So first of all, this is not the usual game you play if you wanted to blast dozens of soldiers into oblivion. A Land Fit For Heroes is based on Richard Morgan’s dark fantasy trilogy of books and like its ancestor, it is first and foremost: a book. You follow the narrative of three characters, all of them, ehm, damaged (to say the least) by reading. You start with Kirellin, a sad ex-soldier with massive ptsd, then you change to Calnar, who is a tribal warrior, abused by his father during his childhood years. Then you change to Ilaria, who is a rootless thief, trying to find herself. You can choose any of them to be homosexual or heterosexual, it does have an effect on the flavor of the story, but not on the main storyline. Lots of details depend on this, like Kirellin’s relationship with Ringil Eskiath, Richard’s main protagonist in the original novels. After reading Ilaria, you change back to Kirellin, and so on…
Your characters will have to cooperate by finding vital information (I’m not spoiling anything about how they communicate, etc) and as the story goes on, the three narratives get closer and closer to each other. Besides reading and making the usual gamebook choices (are you kind to barkeeper? do you kill the thugs?) which have consequences on the later pages, you get to fight battles. Previous reviewers said that the battle is “thin” – I kinda liked it, it reminded me of the old Pool of Radiance-type of games. But I’m above 35, so I like nostalgia, and I don’t have the fingers to click forty times a second, nor do I like FPS games. It is turn-based, you can roll virtual dice, you get to cast spell (after learning it), while learning and using Feats (special short-term powers) gives a small strategic element to each round.
Yes, you have to register to the publisher’s database in the game, to save your bookmarks to the cloud. I have no problem with this, though integrating the Steam’s cloud db would have been a lot more elegant.
There’s also some basic dungeon crawling, using an isometric approach for two characters, which I think is there to boost them before the final chapter, when you control all three of them and fight the Big Enemy together. It is fun, a bit rogue-like: some grinding, loot, some traps and locks to disable (with cool minigames) and then some more grinding.
Like I said, I like this game. It is unusual, the narrative is deep, and even disturbing at some points. The characters are very detailed, so you can easily find yourself liking the anti-heroes of the gamebook, like I did. This game is not for everyone, I guess, but I think it will find its audience!
