Siege of Treboulain

This is a satisfying power fantasy story. I'd say that its choices are clear enough to know which stat it's building or testing, and there is a clear feeling that the outcome for the city truly varies based on your choices. And I get the impression you can succeed in different ways (for example, I was a diplomatic magician, but someone could have gone for an intimidating warrior). I felt the romance storyline was a lit flat - perhaps because it's a relatively short story, so the character/relationship isn't fleshed out. However, it delivers well on what it promises, and the author has left room for a sequel. Given I'd happily play it, I think this game has earned a recommendation.

As far as text-based RPG's go, this one is pretty good! I liked it a lot and had enough fun I played through it multiple times all the way through, a rarity for me. The characters are appealing, the conflicts are compelling, the whole thing moves at an exciting pace, and it's hard to put down once you've started going. The world and consequences feel real and it rarely if ever feels like the game is cheating or being manipulative. And, (for the most part at least), it avoids many of my biggest problems with a lot of text based rpgs where it feels like the game is just asking "what do you want this story to be about? I'll just do whatever your character wants to do" as if its pushing all of the story-telling effort onto me. I love that you can get a bad ending by accident! That said, these are the main problems I had: -The game really wants you to specialize, pick 1 person to romance/befriend, pick 1 skill to develop, and then just repeat that 1 skill and 1 character over and over to succeed. You won't have a lot of success if you try to balance priorities and give everything its time (your character will just end up being bad at everything and being hated by everyone). -You have to initiate anything romantic. Despite there being kissing, romantic confessions, and even minor sexual content, characters will not develop crushes on your character, confess romantic feelings, or attempt to start a relationship until you make the first move. Characters liking you is entirely based on how much time you spend talking to them and on how nice you are, not on any values or traits that character specifically finds attractive. -The game has a lot of awesome, exciting events, parties, battles, dungeon adventures, trials; that's great! However, replaying the game it can be a bit disappointing just how many beats repeat. While there is value in a really well-structured compelling series of plot events, I think I would have liked to be able to take branching paths with entirely new segments.