Jonathan Green - Ronin 47

Ronin 47 by Jonathan Green
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a gamebook that is really cool in terms of the story and the world. There is a lot of choice, there are interesting plot developments and any way you go there will be interesting bits of action or conversation.

The mechanics, however, drag it down hard. The rules are just way too bloated. It might be interesting to some, but I like rules light games and I had problems trying to do everything I was supposed to. At first I solved this by skipping the ranged mech fighting phase, but even that was too much, so I resulted to resolving every conflict as a victory without fighting.

So you have these bloated and pretty dificult mechanics and now: add the map of Tokyo. Congrats, you now have a game that is hard af to play :D.

At some points I have also found issues with some game design decisions that were confusing - stuff like mixing the DNA bomb, which I still don’t understand how I was supposed to mix it (even though you can find the correct solution by just trying all the mixes).

The gamebook is pretty good, but definitely not my style. That’s why I’m giving it a 3/5 score.

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