Pros:

 * The quality of the writing here it good.

 * It's finished! You can play it and relpay it, and it seems to be totally in finished state.

 * The antagonist is, in my opinion, rather likable and entertaining, and her interaction with the protagonist is entertaining and well written.

Cons:

* The "game" part of the game suffers from very awkward interface issues. It's basically minesweeper on a non-graph-based map where you're hunting mines instead of avoiding them, but the visual part that shows you the map layout is on a different screen from the numbers you use to know where the mines are on the map. As a result, fighting the interface takes more effort than beating the puzzle.

 * The "sex and story events" are very hit or miss, and overall fairly mediocre. Tge parts of the game that should have been "rewards" for doing well, I found myself largely skipping past because they were boring. For context, the second more memorable of the scenarios involved a married woman asking a priest for advice because her husband wasn't sexually interested in her. Again, it was well written. It kept me sufficiently entertained that I read it. But is that really the sort of content you're looking for? Ehhh...probably not.

Overall, I would say this is worth a download. The first half is amusing. And if you're lucky, maybe one of the outcome scenarios will happen to touch on one of your fetishes or something. But be prepared to skip past some parts.

The puzzle, which makes up most of the game, is incredibly fun with lots of replay value. I'm an old hand with logic puzzles, so for it to be challenging for me, I try to solve it using as few crystals as possible. I heartily reccomend this to any fan of logic puzzles for the gameplay alone.

As for the story, it has its ups and downs. The intro sequence/framing device was a bit too "kooky" for my tastes, but the endings were pretty good- much better than a lot of fantasy novels I've read. It's not the hottest thing on the site; some endings don't have any sex in them at all, but if you like to read porn where you care who the people fucking are, this works.

Easily in my Top 5 games on the site.

This game is not worth playing. The puzzle is unnecessary, and takes up entirely too much time to figure out. And if you get it wrong ONCE, then all the progress you've made is gone, and the map you WILL HAVE TO DRAW is useless. The work invested and frustration when you fail is nowhere near worth the well-written but utlimately meager payoff. Your time is best spent on any of the other games on this site.

I have to say I didn't want to play this game initially. The concept wasn't appealing to me. "Meh, a puzzle and a couple of stories", I thought. But after seeing Joe's other works and reading somewhere on the forums how disappointed he was with reception of Five Fates, I decided to check it out. 

I actually really enjoyed it! The puzzle itself is quite fun, and the writing is great as usual for Joe. While yes it is indeed "a couple of stories" in the same setting, the stories themselves are varied and fun. I replayed the game a bunch of times trying to get the ending for the ones I enjoyed the most, all the while discovering new ones. 

I did notice some mistakes like using "you're" instead of your, but those were really rare. Didn't think to write down locations of the ones I noticed.

I wish there was an option to pick the fifth Fate from the ones you saw already, getting the end story that you saw already while hunting for that one ending that you are really interested can be a bit frustrating.

Overall, if you like puzzles you should check it out. If you like reading you definetely should check it out. If you are looking more for a game than for a story- this is a miss. The only part that makes Five Fates a game is one single (albeit interesting) puzzle.

Let's be honest - this is more bunch of fantasy erotic stories, then actual game. But it seems like that was an intention so I don't feel like it's a bad thing. And the stories are actually great! Very well written, humourous, yet still not overly silly, both characters and situations are believable and interesting, world is interesting too and last but not least I see a lot of redacting work behind it. Author has a lot of great ideas and a lot of talent, too. I'm really looking forward to see other games or even just stories from them.

Only thing I would change, if I could would be system of the central puzzle. Giving ten clues at the start seems like a little bit random and can make game overly easy or overly difficult due to randomness. Maybe it would work better to not give any clues at the start and just give player (much) more crystals so they might use some actual strategy when choosing which areas of puzzle to get clues to. It would also add to "gaming" ascpect of the game, I believe.