Create your own adventures in a dangerous land of monsters, treasures and traps. From renowned authors Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (co-founders of Games Workshop) and Nomad Games, Fighting Fantasy Legends is a role-playing card game set in the world of Fighting Fantasy. Travel across the land of Allansia with just a sword and some gold to your name and rise up to Legendary status...

Asmodee Digital rerelease Nomad Games's Fighting Fantasy Legends, which was originally released last summer [2017]. The game uses the popular '80s Final Fantasy book series created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone and converts some of the original tales into an easy to pick up and play RPG. The synopsis above is the official one from the Google Play store... but it's a little misleading. I don't think it can really be described as a "role-playing card game". There are cards that appear throughout the game, but these are the monsters that you meet and they simply have their stamina printed on them. However, I'm assuming they are referring to the collectible side of the game. After you defeat a monster, that card is stored so that you can view all the beasts that you've beaten. In addition you can't "create your own adventure" you can chose the order of the missions you undertake, but that's pretty much it.

I grew up on the original Final Fantasy books and was looking forward to seeing how this game faired. Obviously, nothing can compare to the excitement of the original books, but as an easily accessible game to play on the move, this works rather well.

If I'm being honest, though, I wasn't overly impressed with the repetitive nature of the game nor the relative ease in which each of the main quests could be completed. You have to visit different towns that are dotted around the map and complete each quest (to kill a boss). Along the way you'll need to find certain items, which means exploring every room and corridor. More often than not you'll encounter a creature that will attack you for no reason, or you'll set off a trap, and this will lead you lose stamina. When you're stamina reaches zero you will be transported outside the walls of the city and have to try again (keeping any of the items you found).

I didn't find facing down the main boss of each level to be any harder than fighting any of the other creatures I encountered. And the main game is simply a case of exploring everything you come across and if you mess up, remembering where you went wrong last time and making a different choice.

The game is based on three stories from the original gamebooks: City of Thieves, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and The Citadel of Chaos. You have two style of dice. First is your skill and then you have your luck dice. If you are confronted with a battle you must throw your skill dice and for each one that shows a mark, one point will be knocked off your enemies stamina. They then throw their dice and any showing marks are deducted from your stamina. This goes on until one of you runs out of stamina.

The same for luck. If you enter into a situation that involves you rolling your luck dice, you'll be told how many points you'll need to pass. You can level up your dice as you progress, and you have to be careful as creatures can sometimes curse your dice, making it harder for you to roll high marks.

Some of the rooms have games that you can play, and if you remember the books you'll be pleased to hear you can play Runestones, Knifey Knifey and Dwarf Dice.

Overall, I did enjoy it, but I thought it could have been a little more polished. A little more story and slightly harder bosses wouldn't have gone amiss. It's a game that can be easily finished. But it did bring back a lot of nostalgia, to the point where I'm seriously considering downloading one of the digital versions of the books to see if they are as much fun as I remember.

7

Darren Rea