The Great Tournament

This game gave me comfort when I played it in high school, horrible things were happening at the time so it was very nice to enjoy this adventure whenever I could. After a few years, I decided to revisit this game to take a trip down memory lane. I just finished my play through, and the journey I took was incredibly satisfying.To say that The Great Tournament is worth playing is an understatement, the story and world building is phenomenal, and all of the scenes are absolutely outstanding. Sir Robert is one of the most entertaining fictional characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading about, every companion you meet is enjoyable to interact with, and the impact you make in the kingdom feels greatly earned. This is simply one of the best games I’ve ever had the honor of experiencing.I want to end this review by saying thank you to everyone involved in making this gem of a game, thank you for providing a fantastic adventure, and thank you for a wonderful time!

I generally go for retro style or table top role playing, but I decided to give a text based adventure like this a try after the reviews and I have to say I was so entrenched in this story. The characters, the smart choices, I really felt like there were consequences to my choices. Sometimes I had to put my phone down and really think about what choice I wanted to make and I actually felt the stakes and the weight of the choices through this story. There was not a single character that I didn’t find compelling or layered. Sir Robert has become one of my favorite characters who have come to life in more ways than characters in books I have read. I really just want to commend the developers for writing a realistic, thoughtful and engaging story. This was a lot of fun, kept me up at night wanting to get to the next chapter and really brought some of these characters like Sir Robert, Hannah, Cuthvill and Varys to life. I will, without hesitation, explore more of this developers context. Thanks for a great read and a memorable tale!

This game held promise, but like all too many “Choose your own adventure” tales, your choices make little impact. The stats screen gives you little to go off of when making decisions, and oftentimes seems to run counter to what the character actually does. The writing in particular is amateur. There is a thing called readability, and it’s not here. The main problem is that every passage reads like the author was trying to impress his eighth grade English teacher. Grammatically correct, but lacks character, and leaves what could be exciting events grayed out and dull. The characters speech is in a similar fashion, so I wasn’t ever enveloped in the world because they acted like wooden puppets. What the best Choice games do (Tin Star, for example) is world-building. That’s to say, they create all the ambient surroundings to a degree that you feel like you’re actually in an adventure serial story. Those I would say are the two most glaring missteps in this game: should have read like plain language (characters speak to each other, so make them sound human!), and flesh out these kingdoms and lands to make us feel like we’re picking up that short sword ourselves, or riding in a rickety wagon. Adjectives are great for this, but more interaction by the player is also a great too to get them invested in that world. Meaningful interaction, with short effects evident, and long term effects likely. That’s all I have. I would try this author again in the future, but would need to see larger sampling of the game before I’d commit money to one again.