Werewolf: The Apocalypse — The Book of Hungry Names

Of all the WoD 'Choice of' games I've played through (I've finished all but two games), The Book of Hungry Names has to be my favorite. It's got great characters, a great story, and I really enjoyed the leveling system.

Quite good, enjoying it, dunno if I'm even halfway through yet. Strong strory and long, with many mini quests.. Finally finished it - its good.

Балдежная игрокнига - не смотря на солидный объем, прерывал чтение лишь на еду и на сон.

I really wanted to like this game more than I did, but in the end I cannot recommend it. My main issue is the structure. Instead of feeling like a focused, linear story with strong pacing, the game often feels more like a sandbox of scenes, investigations, side threads, lore dumps, and optional directions. That can be appealing if you enjoy wandering through a very dense setting, but for me it created serious pacing problems. There were long stretches where I felt like the story was losing momentum, and by the time the main plot became urgent, I was already mentally tired from everything surrounding it. I also had some immersion issues with repeated relationship content. For example, in my playthrough, some romantic moments with Melodie felt like they happened more than once in very similar ways. It was not a huge mechanical problem, but it did pull me out of the story and made the relationship feel less natural than it should have. Another big problem for me was the amount of lore. I understand that Werewolf / World of Darkness stories are supposed to have deep mythology, and I can see how some players would love that. But personally, I found it overwhelming rather than engaging. Garou society, the Wyrm, Gaia, spirits, gifts, tribes, religious references, different supernatural rules, political factions, old histories, spiritual concepts — there is just so much of it. After a while, I stopped trying to fully follow every concept and started focusing only on the immediate choices. For this kind of story, I would have preferred something more grounded, physical, and nature-focused: the feeling of being a werewolf, surviving, hunting, protecting territory, dealing with instinct, rage, the pack, and the wild. Instead, the game often leans heavily into abstract spiritual lore, metaphysical threats, and complicated faction history. That is not necessarily bad, but it was not what I wanted from the experience. There are definitely good things here. Some characters are memorable, a few scenes are genuinely strong, and the writing can be very creative. I also appreciate how ambitious the game is. But ambition is part of the problem: it often feels like the game is trying to contain too many ideas at once, and the pacing suffers because of it. If you already love dense World of Darkness lore and enjoy a more open, investigative structure, you may get much more out of this than I did. But for me, the experience became exhausting, unfocused, and too lore-heavy to stay enjoyable. Not recommended.

A WtA game/book I enjoy far more than Heart of the Forest. The characters have personalities, some parts made me laugh, and it was engaging. Of course, there are some parts that are annoying. Trying to balance everything, do everything, try not to have your Rage, Health, and relationships decay. You have to stay super vigilant about that. And there's parts where the book gives you some options to choose, only to pull them away going "sorry you can't do that! Choose again!"