Pathfinder Legends

In this fourth instalment, Scott once again proves better at adapting the original scenario to an audio story than his fellow author was in the two episodes he had done up to this point. But where Scott's previous offering was a horror tale of sorts that was able to play with the characters' emotions, here we have something that is little more than “kill the monsters”.

At least, that appears to be what the original scenario was, leaving relatively little to play with to make a more involving story. But, given that limitation, Scott does reasonably well, focussing on the conflicts between the villains and building the story around them as much as around the heroes. Some of the fight scenes are well done, with the fight with the harpies particularly effective, as they use the entrancing siren call rather than physical violence.

But it has to be said that there's little here other than fight scenes, and some of the villains bickering. The first segment of the story is basically just one long protracted fight in which our heroes stoop to some fairly unpleasant tactics to get things done. The main viewpoint character here is the dwarven ranger, who evidently has giants as his “favoured enemy”, and the wizard's narration is used only to move the story forward when the party has to spend a few days travelling or whatever.

The fighter is also well-used, being separated from the rest of the party in a way that enables us to see more of what is going on than would be likely in an actual game, and clearly being set up for a further story element down the line. It's also worth noting that the higher level of the characters is evident here, with the wizard using quite a lot of magic that would have been rather handy if he'd had access to it in earlier episodes, and the overall stakes being higher.