User blog:General Khor/5th Choiceversary Blog

Hello and welcome to another semi-annual review blog by General Khor. Five years it's been, and yet I'm still here, and I think it's a great milestone, considering how many players left the Choices community after only a year, or two, or three. Now I know what many of you think of the first half of this year, and I can tell you this, I can agree that Choices hasn't been doing well lately. The Renaissance Era that lasted for the past two years is over, and now we're in the Post-Renaissance Era. And it's not just because of the long list of genderlocked books, there's more to the past six months that made me take a break. Why? Let's get into it.

State of Choices, 2023 1st Half
So you know how most books this year are expected to be genderlocked? Guess what, PB confirmed that if you're non-VIP, the only gender of choice books you'll be getting are Crimes of Passion Season 2 next week, Blades Season 2 in September and a new, intriguing one called Dirty Little Secrets in the autumn, so yeah, not all new releases this year are genderlocked, which is a small comfort for the male fan base. Still, let's go over the releases for the past six months, shall we? So, most players start off the year with Guinevere (three guesses who we play as), followed by Kiss of Death in February, Getaway Girls in March, Roommates With Benefits in April and First Comes Love in May. Besides being genderlocked, another thing these books all have in common is that they're all single LI books (except for Guinevere, three guesses why), and if that's not enough, KoD and RWB also have a lot of the s-word. Which makes me wonder, why is PB's target demographic soooooo... horny? As for the series that wrapped up this year, Laws of Attraction saw its end credits rolling after two books in January, and The Phantom Agent ended as a standalone in February. Oh, and KoD is set to wrap up this week, after Guinevere which also ended as a solo book in April. Now, without further ado, let's get into the reviews.

The Phantom Agent
Rating: EXCITING!

So, a James Bond-esque secret agent story. What could go wrong? Well, quite a few things, really. First, the big bad. I prefer a card-carrying one who revels in mayhem, complete with a robot army, a scientist team and other minions to help him take over the world, just like Evil Emperor Zurg, but they had to give this one a sob story. It's like this: he used to work at a pharmaceutical company, and he had a pregnant wife, and they were expecting a daughter. But then, there was a chemical spill his reports of which fell on deaf ears, and it claimed the lives of his family, and when the company couldn't hide it anymore, they blamed him for the spill and fired him. So yeah, how could one not feel sorry for him? If you want your villain to be a massive global threat, it's best not to give him any humanising qualities at all, otherwise some people will root for him, and this grays the morality of the story, something you don't want when fans expect the story to have clear-cut, black-and-white morality and a happy ending.

Speaking of Zurg, another source of inspiration I can think of for this story besides James Bond is this little known movie called Buzz Lightyear of Star Command: The Adventure Begins, a Toy Story spin-off film which was the pilot of a TV series. So in the beginning, Buzz and his partner, Warp Darkmatter, were on a mission to rescue some LGMs, but then Warp is killed in action when Zurg blows up his base, or so Buzz thought. After that, Buzz declared that no Space Ranger will ever again die on his watch. He. Works. Alone. That is until his boss, Commander Nebula, assigns him a new partner: princess-turned-ranger Mira Nova, whose planet Buzz saved once. He is later joined by Booster, a fun loving big guy janitor who really wants to be a ranger too, and XR (short for Experimental Ranger), a robot partner built by the LGMs. In the last quarter of the film, it is revealed that Warp survived the destruction of Zurg's base, and he was secretly on Zurg's payroll since the academy, and he faked his death just so he can join Zurg for real. Needless to say, Buzz reacts the way you'd expect, and in the end he realises the importance of having backup, and so he finally accepts Mira, XR and Booster as his partners.

So what similarities does TPA have with this movie? Well, you can say we're playing as Buzz, Mira is our LI (bonus points for her father being the previous commander of GAIA, making her a GAIA princess), Vivian might as well be Booster if not for the fact that she wants nothing to do with GAIA after the mission, The Architect might as well be Zurg if not for the aforementioned sob story, and Rowan may as well be PB's Warp, right down to him faking his death and joining The Architect willingly as his Contractor, except Rowan was a good person before this, and The Architect tricked Rowan into joining him by appealing to his goodness. Oh, and GAIA's commander is pretty much PB's Nebula, who was an agent himself before succeeding our LI's father. So there you have it, I envisioned TPA as "BLoSC if Buzz were a secret agent and Star Command were a spy agency". And I almost forgot we did gain a robot partner near the end, which I named XA, short for... you guessed it, Experimental Agent.

Now let's talk about the biggest problem that brought down the rating: how PB handled Rowan's arc. I'm sure you know that besides MCs, most characters that are featured in sneak peeks are LIs, as well as most gender of choice characters that aren't MCs. I get that the reason we can choose Rowan's gender is that s/he was our partner before we meet Gray (you know, PB's Mira), the only LI in this story. I mean, if they wanted to make this a single LI story, they should have just told us so right when we meet Gray, otherwise they should have had Rowan redeem and rejoin our team. But no, right when s/he redeems, they kill him/her off. This means fans were left with false hope that they have a choice when it comes to LIs, only to find out near the end that there isn't a choice. So yeah, how can they trick us like this? Needless to say, that left me F-U-R-I-O-U-S. If it weren't for this worst Halloween trick ever (the book came out for general players in October), this book would have gotten the highest rating. Still, I would say this is a good intermediates, as this book contains a fair deal of violence, which is to be expected from a spy story.

Guinevere
Rating: EXCITING!

In case you don't recognise the name, she's the queen of King Arthur, so yeah, this story is basically a retelling of the Arthurian Legend from Guinevere's perspective. And playing Guinevere is... Meredith Grey! Yep, that Meredith Grey, who also starred in many 2019 books. Anyway, if you're familiar with the Arthurian Legend, you'll know that Guinevere was accused of having an affair with Lancelot of the Lake, Greatest Knight of the Round Table, and Arthur was about to execute her, but then war broke out, and Arthur ended up falling in battle after killing Mordred, the leader of his enemies who was supposedly his nephew. Except in this story, it was all made up by Merlin, who had illusions about us cheating on Arthur and tried to kill us several times. Now you might think, isn't Merlin supposed to be the ally? Shouldn't all this be Morgana's doing? Guess what, PB switched their roles. And all this happens before we become queen, and we can choose to screw destiny and marry Lancelot instead. Oh, and Mordred is still a child at this time (played by Isaac Achilles from the Royal Franchise, no less).

Overall, PB did a good job at adapting the story, with it being divided into 3 parts:

Part 1: Chapters 1 to 8 (The build-up)

Part 2: Chapters 9 to 16 (The conflict)

Part 3: Chapter 17 (Epilogue)

And let's not forget the all-star cast: King Liam or Nik as Arthur, Viscount Westonly as Merlin, Josephine Vance as Morgana, Diavolos Nevrakis as Kay, Aditya from TNA as Gawain, Eren from TPS as Gareth, Peter from FA as Percival, Xanthe from ACoR as Yvaine... the list goes on. So yeah, definitely a good book for beginners.

Conclusion
Alright, this is all I have for today's blog, because I just realised, there's a lot to talk about in LoA, so I'll be making a separate blog for the series tomorrow. Anyway, the second half of this year is going to be mostly genderlocked books as well, including The Duchess Affair in July and Kindred in August, and from what I've seen about Kindred, fans are gonna love it, 'cos it's not another smutty romance book like KoD, RWB and TDA, but let's just leave it at that, this is all I can tell you without spoiling too much. Still, remember how I said that letting fans decide who they want to end up with is what keeps the spirit of Choices alive? Now, with the surge in single LI books, Choices is losing its spirit. Out of all the books in the first half, only Guinevere has more than one LI (GG is another case of The Princess Swap, being a multi-POV book with only one LI for each playable character). I'm sure fans are already tired of not getting the most important of choices, and if this goes on till the end of the year, I don't know how much longer this game can last.

That's all for today, until then, this is General Khor. The end, and thank you for reading.