'The Aegis Saga - Blood'

This game is a bit off the beaten path for most Choicescript games I've played. It's long but eschews most numerical stats, instead giving you a variety of personality traits that come in threes and which you can switch between (I think, I was never quite sure).

There is a lot of worldbuilding here. There are many races, including one of scaled magic users and another of cannibalistic giants.

There is a pair of kingdoms with two rulers, each of which has their own consort. The consorts are the only people that know the identity of the heirs, who are camouflaged by being raised in orphanages. The current consort is the consort of both houses at once, which causes problems.

We follow four protagonists, with two making up most of the game. The first main protagonist is an orphan raised in one of those orphanages. The other is one of the scaly magic-users, embarked on an expedition to save their people. The two others appear in the prologue and in intermissions.

The stories are primarily relationship-centered, and not romantic ones, more like friendship, clanship, bullies, etc. There are some fights and several action scenes, but they mostly revolve around whether to help or protect others or to be selfish. I liked that.

For most of the story, I enjoyed the writing, characters, and worldbuilding, but I felt that the plot arc was kind of flat. It started off with bold moments and then just kind of simmered for 12-14 chapters, occasionally rising up and down. Important things happened, but it didn't feel as coherent as it could, especially with switching viewpoints so often.

In the end, it is revealed (massive spoilers) (Spoiler - click to show)Our two protagonists are actually the same! The scaly one is a partial reincarnation of the orphan's soul. This definitely raised my opinion of the game, but I'm not sure it makes up for the slow-paced early development.

Being part of a series means that slow development early on isn't too bad, but the ending of this game bursts with combinatorial explosion. It's no wonder the author hasn't finished the sequel; just resolving the loose threads from that last one would make the first chapter enormous (I had a similar issue when I helped revive a WIP by a different author, with permission, and my first task was to resolve an enormous combinatorial explosion with about 120 options on what kind of club activities you were going to have at a school festival).

So, as this game stands itself, it was very enjoyable, great writing and development, but could use better pacing/rising tension for my personal tastes.