Sword & Sorcery – Arcane Portal
Expansion of: Sword & Sorcery - Immortal SoulsFrom the depths of the abyss, new, infernal enemies are summoned to bring chaos and death to the Talon Coast! Create new legendary tales by fighting and banishing them to save the realm.
60m - 90m
1 - 5 Players
Ages 12+
Glic2003
Whew! I'm only a little over half way through it, but so far, Arcane Portal has been a miserable experience. The main problems have been the length of the quests, which are very, very long, and the lack of enemy variety. There are literally three enemies (besides the boss), and you'll fight them over and over and over and over again. To further exacerbate this, the enemies tend to have the ability to heal each other or resurrect new enemies on death, or summon more enemies. In other words, the enemies' abilities have the power to make a game that's already too long even more longer....er...longerer... I mean...make it stop already. Another annoying issue is the need to rearrange and add more map tiles to the layout while the game is in progress, slowing the game down even more. Fortunately, the campaign book lists the extra tiles at the setup stage, so you can at least pull them out of the box before play begins. The quests are peppered with some unique events, which add a bit of colour to the proceedings, but I found they further slowed the game down, without adding anything of real value. And as a final slap in the face, Kickstarter backers were only given this campaign as "DLC"; that is, a trio of .PDF files, not a printed copy. So it's necessary to either refer to the .PDF files while playing, or get them printed off yourself. If you buy the Arcane Portal at retail, a printed copy is included. I'm not sure why KS backers needed to be screwed over this way, but it is what it is. On the positive side, I did find the quests more challenging than the base game, and the enemies' abilities do encourage a bit more tactics. It's definitely possible to get sucked into a powerful downward spiral if players are careless. Mercifully, there are only four quests. And the new big boss enemy is my favourite miniature in all of Sword & Sorcery, so I guess that's something. Update: finished Arcane Portal. The final boss was laughably easy, and very anticlimactic considering the many hours of slogging required to reach it. Curiously, it actually seemed less dangerous than some of the other enemies (because they had "Lethal" attacks, while the boss does not). I find it hard to believe this was playtested at all. It's also needlessly fiddly to fight, as it has two different "states" that require flipping the card over and then re-checking what its current abilities are.
codaa27
Contained within the Sword & Sorcery Immortal Souls KS "AP has two issues: Duration (which is not an issue if you have the time) and No leveling up. If you play it as a standalone you will start at Rank 2, which will make your life miserable as you struggle to level up. If you found the base S&S difficult, entering AP with rank II heroes will disappoint you... and if you play AP with your Rank 4 IS heroes then you won't level up anymore as you cannot level up beyond Rank 4. If you don't mind these two issues then you can buy it and have fun. Otherwise, you can skip it safely. I had fun with AP with my 3-player group but was a bit bored with my 4-player group because the game's duration was greatly increased and it all started to feel pointless because we didn't have any feeling of progression. it felt like we had this multi-hour investment obstacle (AP quests) to surpass before reaching the quests where we could continue to level up our heroes." https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2923107/article/40686202#40686202
rutherford82
Quests are longer and more involved. I really like the quests, but you won't advance in level for any of this unless you really struggled in the base game and spent too many soulpoints reviving.