Sorcery! Parts 1 and 2

Generally I like choose-your-own-adventure type of games, and have played also some of the gamebooks this series is based on.
But this felt just, well, frustrating. I liked the writing, the ideas and the events presented here, so there would have been a great potential for a fun game, were it not for all the other stuff.

Ok, there's a map, and in a way it's kinda nice to be able to see the progression one makes, but at the same time it makes obvious the silliness of not being able to backtrack your way.

Magic system is just bad. There's a load of spells, a bit too many to handle easily, and yet it's very limited what you are actually able to cast at which moment, and even the spells that in their description say, that this spell is used in a situation like this, are not available when the said situation arrive...so it's basically a question of trying to guess what the developers have been thinking at each situation. The game would have been better if they had dumped the whole spellcasting away.

But I can't say that I liked the combat much better. Trying choose the actions based on far too few hints is just...no.

Storywise, the idea that some events can have very long-reaching conclusions is kind of fascinating in theory, but also a big potential for frustration when you realize that because you happened to miss one encounter at the beginning of the game, or chose randomly some vague wrong option (and with scarcity of hints in some choices, yes, that will happen), towards the end of the game you realize you are screwed with no chances. So basically it requires either a lot and a lot of grinding to find the optimal storypath, or just looking at the walkthrough, and I found both options to be equally uninteresting.

There was potential here, but I found this just disappointing.