Pon Para and the Great Southern Labyrinth

Good worldbuilding, an interesting story, and characters that felt believable, both in their humanity and inhumanity. Also, wow, longest one of these I've played. You'll get your money's worth in time, at the least.

plot is basically reimagining the bronze age collapse as an epic fantasy quest with mythical beasts and magic and stuff.

The first Pon Para book is gripping, epic in scale, and if you can look past its flaws, a masterpiece in many respects. It isn’t flawless, and that becomes clear as you play. There are a few rough edges and some odd design choices around the CYOA elements. For example, the game goes to great lengths to let you build Pon Para’s attributes exactly how you want, giving you real agency to craft a character who can tackle the world in your preferred way. But, as another reviewer fairly pointed out, the character appearance options are extremely limited (unless you're choosing cloak designs, which for some reason get an enormous amount of variety). That unevenness in how “choice” is distributed shows up in a few places throughout the book. That said, the adventure element is genuinely gripping, and stands out even amidst a huge catalogue of other CYOA games. The choices frequently feel like they matter within the context of the story, which creates real tension: it’s not always obvious what the “best” option is, and you’re constantly weighing your build’s strengths and weaknesses against what you’re trying to achieve. Sometimes these choices can feel a bit railroady, but honestly I thi…

Fantastic game! If you enjoy Kyle Marquis' other work you will love this. Truly the greatest Choose your own Adventure author out there. Tonnes of great role-playing potential and a really interesting and unique setting with an interesting central mystery and villains that aren't two dimensional.

[h2] Introduction / TLDR [/h2] Pon Para and the Great Southern Labyrinth is a high fantasy, interactive novel written by the author Night Road and The Book of Hungry Names. While Kyle Marquis certainly has grown as an author in-between this work and the later World of Darkness novels, I think this start to an as of yet unfinished trilogy really delivers a substantial and fantastical epic fantasy story. If you do not mind that the book is written in a way that you feel like the player character has rather little drive, and you don't mind a bit of monotony in character interactions I think the setting when it really shines makes this a really enjoyable fantasy novel. It has also been really fun reading this in light of being a fan of the World of Darkness CoG novels, to see similarities and differences in Marquis's writing. [h2] Reading overview [/h2] The Great Southern Labyrinth is a relatively linear and dense read, presenting a pretty vivid and rich fantasy world as the main character and their companions find themselves trying to outrun an invasion. The main sense I get is that it is a very cohesive and well paced story, if a bit dense at times. We're not quite at the levels of …

It's a fun story and deserves playthroughs. The stat part is a little confusing, though, given that a few requirements for stats is quite blurred. If there's a third part to this series, I do recommend adding some descriptions of the requirements. Otherwise it kills me to start over without a saving system.