The Legion Of Shadow: DestinyQuest Book 1

A well written, lengthy, satisfying campaign! The adjustments made to the rules of battle as you play are quite interesting. It almost plays like a tabletop version of Diablo, as you are always looking for better gear. The only problem, as is the case with most adventure game books, is that if you are not REALLY lucky with dice, you WILL fail, many times! My suggestion is to reward yourself 1 point for each battle survived, and 1 point for each quest fulfilled. Every 10 points becomes a permanent +1 to a stat of your choice. This may seem to make the game easy, but believe me, the deeper in you go, the happier you will be to have them!

It’s a fun solo RPG book. I enjoyed the combat and choosing the direction of the story. I have played the first two Fabled Land books and the first Lone Wolf game book. This book is more entertaining. Looking forward to starting the second book soon.

I wanted to start getting into D&D but I have no one to do it with. I looked up some solo guides but everything just all seemed meh to me until I found out about gamebooks. I am so happy I found Destiny Quest and the day I got it in the mail, I immediately began to play and instantly bought the second book. I love the writing and the combat system is simple and so much fun. Can't wait to read the others in the franchise!

In terms of gamebooks, DestinyQuest is a behemoth, both in its physical size and what the author is able to pack into the game's mechanics. The first thing that jumps out (after the initial shock of unpacking this tome) is its layout. Typical choose-your-own fare start you at #1 and send you on your merry way, not so here. After an engaging prologue, you, the reader, are sent to one of the book's three beautiful maps where you pick the next leg of your adventure. You are free to complete them in any order or skip sections altogether (not that you'd want to, missing out on the variety of stories and items will only do you a disservice).The only downside that I can find is the lack of internal illustrations (aside from some small fillers to break up the text). However, this is more than made up for by the incredible maps and the sheer amount of content. The story sees you nywhere from partaking in some classic fairy tales to taking on a monstrous army. The game's mechanics, reminiscent of pc arpgs (think Diablo, Titan Quest, or Baldur's Gate), make the pen and paper action quick and satisfying. All in all, DestinyQuest provides a quick gaming fix that is quick to pick up and play (but is still engaging enough for longer sessions).

Overall this is a pretty good book, though it definitely has its flaws. It's a hack and slash game similar to Diablo so if you are expecting some role play elements this wont be for you. The game is mostly side quests, but the side quests are so necessary because game advancement is based entirely on equipment, and you can only improve equipment through the side quests. Thus they are mandatory enough for the game to be de facto very linear. The combat system can be frustrating. You have Speed, Brawn, Magic, and Armor. Speed is the game breaking stat because there is not enough armor to protect from anyone who has even a decent attack score, and only the player that rolls the higher speed attacks that round at all. Thus, if you try to be a night and go for armor and attacks and face a villain that has so so attacks but high speed, they will basically whittle away at you. Still fun to play though, but if you are like me and get frustrated at a series of bad roles and you die facing a monster that you should have beaten because the dice seem to be disobeying the law of averages, you may need to take frequent brakes from play.

I just completed Michael Wards legion of shadow-----and I must say that it was great. I didn't like the long sections of narrative and the limited amount of choices(but I hear that the next book has more). But I must say that this was the BEST game book I have ever played. The battles were a lot of fun. Be careful about adding and subtracting points to speed, brawn and magic and armor because you could become weaker than you should be or more powerful than you should be. The battles take up a lot of time=---but the excitement of it is that sometimes you win by the skin of your teeth and that's a great feeling but of course sometimes you die------the cool thing about this game death is NOT the end!! You can pick up where you left off! This way you don't have to go back and start all over again.Michael is a genius and his writing is amazing-----his choice of words, the way he develops the story, and the mood he sets for whatever is happening in the story at that time. Any way-you have to buy this book-------did you like fighting fantasy or lone wolf? You will love this even better!! In conclusion---Thank you Michael for such a fine piece of work!!! Johnathan J F

Bought this for my 6 year old son (maybe for me too). The last time I read /played a game book was the early nineties. Fast forward 30 years and my interest in game books was peaked again. Mainly due to my sons passion for table top games and tcg games.The book is a mammoth, 650 odd pages, several quests, from easy up to hardest. The writing is engaging, well thought out, more like a good to high standard fantasy novel. Not like the microwave dinner writing of those early 90s books.I'm reading the book, my son is choosing the options, he is so engaged and was so excited to defeat a goblin and rescue a girl. Basically he's deciding the arc of the story.It'll keep us both engaged for months.

After a hugely successful run during the eighties adventure gamebooks fizzled away by the mid-nineties. The main reason for their demise was probably due to the advent of more advanced game consoles and improved graphics which made role playing videogames far more popular. A lot of the old series’ of adventure gamebooks have experienced something of a revival in recent years and been given reprints. It is, therefore, somewhat understandable and expected that there would now be attempts at new gamebooks.The above goes some way to explain why ‘Legion of the Shadow’ feels closer to a computer/video game than it does to the old adventure gamebooks it is attempting to emulate. For those that loathed reaching the end of a gamebook only to be thwarted and have to start all over again, you will be pleased to know that death is not the end in Destiny Quest. If you die (and this will only be in combat as there are no ‘you have died/lost’ passages) you generally just restore your attributes and re-start the fight you died on or try something else and come back later; much like you would in a videogame. This does make things easier than most gamebooks but it is probably a good thing because the vast majority of combats are quite lengthy and difficult.The gameplay style is far more orientated towards combat. There is a lot less that involves finding your way around, searching places, solving puzzles, learning codes and finding items. The vast bulk of stuff to be found is equipment that is geared towards combat. In a lot of ways the adventure moves from one combat to the next, sometimes relentlessly. In can get a little tedious and time consuming (especially repetitively fighting the same opponent). At times you can expect to spend half an hour or more just rolling dice.However, the combat system is well thought out and designed and quite entertaining, especially when first starting out. With all the modifiers involved though it is easy enough to get something wrong and inadvertently cheat, usually to your own detriment.The blurb makes a lot of the fact that you can personalise your character to be different every time allowing for multiple replays. This is a bit of an exaggeration. Your character may always be different but really only in so much that you have a slight variation in your abilities. There is obviously no image of your character so having a polished helmet and fancy sword may actually be no different in real terms to the gameplay than having a battered hat and rusty battle axe. The three classes from which you can chose are fairly typical and rarely make any substantial difference.In fact this gamebook has a lot less re-playability than most. Completely the book probably means you have virtually done everything there is to do. The book counters this though by having an incredible length (at over nine hundred references even longer than the epic ‘Crown of Kings’) and a huge amount to do. This just about compensates for the hefty price tag for a gamebook.The main innovation is probably the use of a map which you use to select quests, missions, hunts or shopping trips. It takes you directly to a starting paragraph for that section. It’s quite novel but it does mean that some of the exploration typical of adventure gamebooks is actually lost.The main plot of undead, demonic forces invading through a dimensional portal is hardly very original but it is one that almost always works. However, the adventure actually has a stronger storyline than it initially suggests. This is because the adventurer begins as they return to consciousness knowing very little about themselves. The adventure is a slow discovery of who and what you are. A similar idea has been done in gamebooks before (most famously ‘Creature of Havoc’) but it seems to always make for an intriguing read.The adventure is a bit too combat orientated and I’d prefer some more extensive subquest sequences. But overall it is a well written and engrossing adventure with plenty to enjoy.

I really wanted to like this book as I remember playing Fighting Fantasy books as a kid. The quests are divided in 3 acts and then rated for difficulty. I completed the “Easy” and “Average” quests and, despite the slightly corny and very basic nature of the quests, hadn’t lost interest yet. I wasn’t even put off when on the first quest I had to go into the woods to find a girl who had disappeared after going to see her grandma, and yes she had a red cloak and I did run into a wolf. Then I moved onto the “hard” quests. The combat mechanism and monster stats make it almost impossible to be victorious here. Maybe I’m unlucky at dice but it is impossible to kill an opponent when you can’t even land a blow. I get that the quests are supposed to be hard but there has to be some hope of winning. I basically got tired of dying so stopped playing. Now you can build up Special Abilities but this only turns every combat round into a feat of mental agility as you add and minus numerous different values.If you die, which you will, death is not the end, you can restart the same quest from the same spot with the enticing prospect of going through all that combat again in the vain hope of a different outcome. Or you can go on a different quest and get slaughtered by a different monster with very similar stats. Suffice it to say that combat, and getting murdered, becomes tedious very quickly. I guess I could go back and redo my previous 5 quests, do something different in the hope of maybe adding 1 or 2 points to my stats, but who wants to go back over ground they already covered?Such a shame because this is a nice thick book and I was looking forward to developing a great character over many quests and maybe moving onto sequel books. The other point to mention is the art. The cover art and maps are really nice but that is it, no other pictures which would have been nice.

This is an amazing gamebook. The story is great and the quests are very exciting, especially starting from Act 2. The world is described in a way that really helped me imagine everything. Combat takes some time but thanks to the many different items and special abilities found througout the book, the fights become more epic and it gets easier to defeat even the most powerful enemy. I'm going to continue straight away with the next book in the series!

I bought this for my eight-year-old thinking (due to it’s size) it would be something we would read together. But no, a few pages after the prologue it became clear there was no need for me, as he devoured the book, adventure after adventure. He was properly hooked. So much so, as soon as he’d finished it, he restarted it again, choosing another path. We bought the next book, which he packed in his case of ‘essential items’ when we went on holiday. He was rarely without it. A strong recommendation from both of us!He has put some advice/commentary together for would-be first-time adventurers:Monsters: I found the legendary Hydra all but impossible to defeat, thanks to its ability Shed Skin.I think that Spindle the spider was a really good opponent and had some great treasure if you defeated him.Battle: Powerful and strong, I slayed the mighty King of Warriors using the unforgiving ruins.In my third combat round I vanquished the Water Spirit as it was being pulled into the rainmaker staff.Decisions: My advice would be to explore all possible decisions before moving on.One thing I definitely got wrong was when I chose to decline the tour and missed getting some very important things.Abilities: One of the most important abilities is Charm, which lets you reroll as many dice as you have items with this ability.Venom is very useful as well, because if you have damaged your opponent it deals two damage to them at the end of each of their turns.Summary: I have really really enjoyed this book and in my opinion the best thing to be is a Rogue!Out of a 1 to 10 rating I would 100% say 11!!!