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Ron Weasley & The Quest For Hermione Reviews
Author: Captainc22
Date: 2006
ADRIFT 3.9
Reviewed by
Emily Short
"Ron Weasley and the Quest for Hermione" is not the kind of IF that tends to get
attention from rec.games.int-fiction. First of all, it's a work of adult IF,
with numerous and extended pornographic scenes; second, it's derivative of a
piece of copyright literature, which would exclude it from eligibility in many
IF competitions. In fact, it's more an IF version of Harry Potter fan fiction
than it is a direct adaptation of any of J. K. Rowling's own work: the
characters are flattened and simplified versions, without any of the sly
comedy-of-manners dialogue one finds in the original; the relationship plots
come to the fore and every other theme is ignored; and I think we are supposed
to understand that time has ratcheted forward so that all the young people are
of legal age and Voldemort is no longer a threat, which is the sort of dodge one
finds in fanfic where the author wants to use the characters for a bit of smutty
business but is uncomfortable writing what might be construed as child
pornography.
The protagonist is a young Ron Weasley, out to win the affections of Hermione
Granger in the way AIF player characters generally win the affections of women
-- by carrying out tedious tasks for them -- but he's not too picky to seduce
every other woman in Hogwarts Castle as well, if he thinks he can get away with
it. (The author seems to have drawn the line at slashfic: if there's a way to
get busy with Draco or Harry or, heaven help us, Hagrid, I never found it. The
male NPCs mostly exist as impediments, the female characters as goals.)
The game is not very good, on several widely-accepted measures of craft. It
suffers from the usual curses of the ADRIFT parser: apparently identical
commands don't work quite the same way; variant names of nouns are not always
recognized, but the non-recognition is inconsistent. The puzzles are implemented
on the assumption that the player will encounter them in a specific order, but
there's nothing about the game structure that actually guarantees this. I ran
into many NPCs who referred to things that hadn't happened yet, for instance, or
who assumed I was working on missions that I had never been given. And to make
matters worse, the key NPC, Hermione, object of Ron's youthful desires, is
particularly unresponsive and doesn't seem to acknowledge partial completion of
your goals: at one point I thought I had possibly gotten stuck in the game due
to a bug, when the truth was that I simply had one more puzzle to solve and the
game's minimal feedback wasn't letting me know this.
I'm not going to critique the sex sequences, either: I generally find even the
most carefully-simulated adult-IF scenes rather mechanical and tedious, which is
one reason why I don't play much of this subgenre, so I'm not really in the best
position to compare the quality of the porn with other similar porn. I will note
merely that it is possible to skip most of these sequences if they don't appeal,
save only the final interaction with Hermione that is the goal of the game.
The thing is, though, that in one respect this game is reasonably successful as
an IF adaptation of a static-fiction work: it uses Rowling's worldbuilding as
the basis of all the non-sexual interaction. The characters and territory are
all familiar; score is kept with frequent reference to house points, though they
don't exactly correlate; the puzzles are based around the player's use of
canonical spells. The author helpfully provides a list of the Harry Potter
spells that are implemented in his game, to spare the player trying to guess or
remember spellings, but there is at least one puzzle that would probably be
difficult to complete unless the player knows the series: I'm not sure it's
fully clued within the game.
A more thorough author could have done a better job of exploring the
ramifications of this worldbuilding. There are quite a few spells that don't
work where you might expect them to. I see no reason, for instance, that the
player shouldn't be able to ACCIO anything he could ordinarily TAKE: I don't
recall the books ever saying that one can't summon objects that are within
reach, and it wouldn't even have been very hard to program this, from an IF
perspective. And spells of destruction and mending work somewhat capriciously
where the author felt like implementing them.
Even so, what is there is pretty fun to play with. There are few silly easter
eggs to be found, things to cast spells on that have no relevance to the rest of
the game. There is a certain pleasure in navigating territory that one already
finds familiar. I didn't have to explore to know that the Potions classroom
would be in the basement.
I found myself comparing the work with several other, more mainstream IF
adaptations that have come out recently: Peter Nepstad's two adaptations of
stories by Lord Dunsany, and Tor Andersson's "Tower of the Elephant." All three
of those games had the texture of the original prose (often simply by using a
lot of it straight up) and replicated the original plot-line, but missed
conveying some essential feeling of the original world: what it would be like to
*be* Conan, or a king in Dunsany's tale. "Ebb and Flow of the Tide", with its
dreamy inactive quality suitable to the corpse PC, is most successful, but
largely because the original story is about not being able to do anything. "Ron
Weasley and the Quest for Hermione" isn't as well-crafted as any of those; it
doesn't try to emulate Rowling's prose style (which is less distinctive in any
case); and it arguably flubs much of the characterization. But despite its
flaws, I found "Ron Weasley" more fun to play, and I derived much of my
enjoyment from a sense of connection with the original work.
Reviewed by Grimm Sharlak
Basic Plot:
You play the title character of Ron, as you make your way around the halls of
Hogwart’s trying to woo the love of your life, Hermione Granger. This of course
doesn’t stop you from trying to score every other female student on the way, but
hey, you’re not with Hermione just yet!
Overall Thoughts:
Just a disclaimer, guys: I’ve never read any of the Harry Potter books or seen
any of the movies, so I come into this self-proclaimed piece of fan fiction with
little to no knowledge of the settings and or characters. On that note, I found
this game to be your typical sex romp, with the characters being somewhat wooden
and interchangeable, outside of their descriptions. This is just your typical
“find the right thing, girl will jump your bones” type game, although you can
occasionally lose the game by going to far with certain ladies.
Puzzles/Gameplay:
Puzzles are basically of the “talk to this person, get this item for them”
variety, with the main quest of the game being based around obtaining a list of
items for Hermione before you tell her how you feel about her.
There is a slight twist, though, due to the magical nature of the school and its
students, you can actually cast spells with your wand to help solve in game
puzzles. This is a neat little touch and for the most part which spell to cast
is clear and actually casting it straightforward.
Sex:
Unfortunately the sex in the game is pretty repetitive, with the dialogue from
the girls being very similar and very stilted outside of the game’s final scene.
I swear to God every girl said “that’s messy” whenever they rubbed your cock.
Ron himself doesn’t even sound that interested in proceedings dialoguewise, and
the actual scenes lack flair. Aside from the aforementioned final scene and one
threesome scene (which was actually really good) the writing is lacking. One
neat twist with some of the sex scenes is, since you’re on a quest for
Hermione’s love after all, having sex with certain girls could result in your
game ending. Nice to see a little bit of realism in there, although to avoid
this fate you can just do everything but penetrate the girls in question.
Technical:
The game is not very ambitious in a technical sense, and I found no bugs or
issues (except for one where it wouldn’t save your high score list, but I think
that’s more an interpreter problem than anything the author could have done).
The only problem was with a lack of synonyms in casting spells. On two separate
occasions, I tried casting spells at targets, using names that auto complete
said were correct, but the author had only written the commands for a different
alias (like a character’s first name rather than their last). Since both of
these scenes required you to cast the right spell or fail, it could be
frustrating, but figuring out the correct name to use never took too long to
figure out.
Intangibles:
While I’m certain this will appeal more to Harry Potter fans than to those who
haven’t seen or don’t like the franchise, the writing is still fairly wooden and
the characters lacking in individuality.
Final Thoughts:
Quest for Hermione is a solid little game, with some fresh ideas despite its
basis in fan fiction. However, the writing really lets it down when it comes to
the meat of the game, and the puzzles are too simplistic and clichéd to truly
carry the game on its own. A bit more focus on making each sex scene more unique
and the dialogue a bit livelier would go a long way with this one.
Rating: C+
Reviews should be considered copyrighted by their respective authors.
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