The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

Genre: Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a Turn-Based Strategy-RPG disguised as a tabletop role-playing game, with the game really hammering home the tabletop role-playing game elements with the game’s presentation.

Out of everything this game does, it’s that presentation that I feel it really nails just right. Not only are you moving little painted pewter figures around a modular dungeon, but the bits of narration you’re treated to seem like they’re right out of a D&D campaign.

The only thing that hinders this presentation is that the D&D campaign that’s being presented doesn’t seem an especially cohesive one. You start off entering a cave of orcs, which opens into a series of wizards’ workshops, and then you encounter a werewolf, and a bunch of skeletons… none of these things seems to have anything to do with the others, but they’re all stock standard tabletop RPG tropes, so they’re all tossed in there without much thought.

Progression through the game has you making decisions at obstacles and splits in the caves and hallways, with choices often laid out in a “choose your own adventure” style. Do you sneak past enemies or run in and surprise them? Do you take the path you were told to go, or explore a little?

While this adds to the narrative and has a nostalgic charm to it, it also comes with its own frustrations, as the game does not let you move freely. If you want to double back to check on areas you didn’t look at before, you’ll often find you simply don’t have that option, which is really frustrating.

Also frustrating, sadly, is the battle system. The premise here is actually pretty good – on each turn, you and enemies can either move or attack, and you need to judge what enemies will do to try to decide how best to proceed. Unfortunately, the game does a poor job both of indicating what enemies are capable of, as well as what they’ll do. Enemies tend to shake before attacking, but you’re not informed where they’ll attack, or even where they can attack, and battles quickly devolve from seeming like something strategic into a guessing game where you try to guess both what an enemy can do and what they will do.

Because of these gameplay frustrations, The Warlock of Firetop Mountain ends up being a game with a great presentation that isn’t fun at all to play. I really wish that more thought had gone into the actual gameplay of this game, because some of the ideas here are really inspired, but as it is, you’re better off just gathering together a group of friends to play an actual tabletop RPG.

tl;dr – The Warlock of Firetop Mountain is a Strategy-RPG designed to look like a tabletop RPG. While the game nails the presentation, the story is just a random combination of generic D&D elements, and both the battle system and game progression are exercises in frustration.

Grade: C-

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