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Dumpshock Forums _ General Gaming _ Betrayal at Krondor has ninjas!

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 11 2007, 11:06 PM

Over the course of playing Betrayal at Krondor for the first time I've noticed that apparently ninjas are part of Raymond Feist's fantasy universe. They're called "nighthawks" but they're seriously ninjas. The photograph of the actor in costume in the manual who is supposed to be a nighthawk looks like a ninja. The graphics in the game portray ninjas. The nighthawks are supposed to be specialized assassins, just like ninjas.

To make things even better, they have the ability to become undead ninjas. You can get attacked by zombie nighthawks with bloody patches all over them. They look a lot like the vehicle-hanging super ninja from American Ninja 2 who gets all shredded up after being dragged from a pickup truck for like 10 minutes.

Never before did I think that I could play a fantasy game where your party with magicians and fighters and theives could be attacked not only by ninjas, but by zombie ninjas.

"The Way Of The Tiger" gamebooks did a good job of integrating schlocky ninja lore with typical European style medieval fantasy. You got to play a ninja and do ninja things like spit poison needles or mentally repeat some trite ninja litany to prevent your SAN from being lost to a tentacled underground monster. You could REVERSE PUNCH KIAI monsters up to 5 times in the course of an adventure for extra damage. However, you never technically became a ZOMBIE NINJA, nor did you get to interact with ZOMBIE NINJAS.

Raymond Feist wins fantasy thanks to his ZOMBIE NINJAS.

Posted by: Demon_Bob Jun 12 2007, 01:12 AM

Ya I loved that game.

Posted by: toturi Jun 12 2007, 08:26 AM

Okaaayyy... but Way of the Tiger gives you a astrally perceiving ninja. And you can Inner Force Kwon's Flail kick among others, a spawn of a dark god/demon and 2 ninja grandmasters.

Posted by: Wounded Ronin Jun 12 2007, 08:43 AM

QUOTE (toturi)

Okaaayyy... but Way of the Tiger gives you a astrally perceiving ninja. And you can Inner Force Kwon's Flail kick among others, a spawn of a dark god/demon and 2 ninja grandmasters.

I did appreciate the inner force + Kwon's Flail from Book 1, but the series really fell apart towards the end. I think in the second to last book there was actually a serious page redirection error! I also believe that whenever an adventure story tries to depart from its roots and start taking place on the epic level (ninja kings, ninjas going to the center of the earth to defeat the ultimate evil) they also tend to fall apart in terms of the quality of the storyline.

So, Way Of The Tiger would have won, if the last two books were up to the standard of the first one. However, the series really ended on a whimper, and the pain of that realization really hurt my soul which had already been half devoured by astrally projecting ninjas with white tigers who used Inner Force to resist cthulu and then REVERSE PUNCH KIAI him. It just started to go downhill after the ninja, in a feat of 80s-powered statistical improbability, beat up three demons from hell at once and became the king.