putting out. When I saw this game was coming out on PC I was really excited to play some more as my favorite Kai Lord. I found the story to be decent and I liked the fact that the adventure felt like I was playing an interactive version of the books. Combat I felt got really repetitive and boring and I was wishing for an Iwin button just so I could get back to the story. As this article points out though the cube puzzles are horrible and basically just result in a lot of trial and error to try to solve them, which I didn't feel were very fun.

I still have all the books from when I was a kid, along with the Grey Star, Way of the Tiger, and Falcon books. Don't see much charm in these electronic versions.

I liked the andriod version; haven't tried the pc version.

I really like the Fighting Fantasy PC conversions by TinMan Games.

And this is 50% off… hmm…

Like Ripper, I've still got all of my chilldhood gamebooks and indeed, are still collecting them here and there. (I've all of the FF main series, Lone Wolf 1-20 (gets expensive after that!) Gray Star, Golden Dragons…)

Contrary to the author though, I always preferred Fighting Fantasy for the diversity and more straightforward die oriented combat system. It was 2D6 vs a 1D10 basically.
However, naturally the skill selections from Lone Wolf made it a different manner of beast as far as choices were concerned.

I put my first couple hours into this game yesterday. Previously, I'd only really played Tinman Games' Forest of Doom in this genre. The thread I made about that and gamebooks in general can be found here: http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=26418

So far, I'm enjoying the skill choices most and the inventory system is both easy and functional to use. Whilst I've only finished Chapter 1, like Gabriel, I am finding the combat is gradually becoming a little repetitive and too regular with few varying enemies (Giaks, Drakkarim) despite having a brief learning curve very early on. In small doses I think it's both fun and reasonably strategic despite the QTE madness.

I like the way the game transitions between the reader and the combat; blending the difference between the worlds.

This is a pedantic choice - but I suspect I'd prefer if both pages of the book were always visible when reading as in the Tinman Games model, rather than only having the one half exposed to the player. Obviously that would bring other challenges design wise too.

There have been some amusing moments; including this collar-grabbing screenshot from a combat situation that I found decidedly un-lonewolf like as far as my childlike projection of the hero goes.

This is on my wishlist for a long time. Now might be the time to finally get it. But when to play all the games?! Just yesterday I bought Darkest Dungeon, Battle Brothers and a few rogue-likes…

I am currently playing it on my iPhone and i must say it an awesome game/novel . Very interesting story, a great rpg leveling and inventory system, and chalenging and strategic combat make it a must have in my book. Should be as good on steam i guess.