Fighting Fantasy #50: Return to Firetop Mountain
Firetop Mountain, the forbidding peak whose dark shadow once cast gloom over the whole of Northern Allansia, has been quiet for ten years. It has been that long since the diabolical reign of the evil sorcerer, Zagor, was ended by a heroic adventurer who braved the countless perils of the dungeons beneath the mountain and succeeded where so many had failed before.
But now, resurrected by the power of dark sorcery, Zagor has risen from the dead! More evil than before, the crazed wizard is intent upon wreaking his revenge upon all in Allansia. He must be stopped, and for good this time. Some brave adventurer – YOU! – must enter the forbidding labyrinth and bring justice once more to the lord of Firetop Mountain!
Return to Firetop Mountain, written by Ian Livingstone and published in 1992, is the sequal to the Warlock of Firetop Mountain. Although it has much in common with that book, Return to Firetop Mountain also contains a few pointed differences: some good, some bad.
The book returns us once more to the dungeons beneath Firetop Mountain where, once again, we find ourselves on a dungeon crawl. But before that, this time we have an above-ground journey to find a wizard who can help us defeat Zagor, the Warlock.
Once we have done that, we head into the dungeon. The early parts of the dungeon are easily recognizable to those who played the previous book, with many nods of acknowledgement to that work. But from there it turns into a dungeon crawl again, reminiscent of the Warlock but with different challenges and opponents.
One good point about this book is that the writing has improved and the encounters evoke a greater sense of excitement (to me, a least). The text is much more descriptive and the sections longer, two points which I applaud. The problem with this book is how difficult it seems to be.
Don’t get me wrong: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is not an easy book, but once you beat the maze and find your way to the Warlock’s treasure, if you don’t have the right keys you become determined to try again. In Return to Firetop Mountain, the difficulty is different; it is hard to even make it to the final encounter.
Let’s have a look at how I died in my attempts:
1st: Death by doppelganger.
2nd: Death by doppelganger, again.
3rd: Death by animated swords.
4th: Death by falling (from the back of a giant eagle)
5th: Death by doppelganger…
6th: Death by curse
At this stage, four out of the six attempts were ended before I even made the dungeon. The encounter with the doppelganger, which is unavoidable, is insane: an average SKILL 9 character only has a 50% chance of winning the fight. I also went through and counted the number of instant-death paragraphs in the book: 30. 1 in 7 1/2 paragraphs ends the adventure. Insane!
In the interests of the review, I decided to find the solution to the book online and play through before I lost interest in it. The final encounter is rather well written, and the face off against Zagor (SKILL 11 STAMINA 18 ) is great. Section 400 (which is almost always the ‘win’ section for Fighting Fantasy books) leaves the gate wide open for a further book (which we get in Legend of Zagor) and is a good ending to a frustrating but otherwise good book.
RATING: 7 out of 10
Angst (Tower of the Sun) said,
June 19, 2008 at 12:27 am
Nice work with the reviews, Shane. Keep up the good work!!
[Just as an aside, I was amused to see your name appear twice in the same day - at the Yahoo Fighting Fantasy group and at the Tower of the Sun facebook group. Call it a small world.
]
Looking forward to future reviews.
PS: Having had my entire gamebook collection thrown out when I left home (imagine my horror); I find myself re-collecting the re-issues of FF and now the Mongoose re-issues of LW. And it’s obviously not just me as everyone on the FF and TotS boards seem to feel the same way. Strange that we, of a similar vintage, would all suddenly crave the nostalgia of gamebooks…
Kind regards
~Angst~
Ron said,
June 19, 2008 at 6:31 am
Nice review. The difficulty sounds really ramped up for this one, but revisiting Firetop might make it worth the challenge. I’m curious, when you play through the books normally (not for a review)do you restart at the point before you died or do you restart at the beginning?
eternalknight said,
June 19, 2008 at 6:02 pm
I always re-start at the beginning whether I am reviewing or not, with a completely different character.
eternalknight said,
June 19, 2008 at 6:06 pm
It is funny Angst. I have always managed to keep my gamebooks, even when I had them stacked away in boxes and had ‘grown out of’ them. I always thought one day I would want to revisit them, and am glad to see them undergoing a renassiance of sorts. Not only are Wizard books and Mongoose republishing, but I am aware of a few others on the horizon that are brand new from new publishers. Happy days ahead!
Angst (Tower of the Sun) said,
June 20, 2008 at 1:13 am
>> but I am aware of a few others on the horizon that are brand new from new publishers.
eternalknight, I know DRAGON WARRIORS is due for a reprint and revision (I believe Mongoose might be the publisher on that one, but not much has been said.)
What other information do you have? What have you heard? Share, my good fellow, share!
(Currently reading “Eye of the Dragon”…)
>> Happy days ahead!
Indeed.
Did I mention the bit about sharing the low-down gossip on future GB plans?
Kind regards
~Angst~
EGO said,
June 20, 2008 at 7:13 am
If you think 30 death paragraphs is insane, how about book 5 in The Way of the Tiger series, Warbringer! ? That book has some 76 death paras in a total of 420.
@Angst: Dragon Warriors reprinted? The Dragon Warriors by Dave Morris? Maybe there’s some hope for reprints of Blood Sword too, then… and Fabled Lands is still waiting to be completed.
eternalknight said,
June 20, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Well, one that I know quite well is a trilogy of gamebooks which will be called Epic Adventure Game Books (EAGB). The first is called ‘Vengeance’, and you play as a ranger searching for your mentor’s murderers. I playtested the book.
http://www.greywoodpublishing.com
eternalknight said,
June 20, 2008 at 11:26 pm
EGO – Yep, the Dragon Warriors by Dave Morris. I was excited too
Angst (Tower of the Sun) said,
July 1, 2008 at 12:53 am
Well, it’s official: Mongoose will be re-publishing Dragon Warriors and a first expansion to the system: – links below
http://www.magnumopuspress.com/?p=37
and
http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/home/publisher.php?qsPublisher=11,
I really liked the system, well most of it anyway, I hope it aged well and that the revision/reprint does it justice.
Kind regards
~Angst~