I love both CoG and HG, games, I can’t really have much of a favourite since all the stories I’ve downloaded have their own unique
“Je ne sais quoi” it’s hard choice but I’ll definitely say that I’ve been attached to the character emotionally and mentally. And before I’m forced to choose my top 2 I’ll say this I love all fantasy, super power, sci-fi, and romance books that I’ve read. So as for my top 2 I’d say…
Hero and Villain 1+2 & Sun and Moon the Keeper. And after that I have so many more that all need part 2s or 3s for them to take top 2 for me say yeah… But keep the stories coming from all authors I thank you all profusely, for your sweat and tears and maybe even blood for making such great stories
Idk if I can pick just one haha so a few of my favorites was definitely the first hero rise trilogy,fate of the storm gods,tally ho,and creame da la creme. I did not expect to branch off as much it did which is part of the reason I love it . Also the wayhaven chronicles,cliffhanger, evertree saga,fog knows your name one of the few horror themed books I’ve read. So many talented authors hard to list everyone.
Samurai of Hyuga is probably my all-time favorite of any published CoG/HG title. I really enjoy the style of writing, how the stat system is implemented as well as how fleshed out and fun the characters are. It also balances a good sense of humor with dark and mature themes in a way that is difficult to do. Not a whole of fiction has been able to make me giggle and cry within the same 15-minutes, but SoH pulls it off repeatedly.
What a tough question to answer. My favorite genres are fantasy, romance, and comedy, and I have a favorite series in each of those - Evertree, Wayhaven, and Jolly Good. Each does its own thing marvelously and many other things very well; I’ve replayed them all an unholy number of times and I eagerly look forward to updates on the next installments. But a favorite? Maybe it’ll be easier once I can compare all the series as wholes (which should be sometime next decade, given the proposed length of Wayhaven), but for now, it’s like trying to choose between The Lord of the Rings, Pride and Prejudice and The Importance of Being Earnest. How could I even try.
My all time favorite(so far anyway)COG/HG is Life of a Wizard. That it was my first ever ChoiceScript game probably played a part in that. But I also really enjoy playing wizards(as opposed to, say, mobsters) and really really like the “Life of a…” concept. Having a large degree of character customiization is one of the most important things in a COG or HG and “Life of a” games like Life of a Wizard gives you plenty of opportunities to customize your character, particularly their background. The first part of Life of a Wizard mainly consist of you choosing a background, but as a part of the story and even in the second chapter there are several opportunities for choosing your background. And with ten different fantasy races/species(including humans) to choose between and several different life events to choose from, your choices can really make a difference in the abilities, “feel” and strengths and weaknesses of your character, which means that unless you tried extremely hard to make every choice the same in every playthrough, every playthrough will feel different, particularly if you switch between the different fantasy races/species.
The “life of a” concept and how it is used in Life of a Wizard also makes it easier for me to just enjoy exploring the different ways your life can go, depending on my chosen background(s), instead of focusing so much on winning the game, that is getting all the best achievements. I also enjoy the scope the “life of a” concept brings, that it allows you to experience so much of the life of your character, instead of just a brief period in their lives, like most COGs and HGs do. The way Life of a Wizard tells you about key events in and the general outline of the life of your character, without telling all the details, also allows me to use my imagination and fill in the blanks by making up stories about my characters and their companions and aquaintances and also imagining them in other ways, all of which is something that I really enjoy doing.
I also really enjoy “building” and developing the abilities and skills of my characters and watching them grow more powerful and skilled and since that is one of the main focuses of Life of a Wizard, it certainly scratches that “itch”. I also enjoy that almost no matter what choices you make, you will eventually turn into a really powerful mage, so powerful that it made me feel my character was really badass, so to speak.
I also like the way Life of a Wizard always makes it clear when a particular skill or abiltity will be tested and the way it even makes it clear which ones(if any) you can use or how high it has to be for you in order for you to use it and that it manages to do so without making it feel too easy or, even worse, just like a walkthrough. I think a lot of COG and HG writers can learn from that approach, although I’m aware that it may be difficult to implement excactly the same way in COGs and HGs that don’t use the "Life of a " concept.
A lot of the reasons why I like this game is due to personal preferences and other personal reasons that are not so easy to explain to others, but I hope I’ve been able to explain those reasons in a way that makes sense to other people in the forum, whether you agree with them or not. For my second favorite COG/HG, it’s easier to explain why I like it so much in ways that I’m more sure that people can understand and relate to, but since Life of a Wizard is still my favorite COG/HG, I wanted to both share my love for it and the reasons why I love it, to the best of my ability.
If I recall correctly, LoaW was also the first Choicescript game to really make use of achievements – before it was written into CS as a feature. It was the first game that really turned me into a completionist.
The Heroes rise trilogy and it’s two sequel, are what introduce me to CoG/HG games, so this will always be my number one,
my number two would be the lost heir trilogy because I get to play as the monarch while riding a dragon and throwing fireballs at my enemy,
my third would be the Infinity series, tbh my first time playing this I kinda thought it was boring so I kinda drop it right at the scene where we attack loch the first time, but couple weeks after I thought why not actually give it a go and ever since then I’ve been to the story
My fourth would be Samurai of Hyuga, playing as a badass ronin that is totally charming/perverted and completely protective of his charge is really great
My Fifth would be the keeper series, ever since watching seven deadly sins I’ve always wanted to be part of the goddess clan, demon clan or the fairy’s, luckily this IF allows to be one of their descendants, plus my mc can wield magic so that’s a plus
There’s also war for the west, lords of aswick, swamp castle, grand tournament, war of magincia, Mecha ace, Tin Star, diabolical, community college hero
My favorite stories? Well, this’ll be some typing.
Silverworld is my current top favorite, because the story allowed me to really get into my character’s head. My character in that game was Eloise of Francia, professional military sniper-turned-bodyguard for the professor’s time-travel shenanigans, who wound up popping headshots left and right and basically trivializing most threats to be had in that game because people just didn’t know how to handle a stealthy woman with keen aim and a sturdy rifle. Decisions I made early about her life leading up to the start of the story allowed her to have experience enough with living outdoors to help the friendly villagers of that story not only build a wall to defend themselves with that worked almost flawlessly later, but also establish trade on land and by river travel with other villages, which bumped their economy up considerably. Silverworld was a game where I never felt like I was on the back foot for making a bad choice - because I never made bad choices. It was a game where the choices you make are clearly explained to you before you make them, so that you have a pretty good idea what skills are being checked - as Eloise was a marksman, her go-to solution was to shoot it between the eyes, and there was almost always a clear “shoot it between the eyes” choice that I had no trouble deciphering. And because up close combat was her weak point, when the game finally got fed up with me sniping everything and destroyed Eloise’s gun, she relied on her stealth to duck and weave through rather dangerous machinery and out of the way of enemy swipes in order to trick that enemy into killing themself. Good times.
So yeah: Silverworld has a neat story, clear choices, and your character can get up to some real bullshit if you play your cards right. Oh yeah, and one of the romances is a nerdy anthropomorphic bee girl, I kid you not.
Heroes of Myth is another game that let me get into my character’s head - Kendrick of Ithos was a nigh-peerless mercenary who got wrapped unwillingly into the whole “fake demon lord” thing (honestly, he didn’t really care that his boss was a scumbag, he was just there to get paid, but nooooo, his fellow damn bodyguard just HAD to go snooping around) and became deeply bitter about all the praise and privilege he received for lying to people for three straight years. Sure, he might be a merc who’s only interest is money, but damn it, at least he’s an HONEST money-hungry merc! Plus, being a “hero” entailed working for the Ithos crown, and Kendrick really came to have zero polite opinions of the princess or the other politicians by the time all was said and done. Kendrick’s plan from the word go was to reveal the truth, damn the consequences, because his guilty conscience simply couldn’t abide the lie anymore, and as the story goes on, he really kind of evolves in two distinct directions: In one direction, he actually becomes the hero that people have always assumed him to be, by owning up to the lie and working to turn that lie into a truth for the sake of the people of Ithos; in the other direction, he becomes basically the biggest villain of all demonkind, as, when he learns that he might be related by blood to demons, he reacts in such unbridled disgust that any and all demons he comes across wind up dead eventually, and when it comes time to defeat the demons for good, he chooses to permanently slam the door between the human and demon worlds, willingly sacrificing his demon half in the process and becoming fully human. And then he turns around and kills Meredith as a final middle finger to the demons.
Kendrick really became one of those heroes you read about in history class and find yourself thinking, “damn, if anybody else wrote about this guy, he wouldn’t look nearly so heroic.” It’s pretty great.
The Heroes Rise trilogy are all favorites of mine, because, even though the time they were written is beginning to show itself as I go back through and read them again (a lot of choices that I didn’t mind the first time around are coming back at me in a new, “wait, hold on, I disagree with this actually” light), they were written well enough regardless that I can’t help but get invested in the story, and, once again, I can really get into my character’s head - this time around, my MC is Morgan Kastans, codename “Merc” (which doesn’t mean anything, that was one of the superhero names she daydreamed up back before her powers manifested - she thought she’d be one of those gun-toting super badasses, but then she learned how to fly and throw energy around, and that kind of ruined her plans on that front. The name stuck around because at least it sounded cool), a woman who, according to the overall plot of the stories, got into the hero game primarily to climb the ranks and use the influence such prestige brings to overturn an unlawful conviction against her parents. But outside of the plot, Morgan is still very much a young woman prone to making mistakes even as she goes out of her way to do all she can to help others: My intent was to have her romance Jenny, but then I chose to have her call a bluff that turned out to not be a bluff, and Jenny got fed a bullet, which was awkward, but wound up being okay because it injected a bit of drama into Morgan’s character development that, in my mind, made her that much more fun of a character to play. She also chose to save her sidekick over a journalist when Prodigal was holding “both of them” hostage, and when her sidekick turned out to be Prodigal pulling a fast one on her, to say that she was pissed would have been an understatement. These among other slipups that made Morgan seem like a real person, rather than just words on a screen.
By this point, you may have noticed that there’s a recurring trend in my preferences towards “well-written stories” and “being able to get into my characters.” Well, let’s focus on that topic that always seems to roll around in some form or another: Romance, the thing that barely means anything to me most days.
I’ve said it in the past, romance really has to catch my eye if I’m going to bother with it at all. That, sadly, means that most CoGs and HGs fail to hook me on that front, with only a small handful getting a pass - Silverworld, again, for its nerdy bee girl, and the fact that other ROs are similarly compelling for readers who might be interested in them; A Sensei’s Story had the chill lady teacher who was super into manga, and that’s about all I needed to know; Breach: The Archangel Job has a fairly compelling cast all the way around, but my sights were set on Aveline chief above all others. Jenny in Heroes Rise would have been my chosen romance, but uh, I kinda screwed up on that one, oops.
For the games that fail to capture me, it’s usually a combination of things: The ROs all have personalities that grate on me, the romance feels either tacked on or pushed too hard, or there’s no option ot opt out of romance if it doesn’t sell you - being forced into romance is twice as bad as romance not being worth it, in my mind - the romance very clearly sticks out from the rest of the story (as in, the story will go screeching off the main plot’s path to ever so innocently inquire as to your feelings about romance, or will stop dead and demand to know who you want to have sex with, which both kill the immersion for me), and in some stories, the ROs practically throw themselves at you, which annoys me to no end, especially when a character I ardently dislike tries to hit on my character. Just, no. No, just let me hate you and quit making it weird, you’re never gonna be my type.
So that’s my take on romance: It probably won’t catch my attention to begin with, but damn it, put some elbow grease into it! Just because it means nothing to me doesn’t mean I enjoy reading crappy romance!
I also much prefer stories where my decisions mean anything. There are, sadly, a few too many examples of stories that fail to do that for me to mention, but usually, the pattern goes, “Here’s a choice!” “I choose this.” “Too bad, you’re doing this anyways!” “What the hell.” In a similar vein, if my character is just there to provide a body puppet for me to watch everybody else’s drama play out, I ain’t interested. And furthermore, I absolutely despise when the narration is written in a way that it seems like I’m either being judged or belittled for my choices, in particular when I fail a skill check because said skill check was either too high for me to reach (which is fair), or was written in a way that I can’t clearly understand what choice I’m making (which is bullshit), OR checked skills that I am incredibly weak in because I was given no prior indication that any choices would come up that would require those specific skills (not that they wouldn’t be checked ever, mind, just that my character who SUPER doesn’t specialize in them wouldn’t ever be hit by those specific checks). Seriously, the only time I’m okay with snide narrators is when the game is a full-bore comedy, and my failures add to the joke. Otherwise, not cool.
Okay, I think I’ve said plenty for the time being, so I’ll stop now.