A Shadow In The North

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yuu
Thu Sep 27 09:28:25 2018
Skull - non-optimum ending reached
its was a fun experience good game

paul
Fri Mar 22 16:05:49 2019
Skull - non-optimum ending reached
death by fire elemental :(

SUPERS0UL
Wed May 29 20:58:31 2019
Skull - non-optimum ending reached
I’ll be back!

JEFF
Sat Mar 7 10:47:54 2020
Skull - non-optimum ending reached
NOOOOOO, DEAD AGAIN!!!

Chris Haws
Tue Aug 8 13:09:21 2023
Skull - non-optimum ending reached
I haven't finished this story yet, but I am enjoying it immensely. It is true to the spirit of the later FF books, where you could go along the same path over and over until you realise you had done just one thing wrong. It's a big one it seems like its got at least 600 paragraphs, look forward to finishing it!

MPerera
Thu Sep 7 15:38:02 2023
Star - optimum ending reached
This was pretty good. I especially liked the spells. Provisions don't restore as much stamina as I expected, but there were enough opportunities to either buy more food or gain stamina.

YARD
Sat Sep 16 14:17:45 2023
Star - optimum ending reached
So, by and large, this is very good. While I generally have a preference for dark fantasy, I started with relatively low expectations here, since the background, with its obvious inspirations from Dark Souls, is very familiar nowadays. (Admittedly, when this was written a decade ago, "Soulslike" wasn't really a thing yet, so in some ways it was hit by something beyond its control.) On the other hand, you can draw the parallels with more classic (J)RPG plots as well (substitute "flame" for " crystal" and you have the archetypal early Final Fantasy plot).

Nevertheless, Richard Evans places a lot of effort in wringing every last drop of atmosphere out of the premise he went with. I appreciate a lot that the story is not grimdark in a way so many lesser writers approach these things, with overblown atrocities and tortures all over the place and blending into one boring mess. Instead, it's a far more understated yet unmistakable portrayal of a land where everyone does what they think is right, but is ultimately out for themselves ahead of anything else, regardless of how they choose to justify it (if they bother to). Unexpected details like the surprisingly heartwarming glimpse into the mind of two trolls at ref 121 make it all the more convincing. Same goes for when a mundane event (settling to sleep) which would be brushed over in any other story suddenly gets several extra choices and becomes an exhibition of how far your character's paranoia might have gone by then.

This story's 700 refs are put to a great use as well, as while there are deceptively not that many routes at first glance, they expand into a wide range of encounters. Even the goblin army is far more interesting than usual due to being an actual army, making up for their weakness with remarkable organization, and an act of simply charging a sentry is imbued with surprising weight at ref 418 - and that's before we get to the sheer number of choices available to try besides that cool (yet obviously stupid) thing to do. Most of the other encounters involve creatures you may not expect to see at all, and are more interesting still. There are not just choices thanks to spells, but often additional choices thanks to their implications. The moment when casting a Levitate spell suddenly expanded into a choice of three targets was a good example.

Unfortunately, this work is somewhat uneven. As impressive as those "extra" choices, ones which could have been absent and you wouldn't have guessed it, are (everything you can do while looting a certain corpse, itself in a rather out-of-the-way location, is another example, as the options in a tavern you shouldn't really attend in the first place), there are a few things which feel like glaring omissions, and detract from the impression more than I would have liked to admit.

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YARD
Sat Sep 16 14:34:25 2023
And one surprising issue which had somehow slipped the creator's mind is that your magic usually receives so little reaction from everybody else.

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Some minor things which I don't quite get.

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I have also discovered some outright software bugs.

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Finally, proofreading. Here, it's going to have to take up multiple comments once again. The issue with the lack of punctuation around quotations is the most prominent, but sadly there's a lot more than that - to the point I ended up intentionally triggering obvious trap options just for testing.

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YARD
Sat Sep 16 14:35:47 2023
Second set of typos.

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YARD
Sat Sep 16 14:37:14 2023
And the last.

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YARD
Mon Sep 18 14:08:42 2023
Haviing finished A Flame in the North, I must now note that it spells that one character's name as Xenophon in ref 43, even though a slight majority of the refs here use Xenophont. Make of that what you will.

And couple more typos, present in the options I didn't remember to check until now.

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coco
Thu Oct 3 21:07:25 2024
Skull - non-optimum ending reached
tough one!

tuppence
Sun Mar 9 12:41:30 2025
Skull - non-optimum ending reached
What an enjoyable read.
thank you kindly.



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