Fatehaven 12+

This was definitely worth the £1.99, with a good 4 hours worth of story, and enough interactivity to allow for a couple of replays. My only gripe with it is there doesn't seem to be any sort of branching storylines, as is common in most other interactive novels. Still a great buy, 4/5

I started off enjoying the game as the writing on the whole is witty and engaging. However, descriptions and plot go on forever before you are allowed a chance to make a decision.

Even then, the descisions you make aren't really honored. For example, if you decide to leave a party, a character will persuade you to stay. Make the "wrong" choice response to someone and a companion will say the right thing instead to bring the story back on track. After a while this gets really annoying to the point I just wanted to leave the game.

The other big frustration are the behaviours and charcteristic stats. They don't make sense! You can be either 'Sly or Powerful'. So you can't gain power by being sly then? and 'Suave or Direct'? Suave isn't a behaviour - it's a state of being! The choice should have been 'Diplomatic or Direct', or even 'Sly or Direct'! I never understood how my decisions affected the author's idea of behaviours or characteristics, so making it even less enjoyable.

Frequently I'll come across what looks like a program command in the text, like for instance [check versus Resourceful: pass/fail] and often its not as a result of a choice I've made, its just embedded in the storyline.

Sorry, but all these issues, irritating by themselves, add up to really frustrating gameplay. In the end, I had to stop playing, even though I quite enjoyed the story. Author really needed to pay more attention to these details before releasing.

It suffers a little from some railroading, but in the grand scheme of things this is a great purchase: the writing and characters are top notch. One of the game's highlights is it's somewhat low-brow but undeniably excellent humour, and I appreciate how details are changed due to what would normally be inconsequential choices in some other games. A great buy, and those who read a lot of 'choose your own adventure' books will appreciate the ending.