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Originally Posted by El Quia
Review:
In this gamebook, you are a young Eorling stationed at Helm's Deep just before the Battle of Hornburg. While on guard duty, you spot a Rider of Rohan in parley with a Dunlending, and you see when the former gives a roll of parchment to the latter! That could mean treason, and you decide to investigate the matter further. But with the orcs raiding the Westfold on warg-back and the dunlendings roaming the countryside, you know you can't be away from your post for too long because the army of the White Hand could be upon Hornburg anytime now.
That's the beggining of this gamebook, the second of the Middle-earth Quest series, and everything that happens after that is the consecuence of your decisions, the skills of your character and your luck with the dice. Unlike the first book in the serie, I find this story a little bit more developed and interesting, although your role in the grand scheme of things may seems smaller at times.
You will have the oportunity of a little bit of dungeon crawl, of investigation and patrolling. And for a grand finale, you will fight in the Battle of Hornburg among known characters like Legolas the Elf and Gimli the Dwarf. And although the outcome of the battle doesn't seem to depend on your action, nonetheless the excitment of being part of one of the most important battles from the Lord of the Rings books is enough to enjoy it, even though it turns in a dice-roll fest for the most part.
If you are going to use a character from another book, you will find that there are inconsistencies. The book assumes that you are a young Eorling that hadn't real combat experience, yet, and everyone will treat accordingly. So, if you have an experienced character or are a non-human, you will find some events weird.
This gamebook (and the serie) is not recommended for begginers, but its rules system would make the table-top RPG gamers feel comfortable with it. Being a simplified form of the Lord of the Rings Adventure Game rules, it was published by Iron Crown Enterprises (a.k.a. ICE), the publishers of the more complex Middle-earth Role Playing (a.k.a. MERP), and it even has an appendix to let you play the game with a MERP character. The gamebooks are played with two 6-sided dice and you have the option of playing with the basic system (mainly consisting in no time restrictions, no magic and no equipment limits) or the advanced system (a little more complex combat sequence, magic system, equipment rules, time management, race selection and experience earning). Which variety to choose depends on taste, although I would recommend the advanced system if you plan on playing all the serie for the additional options. And the time system in this gamebook is not specially important, because only a couple of things could get modified by it. But for the rest of the gamebook, the time will only add senseless book-keeping
Should you choose to create your own character, it is created rolling the dice for the stats and distributing bonuses to the skills. If you are playing the advanced system, you could also learn magic (choosing not to assign a skill bonus lets you to select two spells for your character to cast) and race, the last option giving you aditional modifiers and certains restrictions.
What is great in this serie is that although the plot in the different gamebooks are not related between themselves, you could export your character to use it in the other books, much like in a table-top RPG. Here is where the experiencie system comes into play: at the end of each book, you can exchange 150 XP for a special bonus, like an Endurance increase or new spells to casts.
Its (comparative) complex system is great for those unsatisfied by the often simple rules of other gamebooks, while giving the freedom to create a character more to your liking. It is my personal favorite of the series, and it strikes a good balance between and gameplay and story, having the right amount of description and the necessary amount of choice, abilities tests and combat. In my opinion, it deserves a 5 due to design, enjoyability, and the more interesting story than the others.
Grab your sword, prepare yourself for danger and go on with your quest!
Notes:
The pdf is better assembled than the first one, and it's has been OCRed, so vision-impaired players could enjoy this game right away! Unfortunately, it has its share of OCR errors that haven't been proof-read, like making "Bow" into "How" or "Half-orc" into "Half-ore". Nevertheless, these technical defects don't detract from the final rating, in my opinion.
In the extras section, you will find some dice rollers. I would recommend them if you don't want to stop looking at your screen to search for your dice, rolling them and checking the result. Also, they are more silent and have less of a tendency to roll over the border of the table and stopping under the furniture.
Editor's rating: 5/5
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