Hero or Villain: Battle Royale

I'm genuinely angry I played this pile of crap and I subsequently decided to get a refund for my $5. Not because I need it but because I don't want the author to have it. The story isn't interesting (standard alien-themed battle royale setting), the choices are mostly non-existent (your experience is on rails for at least 90% of the game), the new characters aren't interesting, there is only one character held over from the first game...and you barely get to see or interact with her. Oh, and she dies. Spoilers. On top of that, to get a "good" ending, you need to follow an insanely precise path...but this game doesn't have any walkthroughs or guides or anything, so GOOD LUCK! The author has hinted that there's some convoluted path to maybe changing some of the "bad" outcomes of the ending, but he thinks it is cute to not clearly answer how to do so and no one on Reddit, the discussion page for the product on Steam or the Choice of Games forum has figured it out, so once again, GOOD LUCK! Finally, the game is, once again, not a complete story. It is just another chapter...but the third part is, apparently, being delayed by an utterly Quixotic attempt to turn this novel into a card game (I'm not kidding). As far as it goes, it has been two years since Battle Royale came out and there's been no progress shown for the next chapter. All told, this is by far the worst experience I have ever had with a Choice or Hosted game, bar none. I'm actually shocked there are any positive reviews for this.

This is actually the author, so I will use this space to try to address some of the points raised so far in the reviews. Please note that this game was only recently released, and there are some known bugs that should hopefully be ironed out soon (which appear to be blocking some of the paths through the game). Note also that this is the 2nd in an expected 3 game story-arc. As such, the game does only take you so far in the story, which will be completed in the last part of the game. You cannot save everybody in the story, though some characters can be saved, if you make the right decisions (or kill others yourself). Anyway, please feel free to discuss the game, here or in the discussion section! :)

Not a bad game per se, but the switch from being a superhero to gloryfied pokemon is too sharp. And it's far less predictable that most of your choices will do, especially choices where to go because, well, aliens. First is way better, even if all endings was made worse by premise of this game. But it's still a games of the author in whose gamebooks choices are really matter.

Good. Just wish the relationships gains and losses made any sense. Before I knew everybody hated me and I didn't even know why...

I recently bought the first and second. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the first game, it wasn't really a great cyoa, but it was fun. I could see playing it a bunch of times testing out a ton of different builds and different kinds of heroes/villains. That's not the case with this one for one very glaring reason. It ends more abruptly than any story or game I've ever played in my life. I don't know if it was intended, but if it was the author is insane to expect any support at all for future games. This game seemed interesting and fun while it lasted, but then it abruptly ended at a certain formal ball sorta place. I've read that others seem to have been able to get past that part, but I wasn't able to, the game just abruptly ended. Nothing happened, there wasn't a natural ending point, it just suddenly ended. I don't know if it was a bug or what, but it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I'm honestly kind of mad. Again, I was enjoying this one quite a bit (even though there were certainly things I didn't care for, a lack of any of the characters from the first being the main one) it just suddenly stopped. I'm meeting a character to be my partner at the dinner/ball thing and suddenly it's over. Others seem to continue on and actually complete the said tournament but not me. It's not because I lost, or died, or was doing something else. It ...just...stopped. Any way, I've got a respiratory infection, I got this to pass some time and now I'm more angry at this than I am at the constant runny nose, upset stomach, fever, and cough. If this is a bug, please fix it. I don't know if I'll give it another shot at this point but, fix it.

The game has a decent section explaining what each stat does. I also like the option to change the difficulty setting. Good selection of powers, as well as a good selection to choose how your character is meant to look. I do find it annoying the the powers don't have a stat list of their own and how they're not in the main stats section. Has minor grammatical errors. Sometimes your relationship stats decrease even if you haven't interacted with a character directly. Personally, I find this annoying. It'd be cool if you had a stat for your fighting record; As well as that of the Ludus. Definitely needs more illustrations to completely show all characters mentioned. It would also be nice to have a gallery for the characters. Wish the rewards for winning fights were bigger.

A generally enjoyable game. A good continuation of Genesis.

It's not a good stand alone game, it's not even a good sequel, but it's a great great second game in a trilogy, it raises a lot of questions and paths, but not many answers, when the third game releases this is going to be a great purchase, buy and play if you really liked to explore the universe around the first game (or the figths), also if you want to help the autor, if not wait until the third game releases