Broken Bonds

What I liked:

*The characters don't all blend together, and each has their own unique motivations and distinctive qualities. This does more than help keep the reader from being confused, it helps build the world.

*That there is some conflict among the "good guys," at least in the branches I explored, about what should be done. Moreover, these disagreements promise to have potentially significant effects on the cause the protagonist is fighting for—or they would, rather, had this story explored them in these branches (see the dislike parts below).

*A solid established lore. While some of the motives for the eternal conflict aren't necessarily clear, the fact that the conflict spans lifetimes is interesting in and of itself. Likewise with the established relationships between characters that span multiple lifetimes. It would be cool at some point in one of these stories in this series to show how these characters "find themselves" and then rediscover relationships from past lives.

What I didn't like:

*I'm not a fan of unearned sappy romance. But because this is part of a series, I'll give it a pass, at least in part. Still, the whole concept of an unbreakable bond between two people, without any reasonable way in which they might grow to split apart or even hate each other, kind of grinds my gears. More of a personal preference, I know, but that kind of love is like a protagonist who never has doubt about what the right thing to do is. I suspect why people like that sort of thing (probably a form of wish fulfillment), but I've always preferred messy romances. I don't mind deeper bonds being formed with new understandings, but not without massive conflict first, lots of doubt, and one or both characters at one point thinking they'd rather end the relationship. Perhaps that occurs somewhere in this series, but thus far after reading a couple of these, there doesn't seem to be any real conflict in the relationship other than one partner being miffed at the other from time to time.

*That this isn't a complete story, at least with the two branches I explored. Even though this is part of a series, I see no logical reason for the story to end with the rescue of Rain. We don't even get to see what Jana did back at the camp, and the consequences of that. I feel like there is a lot of potential for some revolts or other forms of conflict within your forces. Additionally, we don't even get a confrontation with the Ancient One, even though, again, there's no logical reason, story-wise, for the story to end before that. If this is a series, then this feels like half an episode.


Overall, the good definitely outweighs the bad. This is a nicely established world, and the characters are unique and interesting. It is, IMHO, the best of the entries for this contest, and would be a clear winner if it was a complete story in the branches I explored.

Still, most of this story is well-done. Given the low-effort crap you often here, this is a welcome addition.

Well done with little to no SPAG issues. Characters are well voiced, and the story moves at a good pace.

Some small confusion on some paths that require you to use your items on what appears to be linkless (read deadend) pages. This may be due to just not having a lot of items in games I have played previously, but it honestly only occurred to me to try items after I had posted that I thought you had a deadend.

The choices presented offered a nice variety and interesting changes to the narrative. It would be nice, with this being set in the same world as your other one, where this falls in the timeline. For a story about recycled souls and the like, that seems an obvious miss in the narrative.