From the very first hour Cayden had set foot inside the massive, real-life game that was the Tower of Babel, nothing had gone according to plan. A unique skill, a handful of new friends and the wrath of an ultra-wealthy, patricidal lunatic were just some of the complications to his best laid plans.
So why was he even surprised when a special event trapped him, his companions and dozens of other players inside the tower, squaring them off against a murderous army of stone-faced warriors?
If they are to have any hope of survival, they'll have to leverage not only their own personal power, but the power of the Elan as well. There are castles to be built, armies to be raised and one real question to be posed.
How good is a self-proclaimed RPG nerd going to be at turn-based strategy?
My Opinion: About 400 pages, $4.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
This is the sequel to the popular LitRPG novel, Tower of Babel: Speedrunner.
This novel is definitely a shift away from the storyline of Speedrunner.
It drops the main character (MC), Cayden, and his friends in a special event that turns into this city building, resource management, turn based strategy game. There are still lots of good regular action scenes and dungeon dives but the new game mechanics from this turn based strategy game are the big thing in the novel. If you like those kinds of games (Civilization, Age of Wonders, etc.) then you’re really going to enjoy this novel.
There are all the mechanics of those games like hex maps, unit production, building production with bonus, turns that have to be planned out. There are also resources to manage like: Research, Food, Production, Magic, and Influence. There’s still lots of action in the story, it’s just modified sometimes to use things like mobility, morale, attack and defense values, and is told on a larger scale.
If you’re not a big fan of strategy games, then you may not like this story as much as uber fans of that type of game but there are still lots of action and good story to keep you entertained.
For me, I like strategy games but I usually play the campaign once and forget about it. I don’t repeatedly play different scenarios or do online play. So the new mechanics were neat to see since few stories venture into that realm of game mechanics in a LitRPG story. I was also happy to see that one of the characters played as a Juggernaut class.
A few small points that will bother some people. The story ends without full resolution of the situation of being trapped on this level. It’s not so much a cliff hanger as it is part one of a larger story arc.
Also, the last 8% is also a sample of another LitRPG story the author is planning to release.
Score: 7 out of 10