The Price of Freedom: Innocence Lost

This was a spectacular story, I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. There is a lot to talk about, but before you read anything I have to say, just go play the game.

The characters are the shining stars of this story. For a story about gladiators, the rise of these children into warriors seems secondary to how their relationships with each other grow. It is both the looming threat and the driving force that brings them together and provokes reaction between them. Each one feels authentic and it was rewarding to come to know them. The author has an amazing talent to develop the characters through how they interact with scenarios and environments, how they fight, how they spend their time in the academy, and so on:
There is Brasus watching you and your brother play ball during the festival, but he is far too shy to ask to join in. Then drawing pictures on the ground with Zeru. And the hilarity of chatting with Lula and racing her around the training area. These characters interact very dynamically with each other within the group of children, giving the reader an opportunity to observe others in the spotlight for a few moments before returning to the reins.

Of them all though, Rhodes was easily the most complex and interesting. Upon first impressions, Rhodes seems kind of like a cold asshole that is designed to be hated. But, every now and then through the choices you make, that exterior cracks and you get to peek under the surface. Towards the final confrontation, she seems almost as much a victim to the academy and the arena as the children. How many children has she trained just to watch them die? What if she had made them work just a little harder or train a little longer? Getting to see those small glimpses into her thoughts and relationships really deepens my understanding and appreciation of the character.

It seems so unjust, a common theme throughout the story. It tackles the brutality of the situation through a child's perspective very well. The story lets the reader soak in savage cruelty of the situation of these children, only furthering our attachment to the characters and heightening the tense stakes of the final confrontation of this first part.

The only gripe that you could make about this story is the linearity of it (and that the second one hasn't come out yet). Though I easily overlooked this due to the engaging storytelling and writing, I figured I should mention it. Besides, this game excels in the individuality of your character and it is encouraging and satisfying to feel you tackled an obstacle in your own way.

A joy to play through, many thanks to the author for the great story.
Also, Gerda and Titus can go chew on bricks.

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM: INNOCENCE LOST: 96%

SHOULD I READ THIS?
Yes, definately. It’s a very good story, with excellent mechanics. There is some violence in places.
Preview: You and your brother must survive training to become gladiators in ancient rome. Your decisions of who you want to be, and how to treat the people around you will affect the ultimate outcome of the game.

=SPOILERS BELOW=

RATINGS:

Basic Plot & Coherence: 5/5
The plot is this: You and your brother are sold into slavery and become gladiators. You must navigate your training, while developing skills and relationships that become more and more important. Everything fits well together. The events are logical and believeable, and the story does an excellent job of keeping the narration coherent, despite having so many options for who your character grows up to be. The tension between the two gladiator trainers is built up well, and the climactic battle provides a good pay off, while the consequences and death caused by the match increase the tension in preperation for the next installment.

Characters & Development: 5/5
The characters really shine in this story. Beyond the relationship tracking mechanic, each of them has a clearly defined personality, and multiple different possible character arcs depending on the main character’s choices. The characters are what give this game replay value. You can have a vastly different play experience by making different friends, and seeing different characters develop in different ways. I particularly liked Lula, she, the main character, and Alexius seemed to fit well together as a group struggling to orient themselves in difficult circumstances. All the characters later on had their own complexities. I started off liking Titus and disliking Rhodes, only to have my opinion on them swapped by the end of the game. Each of the gladiators met later on have their own distinct personalities. Zeru, Gerda, and Brasus each are intersting in their own way and contribute to the narrative.

Grammar: 5/5
If there were mistakes, I didn’t see any.
Mastery of Language: 2/3
Excellent use of matching language to the general tone.

Mechanics & Coding: 5/5
The story does an excellent job of creating both a satisfying narrative, and having skill and relationship building statistics that make sense and are important to the story.

Branching: 2/2 (usually 3)
Despite the relative linearity of the plot, the skills and relationship you build and the important choices you do make (such as choosing who to save) really make you feel like your choices matter, and will be important furthur down the road. That said, it is a relatively linear story. I’m still rating a 2/2 because linearity isn’t necessarily a problem when the story makes up for it in other places.

Player Options/Fair choice: 3/3
You certainly have a lot of choices about how to build your skill and relationships, despite the linearity.
There’s no point where it feels like you had no way to forsee the consequences of your actions.

Nitpicks: I see that the second one is not done yet. Disappointing.

Endings: There’s only really one ending, you see how you did after the final fight, and have to learn to deal with it in the next installment.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE:
On my first playthrough, I went down the path where you get along well with pretty much everyone, other than Gerda and Rhodes. Towards the end of the playthrough, though, I made up with both of them and was frustrated by the final battle forcing you to only be able to save one of the characters in danger. The story was captivating, and each of the options really made me think about what was the best strategic choices.

CONCLUSION: 27/28 = 96.4%

I’ve been struggling to review this, and really, that’s a compliment. Normally when reading even stories I otherwise enjoy here I have this little editor in my head going reeeeeee with varying degrees of sound and intensity as I come across the usual ever-spreading banquet of questionable word choices and straight up errors. That always leaves me plenty to write about without even needing to think about it. To come across a polished and professionally written work like this that just lets me immediately become immersed and forget I’m even reading a story is so precious and rare. Price of Freedom emulates that feel of opening a good book and reminds me a lot of some of the novels I read when I was about the protagonist’s age and just getting into the world of historical fiction. (Sadly, I never did come across anything nearly this good on Rome, mostly I just had pioneers and gold rushes and the Civil War coming out the ears...)

The author crafted some truly memorable characters with distinctive personalities. The little brother you need to protect, a new friend you’re thrown together with through circumstance, other potential friends that require a little more reaching out to and effort to understand, and finally those who should be enemies who sometimes turn out to be more than they seem. Because of the nature of the setting and plot, it becomes a painful necessity to think of these characters on another level as well, that of how your interactions with them relate to your continued survival. A sweet and endearing child might be at the same time a constant source of frustration as you realize how little chance they have and can only wish they’d snap to the reality of their situation and toughen up before it’s too late, and someone who’d be an incredible asset in a fight can be so obnoxious that after achieving the optimal ending you still go back and make different choices to make sure they die...haha...not that I would do such a thing on purpose. But anyway...

Brasus pissed me off and broke my heart, Lula made me laugh and had all the greatest lines, but Rhode meanwhile is just such a unique mixture of ally and antagonist and angry drill sergeant mother; not a character anyone will be able to forget for awhile. (I think it was mentioned in a thread that the homage to Semra’s intro in Eternal wasn’t intentional...but I’m sure Endmaster accepts your offering anyway.) It was smart to make the unequal nature of her and Titus’ relationship clear or a few of her actions wouldn’t have let her come off as quite so sympathetic, but as it is I adore Rhode while Titus remains in need of MANY bitch slaps and kicks to the groin. Time will tell if the sequel improves my opinion of him or whether he just keeps going further in the direction of earning the role of Supreme Selfish Asshole. It will be interesting seeing how his kids develop too.

There was enough authentic flavor in the setting to make it feel believably Roman (minus a couple of minor missteps like sailors being weirdly careless of the well being of extremely valuable cargo and details like the believability of the books the slaves had access too...even for Greeks and Romans such things would’ve been only for the wealthy. Something like rolls of papyrus with fighting stances drawn on them or whatnot would’ve been more realistic I think.) This is very much a character focused story though, and setting it inside the academy walls was a good way to keep everyone interacting and the plot moving along without having to go overboard with historical detail. An especially good idea considering the uh, NSFW nature of much of ancient Rome.

There were a couple of places, the line near the end, “So many have come to watch and cheer while two groups of children try to kill each other. Was the world always like this? It seemed so different once.” And the description of the playing children stopping to watch the cart at the beginning that I thought were nice touches really driving home the fact that the injustice and barbarity of slavery were just so casually accepted by the average person, even the protagonist until they themselves were caught up in it with no one to give a shit.

Since this was written in the Choice of Games style it might seem somewhat linear to those used to more branching in their stories, but even though the challenges faced remain the same, there’s so much variation in how to deal with them and how you develop your relationships and skills along the way that it felt enough like a different story each time I played. There’s the strategy aspect too; the first attempt, I hit a vertical wall in the arena fight because I’d spread myself too thin on skills. Going back and having more focus made a real difference, and I was pleased that my decent and honest and open guy who was not afraid to admit that men could cry could still protect his little brother and friends with some underhanded tactics when shit got real.

A liiittle more wiggle room in skills might’ve been reasonable though. Somehow going back and picking just one extra training focus and target practicing a few hours meant the difference between being made to look like a loser chump by Gerda and having flawless godlike accuracy when a check came up a little later.

Ultimately, these are all just nitpicks however. The story was satisfying and even with the obvious set up for the sequel felt complete as far as character development and overcoming the major conflict went. For me, everything was improved in a small way by going back and doing just a little worse so that Gerda couldn’t be saved...not JUST because she was a giant bitch, I just thought it seemed fitting for both bully and victim to be carried out side by side because ultimately reality didn’t give a shit about either or consider one more worthy/capable than the other. The reaction from Rhode seemed more fitting too, so this is ultimately going to be what I consider the canon path.

Although it does occur to me that if all these same characters are carried forward into a sequel, it’s going to mean a *lot* of writing to cover the variations possible in the group makeup now. The sequel is something I’ll be looking forward to (and I know I’m not alone in that) but this first installment was a pure pleasure to read. Thanks so much for writing it.

Amazing story

It's great and managed to survive at the end with Greda and Brasus dead. Just a little that Brasus had to die

Great game. I was forced to sacrifice and juggle a lot of different things and that, I guess, gave the game a sense of reality that you don't see often in games like this. You have to choose between who to save, stat increase or relationship increase, and more. It truly is a strange and marvelous game.

DANG this shit was engaging. A lot of really good character work. I played narratively at first, but then died because my stats were so low. So I kept restarting, trying to get that right mix until I finally survived. Very fun.

-Spoiler-
It was the whipping decision that finally allowed me to survive the arena. I kept putting myself in there, to my own detriment. Harsh example of why you gotta put yourself first sometimes.

o.o welp i think i died in chapter 7- it was the part where i got into my first fight

and i thought i was so smart to just not save and keep on trying different choices- UNTIL I REALIZED IT WAS BECAUSE I DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH SKILL O.o none of the choices would be happy for me because i was pathetic XDD

very intricate story :DD only story i've ever done here, though, so i'm not the best judge

This was my first taste of Interactive fiction and now I'm afraid I won't get enough! I LOVE the stats mechanic and how the storytelling throughout is spot on. I'll be recommending this to anyone with ears to listen :)

REALLY GOOD, definitely recommend. The only problem is that i feel it was a bit short, though I know a part 2 is coming out. I hope