NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Berandor" data-source="post: 1336726" data-attributes="member: 225">Well, I'm consciously avoiding detailed analysis because this is a message board game, and no real literary circle. As I'm not one of the judges, I don't think I need to be harsh on anyone, so I stay mostly general as not to offend. I know from personal experience that sometimes criticism just hits you the wrong way.So don't read on if you're not serious <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />[spoiler]So... honestly I wasn't too impressed by PCats story. It's still good, but it seemed kind of "phoned in". I got the feeling that I'd read the story before. The indirect defeat of the villain (using his machine against him) was also not very surprising. As I said, the world your story is set is immediately imaginable. The reader feels at home in the world, and the story - but that's partlly because it doesn't really cover new ground.I also got the impression the story moves too fast. Where does the name of the female doctor come from? How do they know she's been invited? Do they regularly keep files on their employer's actions?So the agent takes weapons with her that can't be detected. If they can't be detected, and the weapons are sponsored by the very person she's working against now, how come the guards don't know about these weapons and look for them? I would have expected her to go unarmed, confident to find weaponry in the estate or with using her "Unarmed Strike" feat.Kane also does the classic Bond-mistake: Capturing the spy, telling all his plans, then leaving her alone in a fool-proof death trap. (not really alone, but a 100+ year old man? Come on) And a window in a freezing chamber... when I read about the freezing chamber and how Isabelle was going to freeze, I already knew she was going to break a window to escape. As I said, no surprises, and that kind of hurt the tension.I half expected the Lazarus device to work differently, for example tranferring Kanes mind into a younger body, or into machinery, but alas, it didn't. The backwards transformation (teeth forming anew, etc.) was a cool touch, though. In the end, I waited for Kane's reappearance as a child <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />I also didn't really get why all the doctors worked for him. Simply money? Coercion? Did they know they were working with stolen technology? That's like the "poor workers on the unfinished Death Star" discussion from Clerks, but I wondered. To be exact, I wondered during Kane's "amazing" monologue, as he proclaims he's now gonna beat Isabelle to death, expecting one of the doctors to come to her rescue (pulling the switch, maybe?).In the end, I felt it was a competent, but not a very ground-breaking story, nor an especially brilliant one. But still much better than the second one, which almost fully fell flat for me (the humour just didn't click) <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Your story is a safe choice, but still a good one. I just wished you'd posted the other story, even if it would have been flawed. But playing to win has its advantages, as well. Good luck![/spoiler]</blockquote>

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