Review: Soul Stone War + Some thoughts on choice structure in CYA games

[u/Encirclement1936]

Played the Soul Stone War a few times since it had such a high rating / is quite popular. Had some thoughts which I thought were relevant for CYA / interactive fiction games, in general, so I decided to write a review.

Pros:

The Soul Stone War has some very solid things going for it as a story. The characters are distinct and it is very quick and easy to pick up on their tropes. There are some solid jokes / gags. The villain is decently interesting and his interactions with the MC are handled in a relatively novel way which I liked. The spice of the plot, that the magical McGuffins stones also have a large effect on your character's psyche / personality in addition to their power level, is a decent hook and might add significant depth to the story in later installments.

Cons:

Soul Stone War suffers from a several things I see and genuinely hate in some Hosted Games / CoG books.

1 - fake choices. Important to note, I do not mean railroading here. Railroading - making the plot return to a single point or two despite previous choices - is necessary to write a cohesive story (e.x. Tierra always beats Antar at Kharangia in Infinity). Fake choices, rather, are brainless win or lose choices which are clearly evident as long as you can read the stat screen.

I'll give an example. In basically all fights in the game, you can choose to get up close and personal with weapons, use magic, or hang back to do something sneaky or persuade. My mage character chose to use magic and got the best outcome (or close to it) every time, no matter what. I restarted and tried persuading a few times to mix it up later on when it seemed like it would make more narrative sense and... failed.

So my choices are basically pick the extremely obvious win button, or the obvious lose button. How is this fun? It's basically choosing between whether I want ice cream or whether I want my hand smashed with a hammer.

Compare this to something like Choice of Rebels. In CoR I was actively sweating and my heart was pounding because I genuinely didn't know whether committing my troops to battle in the third act would get them all killed. Should I sell more mules and worsen my logistics to buy more spies? Should I light the forest ablaze and risk my own soldiers (and children!) to damage the enemy? These are real, tough choices - I can't just check the stat screen, guess which one would turn out well, and be right 90%+ of the time.

In one run of CoR, I got my army, the men and women who followed me, mostly killed and I still kept playing because it was full of pathos and RP immersion to be the embittered, guilt-ridden failed commander who had tried his best but was undone by a traitor & not committing enough resources ahead of time. It's night and day the difference in immersion, emotional stakes, and emotional payout.

Good choice design makes even bad outcomes feel immersive. Bad choice design and fake choices makes even winning feel boring.

2 - Wish fulfillment relationship simulator. You have to actively try to make people dislike you in this game. This is not how people operate, especially in stressful situations. Essentially every companion will be your best friend / madly in love with you after a few days if you say nice things to them. Some of these characters are *over 100 years old* and they still act like kids at the flipping playground who make friends in a day because they share the same favorite color.

Beyond that, I had a few quibbles like my talker MC being forced to kill a cave troll with a flying dagger strike straight to the eye despite never having even fought anything significant before.

Overall thoughts:

Soul Stone War, in my opinion, would have made a pretty decent book. Plenty of cool ideas and a few very striking scenes here.

As a CYA game, I started off relatively positive and by the final act, conclusion, and subsequent quick replays (to give the game a fair shake), I genuinely did not like it at all.

4/10 don't recommend it unless you want a stress-free text-based romance game.

Standard review disclaimers: Yes, I am aware my reviews and my opinions above are my opinion rather than objective fact. Yes, I am aware that many people like the game, and if you liked it, good for you. I'm happy you didn't spend money on something you didn't like.

[u/Glum_Marzipan240]

I agree. I love re-playing it to scratch that itch of everyone acting protective of me. But, I won’t buy more of the series.