The Cliche Adventures of a Generic Hero

- "The wintry winds howl a horrible wail, whipping white watery snow against the weathered watchtower’s westernmost wall." Boom! What a first sentence. The reader could choose not to read the description and instantly guess the kind of story you're going for here. I absolutely love a good mish mash of fantasy and humour, and this just grabs cliche tropes by the fistful, picks up a big ol' literary baseball bat, and smashes words into something really entertaining. Brilliant.

-"B. E. A. Utiful." Bruce Almighty fan by any chance? ERODING!!

- The humour is pretty spot on and comes in a load of different forms. There's witty dialogue, description, word play, narrator interaction, and that all adds to the surreal pseudo-fantasy setting.

- One of the very few mistakes I found was: " You lash you with your legs, catching Jon in the chest." This story has clearly had lots of time and effort put into it, and is practically flawless in terms of grammar and spelling. That's an impressive feat for a story over 28K words. Most of the stories here are a fraction of the size and still have a plethora of mistakes. It's more of an achievement than anything to have so few mistakes, and that lends itself to reading well.

- Despite the size, I felt the endings were a little abrupt. The whole thing could have gone on for a bit longer, but I think that's mainly because there's so much branching and I wanted it to keep going, so it's not really an issue. Besides, it's not a serious story, so it doesn't need to let the reader down slowly. I would really like to see the other character arcs at the start of the story and think that would give this story loads of replay value.

- The characters were great and the dialogue was snappy and kept well to the flow, even in the action scenes (not always an easy thing to do).

Yeah, I just really enjoyed this and look forward to reading more of your stuff. A very solid 6/8.

This should be required reading for anyone who wants to make a fantasy cyoa. I do not want to oversell this but it was hillarious. A genre lampoon that could only come from a true fan, fully self aware and reveling in tropes and tired convention. From the very first and repeated "DODGE" to the subtle and not so subtle nods at hostility towards women, objectification, and sexual wish fulfillment that you can find in most genre works- a pointed and uproarious look through both an objective lens and an insiders observations. I wish I could give it more than an 8. In fact, I'm pretty sure all it's flaws (if any) are intentional, and the beauty is any that are not would be completely wrapped in the premise and only make this better. It's certainly not an attempt at veiled jest. If you were already aware of these genre faults you will find this a spot on parody, and if you weren't pay attention and soon you won't be able to read stories the same way. This story comes crashing through the fourth wall taking the entire fantasy form, cyoa in general, and the reader with it; never stopping to apologize and never needing to.

Fun story! I played all the paths, and you nail the comic tone. I think it would have been funnier without breaking the fourth wall in a few places, though, particularly the overt references to other media. But it's engaging and written in a technically solid, immersive style, so nice work!

I liked this very much, and I would love to see the other paths be implemented eventually

I laughed out loud at some parts. I think you have a good grasp about comedic timing in stories. From the very beginning, you sold me on the humor with some clever tricks. In the first page you had the option to choose from different types of characters to play as, except the game already made that choice for you; a heroic knight! This gag in the end later comes back as bonus content which makes the joke even funnier in hindsight.

These were my favourite lines when the hero faces of a mad sorceror:

"Once I extract your blood, I can complete my master plan.”

“Which is?”

“World domination.”

“You seem to be doing pretty well without my blood.”

You also made some clever use of running gags, for example the "dodge is the only tactic" joke and the fertilizer jokes all land surprisingly well. It also prevented the story from being a "lol random" story by having clear albeit idiosyncratic rules in the world. The dodge joke is not just some gag, but also a way how the fighting mechanics in this game works. The dumb potion seller who turned out to be an evil vampire sorceror also comes back at multiple parts of the story.
This kind of continuity makes a story like this a little bit more "vavoom"!
One gripe that I have is that the story is repeatedly breaking the fourth wall. I think that it doesn't really need that aspect and too be honest, I think that it was the weakest part of the story. These jokes just don't hit that hard as the other ones.
On the whole, I very much enjoyed this story, I had even played through the bonus content. I'm so happy I had the option to play a sparkly vampire.

A hilarious abomination.

Uh...okay I see what the authors doing

Good but why can't I play another person

I fucking dodged the dodge that's some insane meta shit right there

Good job on the hilarious story HAHAHAHA loved every part of it

Now THIS is REAL fantasy...

Never more had I been impressed by a parody of the all-too-common soldier-clad-in-thick-chrome with a princess story.

One thing that bothers me though, Bucky. You said the bandit leader was the only black guy, but what about the ebony princess? Surely ebony is synonymous with black as well!

Inconsistency aside, this story shows just how talented the mind behind the writing is. Moral lesson: Keep ideas stashed away until they pop up, groinkick you to inspirational levels of testosterone and guide you in composing a commendation-worthy storygame.

And that is exactly what this is. Colorful detailed characters meshed with dialogue and situations that show REAL fantasy is a far cry from DOCTORED fantasy.

Absolutely grand work. May cents shower on thy head. 6/8.