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+
adamredwoods
1 play / 3 players LIKE: Enough strategic decisions to make interesting turns. I also like the secret hidden goals, which helped to add a little tension to the game. The player character asymmetry was really interesting. The dual use of the cards (top and bottom balancing) was well designed. DISLIKE: Lots of randomness. Possibility for player elimination. Fiddly, with little rules and modifications that players need to remember. Lots of shuffling. Not very portable. The gameplay feels like it would get repetitive with it's hack 'n slash gameplay. OVERALL: It's a fun hybrid RPG. It reminded me a lot of Pathfinder TCG, but using miniatures instead. I enjoyed the game, although I am turned off by how much hype this game has gotten. It has a very high 'exploration' game design factor, but lacks strategic depth compared to euro-game design. Still, I found it enjoyable.
Acceptableloss
Like new condition; All pieces are punched and bagged. No stickers used and all cards and components are in original packaging.
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.