Gloomhaven
Gloomhaven is a game of Euro-inspired tactical combat in a persistent world of shifting motives. Players will take on the role of a wandering adventurer with their own special set of skills and their own reasons for travelling to this dark corner of the world.
60m - 120m
1 - 4 Players
Ages 12+
7Nate7
Games of the genre are always a bit of a task to set up and take down but other than that pure perfection. Very fun. Introduced it to a few friends that wouldnt normally play these kind of games but they were shocked and really enjoyed gloomhaven once they learned the mechanics which only took about a half hour to get it down.
46 and 2
This game was a huge disappointment. I cannot understand the throngs of people who praise this game. Leaving aside the weird, NPC-type character races (your choices are quite limited up front) and the badly-organized box (its half-assed attempt to provide some sort of organizational structure for the myriad decks of cards is insulting), my problem with this game comes down to the opening scenario. To say it is brutally difficult is an understatement. It is downright impossible. Changing strategies, characters, skill/spell loadouts, all yielded fast, frustrating death, if not in the first room, soon upon entering the second room of three. Forget trying to meet the (randomly-generated and very, VERY odd character goals) for the scenario. You'll need to seriously ratchet down the difficulty, beyond what the game even allows, basically house-ruling a way to win the first scenario. IE, the only way to win that first scenario is to cheat. What a fun way to play a game. After running into loss after loss on the first scenario, I boxed this game up, sold it, shipped it, and never looked back. There is no reason for a game to punish players who have just started. It's bad game design. A well-designed game can teach as it goes, introducing players to the complexities of gameplay as it progresses. A dedicated gaming group will not tolerate a game that dishes out constant losses, no matter how good it might get later on. There will be the inevitable responses of "get gud," etc, but a game has to have a hook to draw gamers in. This has only disappointment and frustration at the outset. Gloomhaven is not a well-designed game, no matter what may come later on.
adamgrey
Would be much higher, but it is awfully fiddly with tons of pieces, status conditions, stats, and more to keep track of. Setup time is long and arduous and it can be very difficult, especially certain combinations of starting characters.