The Price of Freedom: Innocence Lost (Original)

That was a fun ride. Here's my review:

Characters: the characters were one of the strongest parts of your story. As it should be... I never knew a good story to have bad character design. The characters were fun and mostly memorable. The only exception was the Zeru guy who I literally had to look up again. He definitely need some fleshing out. If you don't go out of your way to learn about him, he is easily one of the least memorable characters and was one of the prime reasons I picked Gerda (or whatever her name is) because I felt like she was more 'fleshed out'.

Plot: good. I was quite invested. I feel like something with the father eventually seeing you was going to be a major plot point since he was brought up so much. But this first part is still pretty good.

Grammer: don't have an eye for Grammer so let's say you get a 100% and move on to the conclusion.

Overall- Great but It felt like it was just about to start when it ended. Felt more like a setup for a much longer story (From what I read). It does an extremely good job in giving me the feeling of "I can't wait to see the life and death of this gladiator and his brother". But left me sitting there with a fully erect penis, as I wondered where the rest of it was. Though, I suppose I should congratulate you on getting me this erect in the first place. Can't wait too see if you work on a continuation of this story!

Wonderful!! From characters to setting to pacing, it all blends together into this little gem!

Characters felt fully fleshed out, each with their own little quirks that lent to personifying them without feeling tacked on padding. Though, one thing of note, I felt Andreas' fellow gladiators needed a little more polish to bring them up to the same level as Alexius and Lula but I'm going to chock that up to more 'screen time' and that you maybe planning for develop them further in the next installment. So, to put it simply, characters are full and robust with just a little polish away from perfection.

Settings were varied and had a sense of identity which I love in stories. My litmus test for this is simply 'Can I switch locations and have, basically, the same scene without major changes?' With how you wrote and sequenced actions events made scenes feel different and defiant which greatly enhanced the believability and, consequently, my investment. That being said, settings got high marks from me.

Pacing was handled well enough. I wish I could have more time with the other gladiators to earn more of a rapport with them but maybe that's just me wanting to spend more time with them so I'm not going to hold that against you. :P So, you did well with pacing.

No major issues with paragraphs or sentence structure to be seen and I didn't notice any major spelling errors but I noticed near the end Lula started acting OOC a little bit (sentiences being too long and using too big words for someone who picked up Latin from overhearing sailors and fellow captives). This was not too big of a slip but it kind of took me out of it for a moment. Besides that, It's a very well written story.

Overall, I give this first part a full 8 in spite of the slight bumps due to how well the rest of it was.

I highly recommend this to everyone and I wish Briar_Rose and Andreas the best in their future endeavors, which I will be watching with much interest.

There is certainly a lot that can be improved on in the story. If you tried to describe things in more detail, give everything a richer image, that'd pull me and other readers into the atmosphere of the story much better. Also, you could make the fights and such more challenging and engaging if you could decide what your character does in a fight, a bit like what you did with Andreas's first fight with Septimus, except with more choices, so there's room for failure. This would provide tension that both the reader and the character would feel, and success would feel much more rewarding as well.

The only characters that felt real to me were Lula, Brasus, Alexius and Zeru. Lula because of the unique way she speaks, Zeru because he seldom speaks at all, and I can respect him as a person. Brasus, I can relate to him a lot, and I sense the most potential for character development in him, along with Alexius. Now, Caecilia and Septimus. They feel less like people but more like story devices. Septimus's personality is that he's an arrogant, sociopathic prick. The Joffrey Lannister and the Dudley Dursley of the story. Caecilia is the soon-to-be love interest, who's the literal embodiment of childish innocence and empathy. Now, I'm not saying these things are a problem. In fact, having two characters that aren't really people, but more like embodiments of opposite values fits very well into a story like this. If you think about it, it gives it an old-timey, Greek epos feel.

The one and only character that I had an issue with is Rhonde. She made it clear when we first met her that she'll be almost cruelly strict, and if we hate her so much we'll want to kill her, then her method is working. However, during the story, she didn't hold to her promises, at all. I felt like it would've been a lot better if she was as rough and strict with Andreas as she could, because she sees potential in him. She'd try to push him to his absolute limits, to help him achieve that potential. That's what I think would've made her better as a character.

Another thing, the pacing of the story. A bit of prologue before the 'deal' would've been great, so we'd know more about Andreas's home, his friends and what it was like living there, so we'd actually feel sorry when he was taken away. And during his time at the academy, there was pretty much no indication to how much time he actually spent there, until Rhonde mentioned that Lula was only there at the academy for a few months now. Also, I doubt 'minutes' and such existed in that time. Just pointing that out.

But other than that, I enjoyed playing through this one. There's a lot of room for improvement, so I hope you'll read this and try to better your writing. Cheers!

I play your chapter as the opening / first time i play story game and i admit that it's really cool! I honestly can't wait and really recommend you to make another part of this since i really love how's the story is going!

A truly brilliant and wee thouhght game! I only wish for a sequil! It's been years since the game comae out, please, finish it my lovely writer!

Well, where to begin.

The structure of the story is very nice. It manages to be interesting and to develop the characters you interact with, while also keeping the pace relatively quick and not getting bogged down in details like stories can be when you're trying to create an emotional attachment to the characters.

The narrative of the story is quite enjoyable as well. It's obvious from the first few pages that this is not the authors first or even fiftieth attempt at writing something for others to read and judge. The story is well structured, and while it is more of a 'reading' story than a 'game' story, there is enough choice to keep it interesting. The addition of positive and negative respect points with quite a few characters, along with what I assume to be a rudimentary stat system add enough depth to warrant more than one read through.

Finally, the historical merit is pretty good. As someone who minored in ancient history, I can say that while this story isn't excessively detailed, there is enough accurate historical information here and there throughout to add to the immersion, and I haven't detected any misinformation in any of the three re-reads I've done so far.

Thanks, keep up the good work, looking forward to the next installment.

This story was really in depth and amazing. I cannot wait for the sequel to come out.

The main plot is not original but the narrative aspect is brilliant! Sequel please...

Nice story

Best story ever!!!!! Please finish this story, its so so immersive and i truly felt like i was in this world