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Item - Küzdelem az Éj Kövéért

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Series: Harcos képzelet : játékkönyvek — no. 1
Alternate Title: Fighting for the Nightsword (official English title)
Authors: Knight, Robert (pseudonym used by multiple people)
Stone, Jeffrey (pseudonym used by Nemes, István)
Illustrator: Szendrei, Tibor
Date: 1992
ISBN: 9637841040 / 9789637841040
Length: 350 sections
twillight's Thoughts:

Küzdelem az Éj Kövéért, Küzdelem az Éj Kardjáért and Küzdelem az Éj Könyvéért are the gamebookization of their parent-trilogy. The events are mostly following the events of the novels, though I always felt failng to stick as close as possible to them was an unfortunate decision. These changes lead to confusion of the fans.

For example in the books, the protagonist swears allegiance to all three demigods, while in the gamebooks that means game over. As a fan you also assume there is a reasonable chance to achieve what the book-protagonist did, and the encounter of the flaming skeleton just ruins your expectations.

Another way the concept could have been utilized is the genre's trope of choosing corridors without any basis for doing so, making such decisions arbitrary. Here you could in theory open up the novels (you know, after buying them, making extra profit to the creators) and check which direction will be the easy way out.

Being the first of the franchise, the stats, and especially the spells, work a whole different way than for the rest of the series, which is of course unfortunate, and for any reasonable company would have meant a second print - which never happened.

Though how a spell which says "roll a die and add the result to your current paragraph" slipped through the editors will always fascinate me. Though as it turns out, someone else also had such astonishing idea, that time on the British market, home of the Fighting Fantasy franchise (Sagas of the Demonspawn #1 - Fire*Wolf, The Demonspawn Regent boss-battle).

The worst hit of the changes was on the third book, which only used half of the final book, and it shows.

On the plus side, along with nostalgia, they gave a chance to actually destroy all the evils of that world, and the gamebooks were pretty action-packed and eventful (I think in this regard my favourite was the second installment). I only wish they'd realised them better.

More reviews by twillight

Special Thanks:Cover image courtesy of Silverland; thanks to Zoleeka from Hungary for the alternate cover image available here.
Users Who Own This Item: firefoxpdm, lajtos_a, ogabor, Rozo, Szlobo, Zolika

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