Ironheart

To be honest, at first I was on the fence regarding Ironheart. My first playthrough ended with a solid peace and, surpassingly, it felt very unsatisfying and rush. As if I missed on something important. However, I decided to give it another try and… was not disappointed! Other paths and romances turned out to be way more interesting, and there was even a plot twist in the middle. But I will tell you about it a bit later.
For now, let us look at the obvious pros and cons of this curious text-based adventure. Put on your best sci-fi fanatic hat and onward we go!
Pros

Sci-fi focus – neither too deep to make you bored or confused nor too shallow to feel irrelevant. Nowadays many stories focus on teenagers and students leaving behind ones that involve only adults. I cannot say that science fiction is not popular – quite the opposite. But at the same time, most of them do not involve mecha and such. Ironheart introduces its own unique concept of war machines that are operated by skystones (parts of the comet) and wormholes that can bring you back in time and completely erase the future. I really like the idea of time-travelling in general, and not being able to come back to your time brings new problems and unpredictable outcomes, as well as some fun moments. Ironheart had just enough information about all these themes and gave them enough time to develop (in most cases), so there is hardly anything I can complain about;
Interesting story. The straight peace path is actually rather anticlimactic. and even boring with an ending that feels abrupt, but other routes were definitely better. So far, I have gone along all possible paths (supporting one side over another, striving for peace, helping the hidden enemy, betraying certain people, etc.) and I can say that being nice and valiant is not always a good choice – yes, surprisingly, but this is true! I usually try to be a pacifist and help everyone, but it turned out that being tricky and smart could bring way more fun than playing as a knight with shining armor. After my obvious disappointment with the first playthrough, I was skeptical about other ones – so I was very happy when I found out that my gut feeling was true and I did miss several important events. Oh, and yes, the plot twist I mentioned above! You might suspect it at some point, but fear not, some events will come out as a surprise for sure;
Characters. Not all are perfect and some do not appear often enough to make you feel anything towards them, but the one that does are quite fleshed out and have their own personalities. A strong female knight with a pragmatic worldview; a crazy (or maybe not so?) fool who can give you a very sensible piece of advice at one point and then start barking at dogs and drawing naughty pictures; your old friend who woke up long before you and is now part of the new world; a former assassin who will put you through a mad chase around the burning city; a tricky Old Man; and many others. Some characters will appear only at certain routes and bring new flavor to the story;
General writing. As I have already mentioned above, the sci-fi part never felt too complicated and redundant, and I think this was achieved thanks to the author’s writing skills. The story flow felt natural (except for the straight peace route) and all events were explained properly. However, there were several continuity mistakes that I will mention among the cons.
Neutral

Some characters have lackluster romance. While all main characters got enough attention in this part and because Ironheart never claimed that romance was its focus, I cannot put this part in the Cons section. Still, I was dissatisfied with how little was told about people who were less important for the story. For instance, if you get into relationship with your assistant from the fief, all your interactions can be summed up with just several words – you meet, you ask them some questions, you are asked if you are attracted to them, you all of a sudden fall in love, you have a passionate hugging moment that lasts within just about 2-3 sentences (with no explicit descriptions, mind you), and then you ask them to join you in the big city. That is literally all. I should also mention that female romantic interests had way, way better backgrounds, more close interactions, and a more believable relationship. They even got a proper marriage ceremony in the end if you play as a guy. Men, on the other hand, felt surprisingly left out – I hardly found anybody interesting for my female character;
Fief management. I am quite indifferent to such features in text-based games. I like focusing on the story and relationships rather than looking after territories and stuff. For me, they feel repetitive and, in case with Ironheart, I did not see any noticeable impact of my choices in this part except for several lines in text mentioned once or twice. I was hoping for something more grand – like, if I do not upgrade defenses enough, some rogue will attack my fief and my character will have to go through a gruesome battle to get it back. Well, actually, there is an optional battle at some point, but it was caused by an absolutely different kind of threat.

Cons

Repetitive battles. Almost all of them are the same – you can either attack, defend, or fire your ballista/yield. Several battles repeat almost word by word (during the Great Tournament, for example). Compared to options in Mecha Ace, they felt extremely lifeless and dull. For a game that focuses on mechas a lot, such a downside is crucial. If you a bloodthirsty and decide to go through all possible encounters, you will notice too many similarities and lack of choices for sure;
Several mistakes in the text – mostly problems with pronouns. An example from Great Tournament: if fighting Fatima, you will see this line, ‘…she passes but she's leaving himself a little open by exposing her flank like that’.

Final Verdict
Ironheart is not a perfect game, but it is a great example of a well-written sci-fi story. It does not exploit overused concepts and introduces its own ideas, which is certainly a catch. But for the repetitive and scanty battles, this text-based adventure would not be much worse than Choice of Robots, Mecha Ace or Magikiras, at least in some way (definitely not as long and deep).
In the end, would I recommend Ironheart? Yes, and quite easily. Just try not to focus too much on peace between two nations, and you may find something intriguing among the darkest shadows of the 12th century.
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One of the best COG title I read in the past two years. Story is nicely written overall if not a bit short, very interesting concepts here mixing the Third Crusade, time travel, and Mech together. (Also if you happen to be a fan of Assassin's Creed, you are in for a treat)

A lot of these choose your own adventure games lately have failed to hold my attention, thankfully this is not one of them my first read through took me about 5hrs but then again I tend to leave it open and think about my choices longer than other people that probably added up a bit.
Its an interesting read, likeable characters, if you have an interested in the Medieval period crusades etc.. or enjoyed the movie Kingdom of Heaven and don't mind the idea of every major lord having their horse replaced by a primitive giant mech in the shape of a suit of armor.
If you like the concept buy it, its hardly going to break the bank.

One of the best. A lot of recent releases have been a bit teen focused or superhero focused from COG and Hosted - but this one is mature, choices matter and it has a lot of heart and humour (Tonzo is one of the funniest characters in COG game history).
Going back and doing other choices is a joy, and investment into characters is excellently rewarded.
The first two endings I played to genuinely had me getting misty eyed - of course, you can go through being less than honorable....
If you like medieval, alternate history, mechs, COG games or just a solid choice and consequence story - you'll find what your're after here.

This was one of the most satisfying CYOA games I've had the pleasure of playing/reading. The description does not do this one justice, truly. Yes, you pilot a giant mech and engage in mech-on-mech mayhem. But you are also involved in kingdom building and management, intrigue, diplomacy, and everything else you'd expect of a traditional medieval adventure.
Here's what you want to know;
-the choices are vast and impactful and their intentions are clear
-you alter your character stats through the choices you make THROUGHOUT the entire story, not just the start
-the writing is very well done and reads more like a novella than a game in terms of quality
-no 'hard stops' where the game abruptly ends due to not choosing according to the author's whims
-great depth, length, and characterizations
The ONLY complaint I could lodge at this one is occasionally you'll read ABOUT your feelings/thoughts instead of dictating them. It isn't a huge issue and serves mostly as flavor, but I would prefer absolute control. In any case, this is such a great story and game and it should stand among the top of the best examples of this kind of experience. Highly recommended!

This is a truly well written, atmospheric choose your own adventure story. I'm pretty picky about my fiction and usually hate about half of the books I start but this thing grabbed me right away and I had a hard time putting it down. The author does a nice job of setting a scene and although you never truly know how much weight your choices have in a story like this, the whole time I really did *feel* like I was guiding the story and that's the important thing. Given that I finished having only completed 2 of the 19 achievements I've got a pretty strong feeling that there's a lot of this story that I didn't see even though the story I DID see felt like a complete experience. Usually if I play through one of these once and got a good story of it I consider it a win, but this one I suspect I'll come back to to try to see what I missed. Definite recommendation if you like choose your own adventure text stories.

This is a fantastic time travel experience. This game allows you to take potential sides and allows you to craft your own story. This is very much similar to the recent approaches in Assassin Creed especially for Odyessy. I have played through this game and have served Saladin, played as a pilot that fought for an honorable old knight, and been with a fool who loves drinking.
This has themes similar to the 1636 alternate history series by Eric Flint. Playing as a giant medieval war machine has its perks! I did not get to play the Mongolians though, which sucked as I am going to replay this game again. The writing style is solid. Super solid. I was listening to the Kingdom of Heaven soundtrack while playing this awesome game. Though I wish Choice of Games had a save menu to save your progress so you can play through chapters. I checked in the menu and it did not have any as I searched through.
I would appeal to Choice of Games to have illustrated hand-drawn concept art for the text or something to that matter, like you have in games such as Medieval 2 Total War. Moving onwards, I don’t know why but the story felt a little short in some areas. There were scenes where I fought as a knight for the Crusader States, but I felt that Baldwin needed more scenes. I also found that the old knight’s son was a douchebag, and he didn’t appear after that in my playthrough although he took my estate! I would have wanted a bit more estate choices as well.
I have not explored this massive game, but I can def say that if this were a novel, Harper Voyager UK or Canelo Publishers should pick this up. I’ve played this game multiple times and I have not tried the Doctor and another one I can’t remember. It’s a fun game, and I seriously wished there was a story in the Ancient World that had a similar plot like this. This would make for a fun Age of Empires II custom scenario. Honestly, a great game and I rec to you all to buy this. It’s 33% off, and it’s cheap. So why not buy it and relive your Kingdom of Heaven experiences? History is becoming bigger in gaming, with old franchises coming back, Knights of Honor, Assassin Creed, etc and new franchises such as Humankind. Choice of Games should be your next choice to play historical text-based adventures. I love the descriptions, I love the cities. I wish we would have had a couple of more chapters in Cairo and Baghdad. I wanted to explore the cities more!
Awesome game!