Beaver Books, £2.50, 0-099-47590-1
Fantasy, 1986

War of the Wizards is the fourth and final gamebook in the The World of Lone Wolf series. Normally this means you shouldn’t be playing this gamebook if you have never played the previous gamebooks, but because this gamebook isn’t that difficult, feel free to jump right in even if you are just starting out.

Basically, in this one, you, Grey Star the Wizard, have retrieved successfully the Moonstone from the Daziarn, and reunited with your love interest Tanith, you find yourselves in the Lissan Plains. In your absence, the Army of the Freedom Guild resistance forces led by your old friend Sodo the Long Knife had managed to repulse the Shadakine force sent to retake Karnali. Encouraged by this, other pocket resistance movements began to form in other cities. And now, the resistance army is determined to march on to seize control of Port Suhn from the Shadakine Empire. However, the Army is walking straight into a trap set by Shasarak the Wytch-king. Guess who has to race to the Army and help them before they get decimated.

Despite being the penultimate leg in an epic campaign, War of the Wizards is another bewilderingly short campaign even when it has 360 entries instead of the usual 350. It is very linear, roughly divided in three separate acts, and the final confrontation with Shasarak the Wytch-king and his mysterious accomplice are anticlimactic to say the least. Throughout the campaign, a few skills dominate your options. This shouldn’t be problem as there is a high chance you already have those skills, but the domination of these few skills over other skills demonstrate pretty poor game design on the author’s part.

A handful unavoidable combat encounters, a linear campaign, and a rushed and truncated confrontation with the final villain… somehow War of the Wizards never feels as urgent and climactic as it should have been. It is a flawed conclusion to a flawed series.