The appearance of this game caught me by surprise, as I certainly wasn’t expecting a board game I used to play decades ago to have (relatively) recently been digitized.
The adaptation as far as I can tell is flawless from a mechanics perspective with the AI behaving remarkably intelligently even when faced with alternate win conditions (you can also play with multiple human characters either on the same computer or through online servers). Visually though it could certainly use some upgrading: Animating the character movement and/or the encounters wouldn’t be unwelcome. Then again, it has a certain retro charm to it as is, it’s far from expensive (on sale for $2 at the moment), and no animation can occasionally be preferable to lackluster animation.
You may notice that the game has quite a number of available DLC. They are in no way necessary; you can play the game perfectly fine without any of them in fact. They mostly just give you additional options or make winning harder. I’ll briefly go over the ones I’ve played with:
- Blood Moon adds a situational new mechanic whose usefulness will depend on how many Event-adding DLC you have installed. The new characters are notable for being less situational than most.
- The City extends the game board with a new Gold-centric region to explore. If you commonly find yourself with nothing to spend your Gold on, or have trouble finding equipment, it’ll be worth picking up (when on sale).
- The Dragon DLC can make the game harder in two ways. Either by overriding the default encounters with powerful dragon-related encounters, or by making it harder to traverse the inner area with two of the three alternate win conditions (if this DLC is activated, I strongly suggest activating the ‘No Respawn’ house rule as well).
- The Dungeon expands the game board by the same amount as the City DLC. Unlike that though this new area doesn’t really add anything new to the base game beyond an arguably easier win condition. The characters it includes are less situational though.
- The Firelands will be more useful the more DLC you have installed, as otherwise its burn mechanic could seriously hinder the exploration part of gameplay.
- I’m not really sure how useful Frostmarch will be to anyone. It basically just adds more of the same to the base game.
- In direct contrast to Blood Moon, the Harbinger DLC is apparently more effective with less DLC installed. This is because its central mechanic mostly relies upon drawing specific events… which can end up a rare occurrence when you have a massive Adventure deck.
- As with the City and Dungeon addons, the Highland DLC also adds a new region to the board. Basically, you’ll want to come here for the new relics to give you that last bit of advantage you’ll need at 10 Strength/Craft to challenge the win condition (assuming the win condition is combat-related).
- The Reaper is a lot like Blood Moon, except its NPC effect is notably more useful. The instant death result can turn around what would otherwise be a hopeless situation.
- The Sacred Pool will be most useful if you’re using alternate win conditions. If you only play with the default Crown of Command one there won’t be much point in bothering with it.
- The fourth of the ‘board extension’ DLC, the Woodland does a number of things. Most notably it adds an entirely new use for Fate which allows you to reroll other players’ rolls rather than your own. Though occasionally useful in the default game, this new Dark Fate is particularly useful for triggering some of the nastier encounter results from other DLC.
Ancient Beasts, Nether Realm, and the various Legendary Decks were skipped because they just add more challenge (which is not something I’m particularly interested in). Cataclysm meanwhile I’m holding off on until I get bored of the default (DLC-extended) board layout. As for Clockwork Kingdom and Realm of Souls… they’re not cheap enough yet.
You may notice I didn’t mention any of the single-release additional characters. That’s both because they’re obvious rip-offs and because the characters in this game aren’t exactly well balanced. Their strengths are very much situational and whether one will be better than another will depend heavily on which content-adding DLC you have activated.
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