This is an average story that gets much worse on replays. The combination of no checkpoints and no variation in the story mean that if you do want to play one particular part differently you have to replay the whole rest of the story first and see almost the exact same things every time. The heavy reliance on stats in combat means fights often come down to clicking next over and over and see how the story's decided you did. The preparation for the main tournament, as someone else mentioned, is a real pain, because having to manage travel and getting everywhere on the right schedule with only text to tell you what's near what just becomes a mess of frustration for very little reward. Do I want to replay the whole story just to get that one joust tournament or that one plot-important feast? If it means I'll have to play the whole thing one more time, I don't think I do.

Don't get me wrong, the first playthrough was fun and even a little emotionally effecting, despite the sometimes clumsy writing. But the moment I had to replay the whole identical thing again to get back to the point where my first character died it started getting more frustrating than fun.

If this game is on sale and you have some time to kill, and already like these kinds of stories, go ahead and get it. It's fun for a little while. It just doesn't have nearly as much replay value as 'choose your own adventure' stories are known for having.

For a game that was released a year ago, it still has both gramatical and timeline errors.
For example, I am talking with a page in a kings court, and during my conversation with him, he says "Oh, wow, that is really cool." I guess I'm a bit picky about that but it is not the only instance of language like this, and you could easily write this game that way, so you could make it feel more "medievally" without sacrificing intelligibility.
I will also mention syntactic errors, and though I'm not a native speaker, I've spotted some.
And last but not least, there are instances in the story, where I could've made some minor story choices, but I'm unable to do so. It were mostly small things, but those choices would be much better than clicking "next".

This story starts out kinda slow, but quickly picks up. The further you get into the game, the more stuff you can do and find. There's just not many CYOA games like this.

Pros:
-Felt alot longer than 190,000 words.
-Pick initial stats and increase your stats over time.
-Court/Realm intrigue.
-Immersive.
-Gather and train an army.
-Manage a settlement.
-Large map of different places you can go to and explore.
-Multiple romances.
-Overall your goal is to win the last tournament. Author does a great job of making the stakes really high.
-There is alot of text between decisions, BUT I enjoyed the story so much it didn't matter.
-This is a FULL story, but if you like the world you can continue your story in part 2.

Cons:
-Some things seem like a waste of time.
-Some things aren't well explained, not sure what you're suppose to do.
-Found the ending a bit too sudden, would have liked more buildup or closure.

Overall:
-I have never seen this much effort put into one of these CYOAs. On top of that, it's a good adventure/coming of age story. I highly recommend this, worth full price.

The Great Advetures is a text based game in the "Choose your own adventure" book style. The goal of the game is to win the "Great Tournament" and save the land from the bad guys.

The story places your character as the Squire for one of the strongest knights in the land. As such, your character is thrown into choices of all kinds from political, miltitary, loyalty, as well as normal choices like friends, girlfriends, and marraige. The story is well written (albiet with a handful of typos) and you care about the characters. There are several RPG stats which are affected based on your choices. Many of you choices make an immediate difference, while others make a difference down the road.

I found the leveling to be accurate. Easy is Easy and Hard is Hard. The RPG elements include attributes (STR, INT, etc) and skills (Archery, Riding, Melee, etc). The stats become harder to obtain at the harder levels. That stats are used througout the game, and if you don't have enough stats in a certain situation, you fail or sometimes even die. Also, don't forget about making friends, as that will be very helpful at the end of the game.

The game can be tedious at times especially on replays as you have go through the litany of choices again and again and it may take you 10 minutes of clicking to get back to the point where you want to be.

If you like a fantasy story, story and characters will keep you interested the first times you play it, but the decisions and challenge will keep you playing it. In the end, this an inexpensive story game that can keep you diverted for 5+ hours. If you ever can't decide between playing a game or finding a book, give this a try. I enjoyed it.

The meat of the story feels very railroad-y, which I am okay with, since I see my character develop very differently. The prep for the tournament, however, is the most tedious, dull, and frustrating ♥♥♥♥ I have ever seen. But hey, at least it is written with zero flair. "Your next opponent is a grizzled veteran. You win." Wow, the 20 days I spent preparing for that tournament now feel so worthwhile. Also, I ended up finishing 2nd, so I got 0 money from it, seemingly no prestige either. Okay.

Honestly, I have TRIED to play this game several times, and the idea of a sequel that plays out a lot more differently based on development is the only appeal, because NOTHING about the writing or story of this is in any way engaging.

Overall, great immersive game. However, it has some major flaws that can be avoided if you take my advice:

Play this game on easy.

This game doesn't have gameplay in the traditional sense, you can only make choices which influence the result. However, although there is some strategy involved (like performing the actions that synergize with your stats), it is hard to win the tournament without looking up how to do it, which reduces the immersion and overall makes the game less fun. Additionally, spending 5 hours on the game to have it finish on a game over feels pretty bad, especially since there are no saves or checkpoints. This is accentuated by the fact this game has very little replay value. In fact, after playing through the game the first time you'll probably think it was great, but after playing it the second time you'll think that it was actually a mediocre game.
It's easier to simply set the game to Easy to maximize your chances of winning without cheating.

Some smaller problems with the game are occasional typos and inconsistencies when it comes to depth. Some parts of the story are written in more detail and therefore are more immersive than others.

Still, I definitely recommend this game considering its price.

Not finished yet ~ good so far
I like that the choices you make affect your stats, and that you can check your stats at any time.
I found myself enjoying the characters as well.
Fun game!
My only complaint is that I wish the text was broken down into smaller sections that you push "next" in between. That's because it's a little intimidating to click "next" only to get hit with a giant wall of text. I realize it's a text game, but yeah lol anyway highly enjoyable!

Really enjoyed this one. The relationships and friends you pick up along the way seem to matter a lot, and I found myself quite invested in all the side characters lives. Seems like there are many romanceable characters and all of them felt pretty interesting

Your choices seem to matter a fair bit and can result in a variety of different paths and courses for you to take (these can be followed through to the next game, though see my review on it for some issues I felt)

One thing I did quite enjoy was there's an aspect of old gamebooks in this one, with stat based fighting and a bit of random variance. Nice to see that in a game, I used to love Fighting Fantasy and the like as a kid

Towards the end of the game, it practically opens up into open world style travels and adventures, which was very surprising and ambitious for these type of games, was very interesting and I think it pulled it off quite well

All in all, I found the story and characters very interesting and fun, and I'd really recommend this game

Highly recommend to those that enjoy the choose your own path adventures and who like the medieval genre. Very well written, and engaging story.

The great tournament is a choice of game set in a low fantasy-medieval setting.

The writing, which is the most essential part of the game can be considered somewhat solid. The story has no real twist or any other kind of element that would stand out. The choices given to the player are medium in quantity and mostly do not posses the quality to make the decision a moral challenge for the player. I only relay had to think about what to do in 2 or 3 situations. The problem is that the players gets the feeling that no matter what choice he makes the story does generally continue on the same path. Many times it is also possible to play down all choices and see what happen which further increases the feeling that the choices are only partly influencal. Best example for this is the training before the tournament when you can train on all 4 fields instead of choosing only one or two.

The choice of game setting especially pays of in the battle scenes as it makes the written word more exciting when you are waiting to see what your actions result in. There fore the Wagon fight scene and the fight on the pass are considerably the best parts of the game.

The whole world could have been better with no magic at all, as it does not hold a significant part in the story and shows only once or twice in the game. But that is just a personal opinion or preference.

The game does not poses any replayability, which is sad as the different choices could lead to interesting different options the player could be motivated to try out. However the overall feeling of choices not effecting the story very much and the texted based parts of the story lower this initial convenient environment for multiple play throughs.

Kind of interesting are the possible development areas and additional content and mechanics for the game. A more choice and less text based version could be a interesting thing to try out. Further more a character screen and better visualization of connection to the characters and the characters between each other could also be tested out. This would also give depth to the rather shallow characters created by the writing. But a I am rather new to this kind of game I can not fully evaluate how much of it is doable or how much of this ideas are already made.

All together the game is a solid experience if you have about 5 hours to spare and like stories in a medieval setting.

https://architectonreview.blogspot.com/