Recent reviews by Tarlonniel

Excellent characters and world-building. The story meanders a bit, but that's okay - I like the slow place as we're immersed in a partly familiar, partly very strange world. My only criticisms would be the slightly stilted prose and the game forcing the MC to fail at things a little too often. Definitely worth checking out, especially for Hadrian. And a certain cat.

A fun ancient-Egypt-meets-Lovecraft adventure.

I too appreciated the offer of a "get out of death free" amulet, since I'm not fond of death mechanics in games without save systems; I'm not a big fan of sanity meters either, but they're sort of a given in the eldritch horror genre which this game touches on. The Greek mercenary was a fantastic LI and I really enjoyed how much I was able to sculpt the personality, beliefs and goals of my MC. Very nice work all around.

Tried to save the world. Failed. Watched my beloved spouse die in front of me three times.

Rekd.

Very interesting concept, and quite well-written for the most part, with few errors/typos. Definitely worth the money. But you might want to have a drink handy.

If P. G. Wodehouse wrote interactive fiction, it would be something like this. Glorious. I'm sure Jeeves would be proud. I'm equally sure Bertie would be confused, but that's the natural order of things.

I look forward to further adventures revolving around dignity, decorum, and the looming destruction thereof.

I wish there was a way to make a neutral recommendation. I'm sure some people will love this game, especially if they loved the first two - I'd say it's worth paying the money to find out. My objections below are quite personal and I'm not sure how many players will share them. They revolve around the romance subplot; if that's not something you're interested in, my review can be safely skipped, but fellow romance junkies may want to read on. Mild spoilers ahead!

I did enjoy the first two games and the first bit of this one was just as interesting. Unfortunately, it started to fall apart when my chosen love interest - the one my character was finally starting to develop a real relationship with - disappeared for what felt like most of the story. It then completely fell apart when that chosen love interest turned out to be someone else entirely, someone I didn't want to romance at all. I don't know if this happens with all the romance options or I just got unlucky, but in any case, it was very disappointing and killed any motivation to finish the game.

This does very much feel like the first half of a full game, but it's a pretty spectacular first half if you're someone who likes to replay games over and over again with a different character each time. I've done four runs now and each was almost entirely different. The writing is top notch with very few errors/typos, the characters keep getting more and more interesting (Orion, Dandy, I love you guys), and the layers of intrigue keep building up.

My only quibbles are the short time frames in which these games take place - the entire trilogy so far has apparently occurred over less than an in-game month, no wonder the main character is suffering under the strain - and the fact that, as I and others have said, this game feels very short and incomplete without its sequel. Hopefully that sequel is coming soon!

Death/random permanent disfigurement in a game with no save function is definitely annoying. The extremely young age of the protagonists also gives me pause, especially when it comes to the romances (fortunately romance only occurs between students, no adults involved). Ultimately, though, I have to give this game props for where it improves over its predecessor. Scene descriptions are less awkward, the characters are better developed, I felt like I had plenty of room for roleplaying, and typos and malapropisms were... well, not exactly absent, but much less noticeable than in the first installment.

I'm looking forward to the third game, if/when it comes out. Hopefully less death will be involved.

I wrote a more in-depth review for the first game; everything I said there holds true here. This is an excellent second installment in the series. I don't know how the author's ambitious plan to write seven books will turn out, but hopefully we can at least get the third volume, which seems to be very much in the works, and from there... cross your fingers, everyone!

I hate getting into an unfinished series if there's a good chance it will forever remain unfinished, and given that this author apparently plans to write seven - SEVEN - installments, but it's taken over three years to get just the first two... well, you'll understand why I put off this purchase for a long, long time. But I noticed that a book 3 may actually be on the (distant) horizon, so I figured, eh, why not.

And wow, are they excellent. Especially if you're (like me) big into the romance angle. I'd put them among my favorite interactive fiction games of all time, and I've been a fan of the genre for many years now. I can see why they take so long to publish, and to be honest I'm still very skeptical that the author will finish the series - the amount of work involved must be insane, given all the choices and characters and the scrupulous proofreading which made spelling/grammatical errors almost non-existent (thank you so much, very important in a text-based game). But I'll keep checking and hoping to at least see book 3 someday!

Thank you for releasing this on PC! I'm not a console gamer so I've never had access to this series, and I'm so happy to finally get to play. Wonderful game.