Finished Prisoners of Time

I just finished playing Lone Wolf 11, the Prisoners of Time. It was a fun time, but not the best of them.

Good: A very other-worldly feel, meeting cat people and brain-things and Kai itself. Hiking through the Nothing under psychic attack.

Derivative: We’re in the Phantom Zone, plain and simple.

Not great: Long spans of exposition, and being handed off from one caretaker to another with the only choice being “eat the food, or no?”

Great: The illustrations by Brian Williams, are just incredible. They bring a clear vision of this bizarre world.

Not great: The story is very linear, with only a couple of deviations from a straight line. Much more basic than any of the prior LW books.

Bad: The fight balance. It tries to work for both starting characters (Combat Skill a max of 24 with perfect roll & choice) and a 11-book veteran Lone Wolf (Combat Skill max of 45 with perfect luck and gear), did not work at all well. There are three boss fights, the first of which is impossible for either case, and the last two of which are flatly impossible without veteran upgrades.

Epic: The new vision of Magnamund as being in Aon, and of Aon not being the only universe.

Between this one and book 10 The Dungeons of Torgar, I am a bit disappointed, feeling as if the series has kind of petered out in its creativity since the scary Flight From the Dark and the epic Shadow on the Sand. I know that the big boss fight is coming to wrap up the Lone Wolf story arc, and honestly I’m kind of glad to see if the series can be rebooted.