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+
AdamKluvanek
This game is so complex yet so easy to learn. It feels challenging but fair. The world is really well made and the story is pretty immersive. Leveling up doesn't just give you some attribute points that in the long run are meaningless but better cards that test your management skills even more.
4characters
Thematic games and RPGs are not my cup of tea so I'm not the target audience. However, the campaign experience of playing with the same group of buddies is epic, the progression of seeing your characters level up and getting better is the major appeal I think. Overall the game itself is clever and well designed. If you like dungeon crawlers and heavy theme and story telling in games (which I don't) then this is probably as good as it gets. The card play in the dungeon components could probably be spun off into a mediocre arena death-match style of game in its own right. However the pace of play is too slow and has far too much randomness for my liking. For example, some little cheesy bad guy poisons you, muddles you, and immobilizes you two turns in a row because this class of bad guy somehow got initiative less than 10 on consecutive turns and you lose the scenario because of it, or you have a 1/20 chance of missing your attack but somehow miss six times in a row and get exhausted causing your buddies who are doing well and enjoying themselves to have to restart the scenario and lose their gains -- that type of thing is just painful and frustrating and definitely not enjoyable for me, conversely lots of people view this as exciting apparently. It is a huge chore and pain to set up, put back, and store. I would equate this game to a well designed Java program that is just oozing with complicated OOP design patterns: it works, the majority of people rave about it, but definitely isn't my thing.
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.