Personally, I enjoyed [i]A Squire's Tale[/i] quite a bit. Is it perfect? Hardly. There are issues that can be spotted right away with even just the slightest bit of scrutiny. However, for those looking for a relatively light read, especially compared to some of the denser works in Choice of Games catalogue, this is a pretty decent pick, depending on your tastes.
For anyone that's played any other game by Choice of Games, [i]A Squire's Tale[/i] doesn't break new ground gameplay-wise, at least for them. But for those who haven't, it's a text/based CYOA game with choices that serve primarily to raise/alter your stats (in this case, your skills and attributes one might associate with any knight/squire), determine whether you succeed or fail at certain checks pertaining to said stats, and change relationship values with relevant NPCs. Repeat till you reach the ending, where your all your choices culminate into what happens during it. More complex and gamey than a physical CYOA novel, but simple enough to easily grasp. This formula and these mechanics have served them well so far to attract a sizable audience, especially in digital markets besides Steam. However, for this particular release, there's something about their usage that warrants a deeper look, which I'll get to later.
In terms of how they affect the plot, though, your choices only diverge from the path you're on slightly before eventually leading back to the main path. At most, you affect which companions you interact with and how things end up [i]after[/i] completing the main task, but never will your choices lead to such a drastic change that the course of the plot is altered entirely during the main bulk of the game. In a way, this flow and limited degree of consequences to their choices are much more in line with modern RPGs than it is with a CYOA book.
As such, it is - as other reviewers have pointed out - essentially railroaded to follow a mostly linear plot. You're driving along one long highway, and you have a choice as to whether or not you visit the towns and rest stops along the way, but your destination will always be at the end of that same road and never junction into another. I've played enough of this publisher's works to accept that this is their preferred format for their games, so I'm not going rag on this point for long. However, for many, this is contrary to what people think when they hear the term "Choose Your Own Adventure." They expect choices that go off the rails and affect the story so drastically that the journey is almost entirely different every time they play. And I think this dissonance between the story structure players expect and what Choice of Games prefers to put out is the root of what some casual/uninitiated readers feel when they pick one of their games up. If you seek to have that level on non-linearity, then this game isn't for you.
It should said that the nature of the plot itself seems to be a point of contention, so how about we go with a hypothetical scenario where we assume you play this game without bothering to carefully read the store description because the publisher use the same template for games under their label every damn time (*cough*). You hear a title like [i]A Squire's Tale[/i], read a few dozen or so paragraphs, and probably think you're going get yourself into some medieval historical fiction. No unusual elements whatsoever so far; just the story of a knight and her squire out to resolve the kidnapping of the Prince of England. And it is, for the most part.
But then you start hearing more often the name of... a place that is sure to get censored by Steam's profanity filters (which to their credit, [i]is[/i] an actual part of medieval myth that you can look up) and realize that the story is operating under the assumption that said mythical place is real in its universe. And thus, your perception of it as historical fiction shifts to low fantasy. Which I didn't really mind. And to be fair, the store description does make it clear that fantasy elements are going to take prominence at some point. But I can understand any frustration from those that fully expected the former upon going in blind. And while I wasn't put off by the shift, I can see how some might see it as the story having an identity crisis. It's a difficult problem to reconcile, for sure, and maybe the author could have done a better job at blending these two aspects together so the focal shifts between the two aren't as jarring.
Let's go back to what I put a pin on earlier and address this game's greatest flaw: the technical aspects and how they are implemented and represented. A problem so blatant that it risks affecting one's overall enjoyment of the game. Now, I'm going make a counterargument to a point that a couple of reviews before mine have addressed, which is the opportunities (or lack thereof) to increase your stats. That [i]isn't[/i] the problem. There's an ample amount of opportunities to increase them in the section of the game intended to build upon - namely, the first two chapters - with sparse occasions to earn a few more boosts in the later ones. However, the [i]feeling[/i] that there isn't enough is a byproduct of a couple of factors.
Firstly, because most of your skill building is confined within the first few chapters, you're given a false impression of just how much you're able to build a specific stat due to the way percentage bars are used to indicate proficiency. The decision to use percentages over any other means if representing them is one of this game's biggest failings. Focusing on one stat will often lead you to bring it up to 40% by Chapter 2 (of 10), so one could be forgiven to believe that by the end you should have it near 100%. But no. By design, a small set of skills at around 30-40% is what they expect you to make use of throughout the game. And those shouldn't be the "high" values for stats like these when there is no sequel planned, as it misleads you into thinking you should be training them to be even higher. And it's false impressions like this that lead to suboptimal builds, which relates to the next issue.
The game expects you to specialize in three or four skills. Which would be fine, if it were not for the fact there is next to no room for leeway. One bad stat increase can spoil whatever build your aiming for, which will later result in you making choices where your stats fall a little short of making the skill check.
And as one might suspect, there's no benefit for those that want to be well-rounded. This wouldn't be a problem, if the game would make sufficient hints that you're supposed to specialize. Not that I'm asking the game to break the fourth while doing so, but there are ways to nudge a player in that direction through the narrative, and I feel that other COG games have done a more decent job at that than this.
So would I personally recommend this despite all that I said? Yes. Again, I enjoyed it, especially since I came in without much expectations or pre-conceived notions on what the story would turn out to be. It was easy to immerse myself in it and I liked the setting and characters. But like many games published by COG save for a few stand-outs, I'd slap a big asterisk to my rating if I could. It's certainly not for everyone, and the quirks in the technical side of things are rather glaring. But there's an audience for [i]A Squire's Tale[/i], and whether or not you're part if it will largely depend on whether or not you can set aside those issues to enjoy it.
