Ratings and Reviews by End Master

Yet another one available through the Tinman games FF Classics app.

As mentioned in the title, this is a sequel of sorts since you’ll be participating in an all new dungeon created by Baron Sukumvit who has raised the reward because he’s just that confident that nobody is going to beat it this time.
But none of this really matters to you right now, because you’re a slave.

That’s right, while you were sailing from Port Blacksand to Oyster Bay (Presumably to visit Mungo’s memorial) you get captured by slavers.

People really need to learn that sailing from Port Blacksand never results in good things.
So you get transported to place called Blood Island that’s run by some petty tyrant called Lord Carnuss who is making all his slaves fight for his amusement, but also to see which one is the toughest so he can send them through his brother’s dungeon because he wants to show him up.

Yeah the baron apparently has an even more messed up brother also with too much money and time on his hands.
Since he wrote the first one, it’s not surprising that Ian wrote this one too. It also shouldn’t be surprising that you’re in for a series of tough battles right from the start. The item hunting won’t begin until a little later though.

So the first part of the adventure is basically being a gladiator. Here you’ll encounter a few instant deaths while you’re going through all the tests. These include a race and jumping over burning coals while wear heavy sacks on your back. Timed jumping and ducking some blade machine. A blindfolded gladiator match involving several contestants. A regular gladiator match with some big monster.

Assuming you manage to survive all this, you vow to not forget all the other slaves that died for Carnuss’ amusement and get revenge.

So Carnuss and crew transports you to Fang where his brother is getting the dungeon festival started. The other contestants are a dwarf noble, a elf prince, an eastern warlord and a chaos champion. Apparently this contest attracted a higher class of participants than the last time around.

You’re thrown in the dungeon with nothing but a sword which is pretty short sighted of Carnuss if he wants you to win all for the purpose of showing up his brother. He could have given you a few extra things to help you out, but he doesn’t believe in playing as a filthy casual I guess.

From here on as you might expect, it’s a dungeon crawl. Start item hunting because the main thing you have to collect are these little gold rings. You don’t get told you need to do it either, because Ian wrote this and screw you if you can’t keep up. There are a few riddle bits too.

Much like the first dungeon, the encounters aren’t exactly the most memorable. I mean there are a crapload of tough battles and instant death paths, but it's just so common and expected here that’s its hardly worth dwelling on.

The baron must have gotten a deal with a necromancer’s guild or something this time because it seems like there are a lot more undead running about. A tougher battle is with a skeleton king on a horse where you need a blunt weapon to do the normal amount of damage to him. Another encounter is with a Lich Queen. Again even the monsters are royalty this time around.

You’ll also have some encounters with the other contestants, but unlike the first dungeon you don’t get to interact with any of them like you did with Throm. In fact most will just attack you immediately.

Other notable encounters I guess are with the trial masters. One of which is some Buddha looking dude who gives you some tests. Failing any of these tests either means death or enslavement to work as a dungeon flunky meaning you just trade one form of slavery for another.

The other trial master is a wizard who asks you how many rings you’ve collected. This part is really longer than it needs to be since he asks several questions about how many you exactly have. Give the wrong number and he'll call you a loser and kill you. (No really, he'll actually call you a loser) In fact this bit even has an anti-cheat number which if you give a particular answer he'll call you a liar since there was no way you would find that number.

If you got that far, now you have to do some sort of number puzzle with them and turn to the correct number. Fail and you die. With all the puzzle and riddle stuff in this book, I thought I was playing an Ian written story not a UK Steve one.

Assuming you pass THAT, you’re almost out. Honestly though that whole bit could have been cut down by the wizard asking you if you had the correct number of rings from the start and then killing you if you didn’t.

Soon after that you’ll get one more "test" one choice leading to instant death and the other leading out since the baron loves trolling people at the last moment. Finding the exit you'll get bunch of cheers and the usual surprise by Baron Sukumvit who wasn’t expecting anyone to win again.

When Sukumvit is about to hand you the prize, his brother Carnuss steps up and claims that because you’re his slave that he represented him and as such HE gets the twenty-thousand gold.

Nobody is exactly thrilled with this using a ringer crap even if there isn’t any specific rule against it. However since Sukumvit doesn’t like his brother anyway, he changes the rules by giving an additional to the reward to the winner by granting a wish. Naturally you say your wish is to avenge all the dead slaves and fight Lord Carnuss.

Carnuss of course protests, but he’s shouted down by the crowd and they won’t let him off the stage when he tries to leave. Since he runs the risk of getting lynched he draws his weapon saying “So be it!”

Despite everything, he’s actually no push over in combat. Just had a strong sense of self-preservation and not wanting to be bothered to dirty his own hands.

So if you kill Lord Carnuss you get your revenge, your prize money and a lot of warm and fuzzies for winning in the first place. It then mentions that it’s more gold than you could ever live on by yourself, so you get the idea to hire an army to conquer the unknown lands past the Moonstone Hills since you’ve got the coin to do it.

Now, think about the wording. It didn’t say explore. It clearly said conquer with an army.
Apparently you were a villain protagonist all along.

That’s the book.

Well this one was another one I didn’t really “properly” finish. Just sort of by passed some of the stuff I needed and didn’t have most of the time.

I can’t say this is one I was really into all that much. I was never big on the first deathtrap dungeon so I wasn’t big on this one either. Really I found the more interesting part of this book was the beginning where you’re doing gladiator stuff. Probably should have just focused a whole book on that instead.

As for Lord Carnuss as the main villain? I feel like he was one of the better ones. At least you have a personal reason to hate him since he enslaved you whereas in other books you’re often just being told “Hey this guy is an evil overlord, you need to go kill him.” (Or in Zagor’s case, he’s minding his own business and you just invade his home and murder the hell out of him.)

It’s an okay book, but it’s nothing too special.

Another one available through the Tinman Games FF Classics app.

DD is one of those books that tends to be one of the favorites in the FF series. It’s not bad and I certainly enjoyed it, but I never got the big deal about it.

The premise is a guy named Baron Sukumvit holds this Trial of Champions event in the city known as Fang. Because he’s a rich jerk with a lot of time and money on his hands, he’s created this insanely dangerous dungeon for this purpose. People enter and if they survive then they win ten-thousand gold. If they fail, then they die.

So far nobody has won and being the ego/greed driven adventurer you are, you decide to try your luck.

Yeah, it’s basically like a fantasy version of any of those 80s scifi movies where you got a gamshow based around trying to survive to the end. Surprised they didn’t actually put it in a scifi setting actually, but probably for the best that they didn’t.

Despite the simple premise, this is where the series started connecting other books and creating a greater world. It mentions the city of Fang being located close to Port Blacksand and few other background lore things.

Before you enter, it also mentions some of the other contestants. One of them is an armored knight, two of them are barbarians, one is an elven girl, and another is some ninja dude. And you’ll meet most of them all again at some point.

As to be expected for a book called Deathtrap Dungeon, the book is incredibly punishing. Having high stats is sort of vital due to some tough battles, but there are a lot of instant death scenarios. Some of them can be easily avoided provided you aren’t retarded like say crawling into a hole where a giant rock grub came out of. (Yes, you can actually do that)

Most of the encounters you have are either fights or some room where you have to make a skill check due to traps. While there are encounters that stand out, most of memorable ones involve you bumping into the other contestants.

You’ll also bump into a few trial masters that are in key parts of the dungeon. Sometimes they just give you a riddle to solve, but in one instance you have to under go a series tests, which I’ll get to in a moment.

The dungeon could be said to be divided into two sections. The only real difference is the second part is a little more lethal and you might have uncovered the fact that you need 3 gems to pass the final test.

Yeah, Ian with his item hunt again. Might have helped had you KNOWN about collecting vital gems from the start, but then again maybe it's just assumed that as a filthy adventurer you’re going to be snatching any valuables you can anyway.

So getting back to the first half of the dungeon, you’ll actually encounter one of the barbarian contestants known as Throm. The pair of you will actually agree to work together for awhile which is a bit of a first in the FF series to be traveling with someone.

Throm’s not too much of a talker though and you'll probably want to keep in mind that for this contest, THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE winner and eventually you'll part ways after a major encounter with one of the trial masters.

Around this point you move on the second phase of the dungeon, which I said seems a bit more lethal. A lot more instant death parts and tough battles, one of which is a freaking T-Rex, though for some reason they call it a Pit Fiend. (Because it’s in a giant pit I guess) You can avoid a direct fight with some luck and some skill checks as I remember.

It is also at this point you’ll bump into the last remaining contestants at some point. One of them even has one of the gems and that one is an unmissable encounter so it's sort of a "gimme" assuming you manage to defeat them.

One encounter of note that isn’t contestant related is one where you bump into a female troll who wants payment for pulling you up on a primitive elevator. You can fight her, pay her or talk your way out of it. Talking is amusing since you look about the room and see a picture of a male troll and make reference to it. She tells you that the picture is of her brother…Sourbelly! She then gushes about being very proud of him being a guard in Port Blacksand.

Assuming you have all the gems, there's still a last bit with the final trial master. Failing to have all the gems leads to a non-standard ending of being a flunky for that trial master and remaining trapped in the dungeon. Which couldn’t be a worse fate for an adventurer seeing as you’ll be working a regular 9 to 5 job.

If you have all the gems then you have to put them in correct order. This is sort of a call back to the Firetop key puzzle. Get them in the wrong order and you suffer damage, but if you survive it, you keep getting chances to put them in the correct order.

After you’re done messing around with the gems and finally get them right, you'll eventually emerge victorious to a cheering crowd and the baron has no option but to give you your prize. I can only guess that this crowd was somehow watching all this stuff unfold on perhaps a giant crystal ball.

There really isn’t a “final bad guy” to fight. I suppose is the closest thing to one is the last surviving contestant since it's a pretty tough battle and near the end of the adventure. There's also a tough fight with a manticore towards the end too.

But since it’s the dungeon that’s trying to kill you the entire story, that could be considered the “main bad guy.”

In any case, as I said I never got the hype with this one, but its still one of the better FF books.

This is another one available through the Tinman FF Classics app.

After playing the disappointing Starship Traveller book, this one was more enjoyable as I was back on the world of Titan again and chopping things up with a sword.

The story has a typical set up. You’re an adventurer, you get hired by the town of Silverton to get help from a wizard by the name of Nicodemus to stop an evil necromancer called Zanbar Bone from terrorizing the place and such.

Nicodemus however lives in Port Blacksand which is basically the hive of scum and villainy of the land so you’ll have to brave the infamous city of thieves.

Despite how generic this all sounds, this is probably one of my favorite books. Most of the setting is entirely in Port Blacksand so it’s a “city crawl” but is pretty rich with varied encounters.

I'd definitely say Port Blacksand did inspire a few things in my own writing of crime infested fantasy cities.

One thing that’s a little odd, is there are many sections of the book where you get the option to just walk into some private home to explore. While if you were playing as thief this might make a little more sense, but then again as an adventurer I suppose it isn’t too far fetched that you’re just going in places uninvited and taking stuff anyway.

Still, in a place known as the city of thieves, you’d think more people would at least lock their doors, though given some of the messed up encounters, maybe common thieves are rolling dice on survival by breaking in anyway.

Really going on about the encounters would be a section unto itself. Most of it is when you’re breaking and entering these private homes.

A funny one is somebody asking who it is and if you say “tax man” they just toss a bag of coins at you from the next room without even looking. You take them and leave. There's also a few creepy encounters (With accompanying pictures!) which might make you think twice about just blundering into people's homes.

The adventure itself is sort of divided into three parts. The first part is trying to find Nicodemus. Eventually when you get to the middle of city divided by a bridge you find out he’s living under said bridge. So you go there to talk to him.

And in typical fashion for these wizards, he wants to do the bare minimum to actually help you. He tells you he’s old and doesn’t want to leave his house (can’t say I blame him) but he’ll tell you how to kill Zanbar Bone. You’ll need Lotus Flower, A black pearl, and hag’s hair mixed together to grind in his eyes. But first you’ll need a a silver arrow to shoot into his heart so you can paralyze him first. Plus you’ll need to get a unicorn tattooed on your head. (I swear I think Nico is messing with you on that last one)

So begins the second part of the adventure, where you're seeking out all these things in the second half of the city. As you can tell Ian wrote this one seeing you now have an item hunt to do with no indication where any of this stuff might be.

Eventually your time in the city will come to an end when every eventual route leads to two troll guards by the name of Fatnose and Sourbelly. They mess with you immediately and no matter what you say or do, you're going to have to leave the city. (The easy way or hard way)

Whatever you do, you won’t be in Blacksand anymore and it’ll ask you if you managed to get all the needed items. If you didn’t you instantly fail since you can’t risk going back into Blacksand now. (Or at least you’re not going to risk it)

If you managed to get everything, the end game begins, but first a new wrinkle!

As you’re making your way to Zanbar’s lair, you get a message from Nico via carrier bird telling you that you only need grind up two of the three items to kill Bone.

This means now you have to play a guessing game of which three items to grind up since Nico is a senile old coot and can’t remember. This apparently ticked a lot of people off, but given how most of these books go with their one true path mode of operation, this sort of thing is hardly surprising.

So after cursing Nico a bit you set off to Zanbar’s place. This part is pretty simple. You get into some fights with undead, before locating Zanbar, but that’s about it.

Anyway so there’s the final showdown Zanbar. You actually need an item that Nico didn’t tell you to go find, but you need it anyway to not get instant death. You can find it in Zanbar’s place though because evil overlords always keep the item that can mess them up close by.

The showdown is pretty quick. There's no complicated duel like you might get with Zagor or Dire, it's just having the right item combos and passing a skill check and you'll win. If not, Zanbar will kill you instantly with his life draining lich powers.

If you avoid such a fate, you'll go back to Silverton and get a bunch of praise as usual.

As I said while the basic plot of saving some dumb little town from the local magical bully doesn’t sound like much, the adventure through Port Blacksand is where all the cool stuff happens.

Zanbar seemed like a cool enough overlord (He looks a bit like a typical skeletal lich from the pic of him), but he seems a little disjointed from the rest of the adventure unlike say Zagor or Dire.

After you’re done with the city part of the adventure, going to kill ol’ Zanbar seems almost like an afterthought.

Of course as I said, I still think this one of the top FF books set in the world of Titan.

I found that Tinman Games does have some more of the Fighting Fantasy books available, but they're not immediately accessible unless you get their Fighting Fantasy Classics app. Not sure why you can't just download them singularly like you can with others, but there you go.

Like most Tinman game updates of the FF series, they don't add too much other than colorized pictures and options to limit your "bookmarks." (Saves) The app itself also provides a bit of history on the FF series.

On with the actual book review.

This one gives you a little more purpose than just a simple dungeon crawl. Instead of being some wandering adventurer going into the evil overlord’s lair to kill and take his stuff, you’re now employed by the government to go into the evil overlord’s lair and kill him. (And take his stuff anyway)

Okay it’s a little more complicated than that. You’re trying to defend your homeland from getting conquered by this wizard Balthus Dire who in later lore you find out he was evil school buddies with Zagor and another evil wizard dude whose name escapes me at the moment.

Basically they all learned under this mentor type, and surprisingly none of them ever backstabbed each other and when they all “graduated” by killing their mentor (who realized too late that he was schooling three hellspawn) they all just went their separate ways to perform dark deeds in their own corner of the world.

I think Balthus and the other guy clashed at some point due to both trying to conquer the same territory, but Zagor seemed content just chilling in his mountain though. (Until some wandering adventurer kicked the crap out of him)

Anyway so this adventure also gives you access to spells! You’re an apprentice so you only get a limited amount and you roll to see how many you get during the stat roll. Choose your spells wisely since you don’t ever get the option to replenish them. Or at least I don’t remember any part in the book where you get that option.

So despite being a wet behind the ears apprentice they send you of all people to go assassinate Balthus Dire. Pretty sure someone in the magic school didn’t like you if they sent you on some suicidal mission like that.

Since you’re supposed to be infiltrating Balthus’ place, you’re trying to be low profile by masquerading as someone that’s just another minor of Dire’s. Since Dire is an equal opportunity evil overlord, you can sort of get away with this because he’s got a diverse bunch of troops of all races working for him.

Though since everyone is working for a darklord anyway, they’re all inclined to kill you just for ticking them off or being suspicious. Not to mention he’s just got weird monsters running about that are probably going to attack anyone they come across.

The encounters in the citadel are pretty varied. Some of the more memorable ones include and ghostly washer woman, a campfire party with an orc, a dwarf and goblin and his girlfriend sitting on his lap, (who is giggling and slapping him occasionally from the description and accompanying picture) a leprechaun that just messes with you for the lulz, witch cooks and their oven heated by a fire elemental, Dire’s wife and more!

Honestly there are more weirder encounters in this one than Firetop and a few creepier bits which makes it stand out a bit more.

There's even a particular encounter where you sort of get to do something a little "morally questionable" but this isn't really dwelled upon too much if you do it. You're there to serve the greater good and all!

There are two major encounters that will stop you from reaching Balthus Dire. They both sort of come one right after another. Since this is a Steve Jackson game rather than Ian Livingston, they won't be combat oriented. One is object based, though there's actually two objects that will work, unfortunately though one of them is on a path that prevents you from resolving the OTHER major encounter which requires having a correct piece of information to get past a certain area. So there is really only one "true path."

If you manage to get through all that, you'll finally meet Balthus Dire and it even shows a picture of him and he looks almost like a fantasy version of Wez from Road Warrior. It even goes on about how he looks more like a soldier rather than a sorcerer.

The final battle with Dire is sort of cool since there are quite a few ways you can do the final combat with him, similar to how you handle Zagor in Firetop Mountain. You can go straight for the kill with combat, but he's pretty strong. The magic duel is a little more fun. Finally, much like with Zagor, there is a way to beat him without combat at all if you know his weakness. Though given what his weakness is, he's a damn fool for having things set up the way he does. Even Zagor had his weakness well protected.

So that’s basically the book. Always thought this one was better than Firetop. It certainly feels a bit more polished.

As a side note I always thought artwork cover for the original UK version was awful. Seriously it’s really boring even when compared to the other UK covers, which are at least serviceable.

Anyway, I liked this one quite a bit and found the setting more interesting than the average dungeon crawler. Dire was also a cool villain compared to a lot of other FF villains. Would have liked to have seen him pop up again somehow.