Gloomhaven: Forgotten Circles
Expansion of: GloomhavenGloomhaven: Forgotten Circles, the first expansion for Gloomhaven, features twenty new scenarios that take place after the events of the original Gloomhaven campaign and involve one new character class — the Aesther Diviner — and her attempts to prevent an approaching calamity.
The expansion also features seven new monster types (including three new bosses) and fourteen new items.
60m - 120m
1 - 4 Players
Ages 12+
AmstradHero
While I've not finished all of the scenarios, Forgotten Circles leaves a lot to be desired. Scenarios are overly complicated, the new mechanics don't seem to add much improvement, and the segmented scenario book means there's tedious mid-scenario set-up for additional monsters and terrain. The new character for the expansion, which you have to use, isn't very good or enjoyable to play. You're mostly playing around with the modifier decks, which at this point of the game are frequently going to be quite good anyway since you're liable to have levelled up a bunch, so her cards are mostly doing minor optimisations for other players rather than having any meaningful impact on the battlefield. She just feels pretty bad and uninteresting to play. Worst of all, the "puzzles" present throughout the scenarios. Some tediously interrupt the gameplay session, requiring you to decode runes for a message. Others require specific actions and solutions that are not apparent, and these scenarios even initially mislead you with suboptimal win conditions that potentially lock off future scenarios. All of this adds up to the game feeling very poorly balanced at 2 players, and definitely seemingly like it was designed for the full player count of four. As good as Gloomhaven is, Forgotten Circles takes the core premise and gameplay loop of the game and replaces it with something different. While it's espoused by the designer and some supporters as being made for "advanced" gloomhaven players, it's not so much difficult because of how it forces people to play Gloomhaven better, but how it forces them to play arbitrary puzzles by mashing them into the Gloomhaven framework. If you're looking at Forgotten Circles because you "want more Gloomhaven", steer clear. If you loved Envelope X and want that feel as an entire small campaign, then it might be up your alley.
bananajamslam
The expansion revolves around the new Diviner character, which is really boring to play as. It's primarily a support character, but many of her mechanics (the rift tokens and teleportation) are confusing and either underpowered or completely pointless. As a result, no one in my group ever wants to play as her. The new scenarios are complicated, require multiple phases of setup, are full of obtuse puzzles, and frequently involve translating more of those stupid runes with a decoder key that everyone hated in the original game. It all slows things to a halt and you'll be lucky to finish one of these scenarios in the same time as two of the older ones, with half the level of enjoyment. A big disappointment for a great base game.
Black_Howling
This expansion is frustrating for my group and myself. There are many new ideas that would have been better served in a pen & paper game, not as a Gloomhaven campaign. It does not work to force players to stop everything and solve a riddle in the middle of a scenario (scenarios 98 & 106 for example), especially since players have a limited number of turns before becoming exhausted. Many scenarios are unreasonably difficult for two players, where one character is tied up as the Playable NPC and/or not directly contributing to the scenario. Some scenarios are better at reduced difficulty or playing with fewer summons (99), but at least one involves arbitrarily guessing the correct puzzle order for the best outcome (106), which is nearly impossible with only two players. Gloomhaven is my favorite game, but we would rather forget that Forgotten Circles exists.