The Necromancer's Tale is the most I've enjoyed creating an RPG character in a while, and no I don't mean the walking corpses

I've only dipped my distal index fingerbone in The Necromancer's Tale, a just-released historical fantasy tactics RPG from Psychic Software, but I can at least report back that the character creator is a gentle joy, to the point that I was disappointed to reach the end of it. True to the promise/threat of "400,000 words of hand-written narrative and lore", it's a hearty choose-your-own-adventure prologue that follows the protagonist's infancy and early adulthood. Each choice you make skews the stats on the left. Might sound unremarkable of concept. Here's why it's stuck with me.