Temple of Terror

Another mission to destroy an evil wizard who wants to destroy the world.

Your task here is to head to a temple in a lost city and retrieve five Dragon artefacts before the bad guy is able to do so. In the world of Fighting Fantasy, this means another semi linear adventure where you need to pick up all five key items or lose the game at the very end.

Unlike other FF gamebooks, there is a simple magic system here. You get to choose from a small number of spells you can master, and can cast them during the game at the cost of a small amount of stamina. Magic helps in some areas, although there is one spell which doesn't appear to be used anywhere.

Finding all five Dragon items can be a challenge, and the one true path does require you to go down a route which takes away a huge chunk of your money and beats you up in various ways. When you reach the temple, there is also an interesting adversary which can kill you if you trigger a certain number of events. Some enemies here also have high stats, so be prepared to roll the dice hard.

As with Caverns of the Snow Witch, you do not learn much about some of your adversaries here. (Spoiler - click to show)There is Malbordus, whom you fight at the very end. There is also the High Priestess of the temple, who is supposedly a secondary antagonist of sorts, but all you do is chase her until she vanishes somewhere. Still, the setting, with the middle eastern vibe, is pretty interesting.

There are some interesting ideas here and there, and I remember having a bit of fun with this one. Still, there are other titles which stood out to me more.