Relics of the Lost Age

An incredibly boring and overly heavy-handed title. The modern LGBTQ+ themes are so off-putting and shoehorned in that you're constantly taken out of the immersion of a decent story. The companions are boring and irritating, the message of racial inequality being bad is hammered into your brain (I don't need a CYOA to tell me that racism=bad) to the point that you find it hard to care, most conflicts are brought down to the same few options every time, and character customization beyond skills is nonexistent. Yeah, Nazis suck. Yeah, racial inequality was rampant at that time and it was awful and it totally makes sense to have it apart of the story. But to make it 90% of the events was a terrible decision. This game is just an homage to LGBTQ+ and racial equality in the most blatant and immersive breaking way. So glad this game didn't take off; it didn't deserve it.

This one's a mixed bag. It has some fun story telling and adventures, but it's tainted by political bias. The story would have been better if current real world issue's and ideas where less of a focus. Gonna have to down vote this one because above issue's broke my immersion multiple times. Edit - Gets even worse as you go on. No idea how this ♥♥♥♥ got approved. Requested refund.

First let me start by saying that all of the current world issues that some may feel are relatable to this story, are saddly not the authors fault, but our failure as a society. All the ugliness that we can shamefully still relate to today, were definetly present in the time period as presented in this game. The fact that they are still raising their ugly heads and afflicting millions of people in our society today is not the authors fault. That being said, if reminders of the historical roots of current modern day racism and hatred bother you, you would do well to skip this one. For myself I found the story line to have moments of intense action and interest, and then other moments of long drawn out situations I really wasnt expecting or wanting to read/play through. There are alot of different genres covered in this story, everything from high adventure ala Indiana Jones, to Private detective / clue finding / case solving (part I least enjoyed) to Romance (i didnt find a good match for me in this one, the only available male character (that wasnt already involved with someone else) was a no no for me. After he killed a second person right infront of me I had zero interest in helping him in anyway and certainly didnt want to persue any kind of a relationship with him,) To Combat Simulator / Survival. The whole combat part bothered me alot as for the first part of the game I was always presented with and chose non lethal options that worked for a good portion of the game. The suddenly after I start being upset about a companion Im with turning around and needlessly killing people, the MC starts killing people too, without ever asking me if I was willing / wanting to do that. From there on the MC ends up killing dozens and dozens of people, with me having to choose how Im going to go about doing it. Its all in self defense, for the most part, although there are several times where you can choose to kill because you want to, sometimes the MC would just turn around and kill some one all on their own. It left me feeling very unhappy. I had a real hard time trying to juxtapose a story line where the ugliness of one group of people towards other groups was a running theme, at the same time I was being asked to handle situations where I was responding to violence, with extreme violence / killing of my own. All in All I think if your not triggered by historically accurate depictions of racism, and If you dont have any qualms with killing lots and lots of people in a fictional narrative, you will find a long and varied story line to read though. If you do find either of those things disturbing though, your going to want to find something else to read.

This is clearly one of my top 3 Hosted Games titles! I'll start with saying this is the first part of a TRILOGY, so some things are obviously unsolved at this point, and the ending you get isn't final. Don't panic if it isn't as elaborated as you could have wished! Also keep in mind my review is done after playing with only one MC - I don't do multiple "routes" in these games - I just perfect the one I've decided to follow. I'll mark pros and cons, but said pros and cons are MY own personal ones. [b]PROs:[/b] [b]- Story, protagonists and secondary characters[/b] I LOVE the story of this game. Every single moment of it. And it's due in part to the great cast of characters - both the MC and companions/love interests, and the secondary characters who appear in one chapter only. That aside, the story is gripping - sad and tragic at times, funny and crazy at others. [b]- Writting[/b] It is my first time reading this author's work, and I think he's excellent. His style is vibrant and witty - he has a great way with words I always felt totally immersed in the places he described. [b]- Humor[/b] This deserves a point on its own, because I'm not fond of comedy. I found myself crying from laughter more than once. [b]- Balance between historical accuracy and inclusiveness[/b] This one seems to be a controversial one. To me the balance between the historical accuracy of the story, with all the awful things it entails, and the inclusiveness of all kinds of people in order to make the story more friendly is perfect. Some people seem to complain about the accuracy part, saying it's about current world issues, but well... yeah, these issues were already there at that time, often even stronger than now, so if that's not your thing, you can skip it. Good job with that, author! [b]- Thematic chapters[/b] The game as a whole will make you feel like you're in an Indiana Jones story, but there's more. Each main chapter is a subgenre of that general big theme. Your first chapter will be a very classical treasure hunt in the desert, but you also have a "survival in desperate conditions" chapter, and so on. [b]- Lenght[/b] It is a VERY long game, by CoG/HG standards, and that's always welcome. [b]- Stats vs roleplay balance[/b] The worst thing in a choice based game is when it strictly relies on stat checks. The whole point should be to allow you to roleplay as you wish, so I naturally prefer more RP oriented games. But this one manages to strike a perfect balance. Stat checks are important, but so are RP decisions - gives you a challenge while allowing you to do whatever you want. [b]- No obscure stat checks[/b] Almost all the time, you KNOW which stat is getting tested when you pick a choice. The answers are written in a way that makes it clear. [b]- Puzzles[/b] Most games like this one don't have actual old-school RPG-like puzzles. Well, this one does. And I love it. Some are actually challenging and test your IRL knowledge of mythology or religions. [b]- The author knows the difference between cherubim and putti[/b] Yes, this is VERY important and crucial to me because people getting it wrong drive me crazy. [b]CONs:[/b] [b]- No saves[/b] Most of these games don't have saves, and I usually don't mind - it's part of the challenge. In this case, the game is WAY TOO LONG for that! I restart if I make a mistake, and you wouldn't imagine how tedious it becomes to skip through SO MANY PAGES after a few restarts. I believe, the author is thinking about adding save slots. [b]- A couple of typos and coding errors[/b] I stumbled upon a couple of typos and mistakes. I'll report it later if I don't forget. Nothing game breaking though. [b]- Romance selection (as of book 1)[/b] I don't mind it myself, but I still think it's not the best choice. As mentionned before, I love all of the main cast, including the four love interests. But as you'll notice VERY EARLY, two of the love interests, a man and a woman, are actually together. They are open-minded, and are ok for a poly relationship, which allows to romance either one of them (in which case they'll still be seeing each other) or both. This is nice! The issue is that players who don't want to have their MC involved in that have only one male and one female character to choose from, so no choice if they're interested in only one gender. If they don't like said character, tough luck! The sequel will bring new love interests, but for people who wanted some romance in this book, it may be frustrating. [strike]I don't care at all about all of that though, since Zhu is my favorite character in a very long time... or really, one of my favorite characters from any fiction ever... in my entire life... And I'm basically totally in love with him... help me...[/strike] [b]- Secondary characters not reappearing[/b] I love the secondary characters that appear in one chapter only... but that's also an issue - I want to see some of them reappear! It's tricky since most of the time it wouldn't make sense for them to reappear considering the MC travels all around the world. Still! I'm sure some content could be squeezed in. Though that may happen in books 2 or 3. [b]- Lack of morally grey antagonists[/b] A very specific one here. Considering how great the characters are, I would have wished for some morally grey antagonists. All of the major ones are truly evil. I don't mind any of them, they are "good" antagonists. But I'd love to get at least one or two who are not fully evil. Again, this may come in future books - after all, we're only at 1/3 of the story, and more often than not, the first antagonists of a series are less profound than later ones. [b]- Short'ish epilogue[/b] I would have wished for a longer epilogue and a bit more romantic content in it, but then again, it's not a definitive epilogue, and the author can't make a lot of things happen in it so it wouldn't affect the sequel too much. I guess it would rather be the fact that I would have liked more content between the climax of the story and the epilogue. [b]- No "character editor"[/b] While for story reasons you're forced to play a "white" character - or one that passes as such - and that's perfectly fine, I would have still liked to be able to determine what my character looks like exactly, and maybe have mentions of that during the story. It didn't bother me THAT much in this game as I had a very specific image of him in my head from the start. But quite often in these games, it's when I'm prompted to select the hair and eye color, the height, and whatever other characteristics that I truly get to imagine my MC. [b]- Very short love scenes[/b] At least for the character I selected. You have an option of fade-to-black or to be given some details, but the detailed version is basically a fade-to-black one too, with just a liiiittle bit of added content. HG have guidelines and you can't do a very graphic thing of course (and the author may not be confortable with that), but this was really very short. Didn't take anything away from the emotion of the scene though! [strike][b]- I NEED MORE ZHU!!![/b] Sorry, I'll stop.......[/strike] And I'm done! The cons are mostly me nitpicking at one of my favorite games of all times, for the sake of laying it all out. Most of these things will probably get updated, ironed out, or sorted in the sequels anyway. All in all, I HIGHLY recommend this game, AS LONG as you're ok with the things explained in the warnings. The game never condones but never shies out from these, so you really have to be fine with themes like that. I can't stress it enough!!

Imma badass archaeologist beating nazis every turn, with some political views attached. Hell yeah.

I've played well over a dozen titles under the various Choice of Games banners, and aside from the incredible Tin Star this is the best of the lot. The rails are a little visible, but they're there for a good reason and you're still given a number of ways to solve various problems, all of which make sense based on your character build. The game is quite well-designed in that regard. It tests both your ability to make use of your character's strengths as well as your (the player's) ability to remember details at points. Unlike another review or two here I do not believe the game was overly heavy-handed with the insertion of modern topics into the setting. With maybe one or two small and not-especially-distracting exceptions, everything makes sense with the presented setting and overall Indiana Jones vibe. Furthermore, it's not like you're especially railroaded into RPing an exact level of wokeness beyond "nazis/racists bad", which, well, they are. Special shoutout to Act 4, which is some of the most exhilarating gameplay in one of these I've experienced in a long time. (At time of review I have done one full playthrough. This number will almost assuredly increase.)

It seems like a good idea. Sort of an Indiana Jones story set in the past. Unfortunately, I found the writing style to be not engaging. I had difficulty envisioning my character and the other characters, as the descriptions were sparse. Then there were pages to read, but the story just lacked oompf. Also, I was not feeling Sam, at all as my sidekick. It felt like too much energy was put into this old relationship, and I lacked investment. I think it would be more interesting to have found the sidekick character along the way, rather than to be saddled with one, that I didn't get to choose. I know choose your own adventures can be done well, and this one, may pickup eventually but I just didn't feel super interested in continuing. It felt the key elements, of who my character was, and what was going on, were already decided for me, and I was just tagging along.

I personally loved this game as a whole and would definitely recommend it, with only a couple of things I'm so hot on. First off, as the author warns you when you first open it up... this is a rather mature game. It doesn't try to sugarcoat the ugliness man can dish out to their fellow man. Whether it's Nazi racial prejudice, southern bigotry toward African-Americans, colonial policies toward natives etc. So if you're more sensitive to these things, be careful. The writing is generally very good (with a caveat): I liked practically everyone I came across in this game, from your student/sidekick; to an... shall we say eclectic pair of adventurers you meet rather early; to a former acquaintance who has rather sadly devoted her talents to some evil people for substantial reward. It's a very satisfying length, enough you probably won't finish the game in one sitting. The stat system was fair; it never felt like the game was demanding too high a skill level from me to perform a task, and I loved the 'specialism' system. Think carefully about which you want to take. Something I didn't like in this game was the puzzles, which isn't really the game's fault but... sometimes it feels like the author doesn't explain how to work things out very well. Without spoilers, there's a puzzle which involves math derived from a biblical passage you can easily get the wrong idea about from how the working is explained. Also, the caveat I talked about earlier was that the antagonists are... well, forgettable. The Nazis can barely be distinguished from each other, villains in a later chapter in Louisiana are the same type of detestable, hypocritical degenerate etc.

更新：3已经出了，作者为抗议论坛管理员[strike]说不过就封号[/strike]把3免费了。全作在itch，地址为https://jamesshawgames.itch.io/relics-3-ashes-for-gold。 [b]“而你，我的朋友，是真正的英雄！”[/b] 游戏内容还是不错。剧情可圈可点，解密内容提示比较明显逻辑推理也相对简单（还可以跳过，谢谢作者额呜），RO们很香，技能检验简单易懂，第三部已经追完了，出必买。 ··· ···就是玩了半天我都没看懂[spoiler]Zhu[/spoiler]到底是何方神圣。[spoiler]果党吗?第二部里面说有解救军统同伴的内容但看开头描述又是支持共产主义···包括对话有暗示说有地下活动被抓住了会被枪毙[/spoiler][strike]不过这种大机密跟我一个教授说真的好吗[/strike]，[spoiler]难道是共党????[/spoiler]而且一战期间中德有合作这个传闻又是怎么来的我是真的没听说过（）虽然第二部和第三部里很香（可能主要是因为已经习惯了这个设定···）但是我真的很想说一个就是，[spoiler]“从小在惨绝人寰的儿童特工训练营长大”[/spoiler]、[spoiler]"为了组织什么都做得出来包括屠杀无辜乡村教师”[/spoiler]和自带的极强PTSD属性这种啊在其他if里看起来很香的战损伪三无兵器少[strike]女[/strike]男角色设定（？）放在这个语境下来看果然还是槽点过多。如果决定入的话第二章对本国特定地区的描述大家可以当成一个就是架空来看··· ··· 最后··· ···无论怎么看都觉得，[spoiler]me，一个潜行械斗点满能做出黑客帝国躲子弹动作参加过CIA并以一己之力改变二战进程秒杀希特勒同时还找了一个前特工RO的历史教授，大概会成为学校的校园传说吧··· ···[/spoiler]

A clever romp with interesting story structure. I'm only in chapter 4 so far, but there are lots of choices and options given, and plenty of room to build your MC to suit a particular adventuring style. The characters are varied and interesting, and if you're in the mood to punch some Nazis, this may be the perfect game for you.