Gloomhaven (2019)

I have the boardgame and enjoy playing it with my son. Having some house rules that allow us to fudge results somewhat is crucial to getting past some levels, however, and this game sticks strictly to the rules.

I made it pretty far. I had beaten something like 30 scenarios. Then I ran into a situation where I couldn't get past any scenario without a TPK (total party kill) despite trying multiple available scenarios. It's simply too difficult to get past a scenario when you're facing 15 enemies with multiple ranged attacks that damage 20% of your hitpoints each round. I suppose the game was designed to be difficult so I can't fault it.

I ended up quitting the game. Maybe I'll go back one day? I don't know.

Playtime: 3 hours, 19 minutes

(6 tutorials, starting mission twice - won once)

Intro

Gloomhaven is a turn-based strategy RPG. You create a party of 2-4 members and fight through dungeons. Each character has a deck of cards with each card having two options, usually fight/move. You pick two cards at the start of each turn and if you pick the top choice on one card you have to pick the bottom choice of the other card. Each card also has a number indicating initiative, allowing you to pick between earlier or later actions. The goal is generally to kill all enemies in a dungeon.

Darkest Warmachine

Gloomhaven reminds me of Darkest Dungeon and Warmachine: Tactics. Like DD it has random NPCs, grinding and excessive difficulty. And like Warmachine it's a poorly designed version of a physical game that also takes too long to play.

Interface problems

The main problem is the interface and related interactions. It's bad. Really, really bad. For one thing, the "fast animations" options is hidden between the keybindings. Another bizarre choice is having XCV and T as the most commonly used keys (aside from Space). Worse still, these bindings aren't shown in-game so you have to find them first and then remember them. The game also lacks a simple "skip" option for story elements, despite apparently requiring you to replay missions often.

No autoturn

In addition, the game will constantly prompt you to act when you can't act. You're immobilised and you can't move or attack? Manually select those options on the cards and click "skip". No enemies to attack or push? Manually click skip. End of the turn and you have no potions? Manually click "end turn". It would be so easy to fix this. Now the game is slowed to a crawl. Even the first mission took me over 70+ minutes to finish.

Don't time me, bro

As i explained in the intro, actions are all tied to cards. What might surprise anyone who has ever played a turn-based game, is that this goes for non-combat movement too. As annoying as that seems, especially for classes with few Movement 3+ cards, it's even worse than you think. Cards can only used once before they are discarded. To regain discarded cards you have to rest. Resting requires burning cards - removing them from the game. Some stronger actions burn cards right away. This game puts you on a timer. The first time i lost because my team just ran out of cards and got exhausted. Timers are bad enough in other games but i especially hate them in turn-based games.

The long game

Over 3 hours in i've only completed a single mission. And that was on the easiest difficulty. From what i understand there are some serious difficulty bumps that require you to replay missions to grind gold and stuff. Eventually, after enough grinding, you get slightly stronger. I cannot imagine the amount of patience required.

Conclusion

This is an excruciatingly slow game where you have to even plan your non-combat movement in advance because you've got a limited amount of actions for no good reason. While the actual combat is pretty good, i can't deal with turn limits and terrible interfaces.

For context, I write this review after achieving 100% of achievements on Steam (meaning completing much of the main campaign, pretty much all of the Jaws of the Lion expansion other than mutually exclusive missions, and all of the Guildmaster mode's non-repeating missions) which took me 380 hours, including significant time playing in campaigns with friends. Additionally, I own Gloomhaven and Jaws of the Lion in physical board game format. I never finished JotL in physical, but I've pretty much played the base game to 100%, completing every personal quest and every single scenario that wasn't locked out by campaign choices, maxing every class to 9, and even exhausting all of the city and road events until there were just repeats left. I certainly didn't time all that but given the game takes a considerable amount of time to set up, I doubt it was less than 200-300 hours, all told, if not 400-500. Thankfully, this review only took half that long to write!

And yet, while unsurprisingly I on balance really like the game, I do have my qualms with it. As the above indicates, one thing I can certainly say about Gloomhaven in its favor is that there is no shortage of content. Even with all of the above, the digital version has solo missions that I didn't even bother with and within the last year, the physical version of the sequel, Frosthaven, released, which as I understand it is like 1.5X as big of a game (though I honestly haven't looked into it much). If you're the type who has no interest in a game that's going to give you less than 100 hours of playtime, have no fear, there's plenty.

However, while the game is able to boast impressive stats regarding its content, there is a point where the aim for quantity overtook quality. In the base game especially, the missions can get extremely repetitive in format. Just about every map has some quirk either in layout or enemy grouping or with a special scenario effect, but of the 95 scenarios in the base game, without doing any actual research, I'd guess at the very least, 75% of those the win condition is "Kill all enemies in all rooms." And it's honestly probably closer to 85-90%. To be fair, some of the worst balanced scenarios are when the game deviates from this formula, but it is still a little frustrating for a game that has so much creativity to feel like a hefty chunk of its scenario pool is a bit lazily designed at times. This may also be lightened by the fact that most people don't really need to play near every map, many of them are branching paths on the main quest, others are entirely side content, and a good number are specific to certain personal quests. So you could certainly play the entire campaign while only doing maybe half of the scenarios. I also think Jaws of the Lion, while a significantly shorter campaign, does a much better job of this with a variety of mission parameters and only one of them is clearly improperly balanced that I noticed.

One of the main things Gloomhaven is known for other than its massive library of content is that it is punishingly difficult. There is definitely RNG involved, but it is a heavily strategic game that requires learning the ins and outs of your classes as well as the enemy types and their various capabilities. While I find the difficulty is generally at a really good place of very challenging, but fair and doable, there are certainly some scenarios that feel heavily imbalanced. This is especially so in Guildmaster mode which was clearly a very thrown together game mode utilizing the base game's random scenario generator. One mission would be a breeze and the next would require you to exploit the most overpowered abilities at your disposal just to skirt by with significant luck. This is only somewhat forgivable to me due to the fact Guildmaster is clearly a mode put together to troubleshoot and develop the digital version, rather than as a replacement for the main game. Further, there are several difficulty settings, including a casual mode that makes most any scenario a walk in the park. A few enemy types also seem clearly broken for how they're employed and I was disappointed to see the recent second edition errata didn't fix basically any of it. Still, the bulk of the game is very fun with its challenge and victory feels well-earned and rewarding. I will also note that the title of this review is a reference to the catch phrase my friends and I would use every time something really bullshit happened in a session.

I will also caveat that the game definitely gets significantly easier as you go. I don't want to get into the details too much, but your d20-like RNG to determine how well you hit is based on a deck of attack modifiers and at the start it's pretty balanced with good and bad modifiers, weighted to a neutral +0 average. But when you level or get perk points, you get perks individualized to your class that remove/replace bad modifiers and give you good modifiers, so by level 4 or 5, you can have a much more dependable RNG and once you raise your prosperity level by completing quests, your characters will start at higher levels and with additional perks so even new characters don't have the struggle of such a crappy mod deck, which makes a huge difference in consistency and strategy when your big attacks are unlikely to totally whiff when you really need them.

While I could rant all day about the various mechanics, one of the last main things I'd like to note is that the base game features 17 classes, 6 of which you start with, and the rest unlockable through completing your character's personal quests that are relevant to the unlocked class. The community is extremely strict about spoilers, so I'll be vague about the unlockables but I find the classes in Gloomhaven are very fun and varied, each capable of 2 or 3 different play styles that each feel unique and, for the most part, viable. There are certainly classes I think are significantly weaker or significantly stronger (of the initial 6, tinkerer may be the weakest class in the game whereas Cragheart and Mindthief may make top 5 or so strongest of the entire pool), none of them feel useless and I thoroughly enjoyed playing with each of them. Jaws of the Lion also adds 4 new classes and while comparing their strengths when I played them on very different scenarios for that campaign is difficult, I think design-wise, they were even a step above the classes in the base game when it comes to just being fun and unique. A huge pull of Gloomhaven is unlocking and exploring new classes and this is one reason the community is so adamant about spoiler tags, because it's widely accepted that some of the initial excitement is when you unlock a new bad ass class and get to explore everything it can do.

Most of the above could be said about the physical or digital versions of the game and that's because in a lot of ways, this digital version is a pretty faithful recreation of the same experience so commenting on the board game is sufficient. However, I will note a few things about this adaptation. For one, the Guildmaster mode is a pretty big variation on the game with tons of new content not in the board game. Personally, I felt this was the weakest content and again, I think it was mostly thrown together to playtest the digital version, but it does have some features that I like more than the base game. Aside from extra content, the digital version is mostly very faithful and a good adaptation of the rules, which is significant for a game that has so much variation and some pretty complicated rule sets. I have noticed a few things that I think are glitches because they don't align with any reading of the rules I can make, at present the biggest one being that in the current build, a monster that has an ability that taps an element is allowing all monsters of that type to tap that element when it should just be the first one who uses it up. This isn't always that bad but with a certain enemy type can mean your entire party loses their turn due to a glitch, which is awful, though most of the game works well.

The presentation of the game is okay. For a game made in the last few years, the graphics are on the low side and can be a bit visually glitchy at times, but I found them functional for portraying the board game setup while still managing to add some colorful scenery the tiles of the physical game lack by practical necessity. Another massive advantage is that each scenario of the board game, even if you leave out your character mats on the table, can take a good 30 mins to an hour to set up, even if you're quite practiced at it. It's a fun game but that got extremely exhausting and it's so nice having the digital just do all that with a quick loading screen. There's also the benefit that the game does interpret the rules for you so you don't have to look up much. I even learned a few minor rules I was doing wrong from playing it. As a last significant plus, the digital version is tremendously cheaper than buying the board game. At present, the main game is $35 (all prices here are in US$) which may seem a little steep for a game that's admittedly not all that impressive graphically. However the physical version of the base game is going to run you closer to $110, maybe $80 if it's on a good sale, but you'll also likely need a box sorter (I'm NOT kidding) if you want the sorting and setup/teardown to be at all efficient and that can run anywhere from $40 for a crappy one to $80-100 for a more adequate one . The only major downside is that the tactile feel of the physical board game is admittedly very nice and despite the expense, it's a very nicely made game with minis for each class you can paint if that's your thing.

My on balance feelings toward Gloomhaven are surprisingly mixed for a game I've sunk so much time into. I think my recent experience makes me feel more like 4 stars as while I never was exactly "tired" of it, the novelty certainly wore off after so long. I wasn't forcing myself to play through the last 150 hours by any means, but it felt far more like something to just do for a bit for a break from other things rather than the excitement I got in the initial playthrough. However, for this review, I have to keep in mind that initial excitement and addiction, which was rather significant and consuming. Given that, I think I'd be lying if I gave Gloomhaven less than 5 stars. My biggest recommendation is that honestly, you really don't need to see all the content the game has to offer. It is a long haul game, but you could get plenty out of it without playing it for like 700 hours or whatever.

You know how dungeon adventuring would be better: what if you could only do a tiny subset of things? What if it was controlled by a weird card mechanic? What if, when you ran out of cards, you just crumbled into dust? Doesn't that sound fun?

Got this free on epic, gave it a try with friends. Tried the first entry level battle on easy - must be simple right? Well, first room of baddies we took. Second room, okay fine. Then we started crumbling to dust. Then we found a third room, and had no cards left because half of us were dust despite having full health.

Doesn't seem like they put any effort to ramping up the user experience and helping people to understand or enjoy the game.

I started getting into board games recently and heard about raving reviews about the Gloomhaven board game. Found out that it was free on Epic so decided to give it whirl... I don't think this game is very good... at all.

Gloomhaven is a card based tactical dungeon crawler. There are two modes, the Guildmaster mode and the Campaign mode. The Guildmaster mode is a more free form mode with less strict rules and randomized encounters, while the Campaign mode is identical to the board game's campaign. I decided to play the Campaign mode to get the "authentic" Gloomhaven experience.

The game is extremely complex, deep and tactical. It's the kind of game you can spend hours figuring out the best builds and character synergies. It's also extremely difficult, and I could not even complete the first mission on Normal difficulty until the fourth try. To say the least, this is a tough game that requires near-perfect play just to beat even the first few levels.

There are many aspects that will drive players mad such as...

• Each character is limited to 9-12 cards. Once all of those cards are burned, that character is exhausted and dies. You are always forced to play optimally and aggressively or risk losing by exhaustion. Depending on the mission objectives, if one character is exhausted the whole mission is over. It doesn’t help that each character must use two cards per turn and there are numerous occasions where you will spend one card to move the characters and do absolutely nothing with the other card.
• Each character has a goal. Once they reach their goal, they retire. They don't leave any gold, items or experience for your other characters so it feels wasteful spending all this time figuring out the perfect build for your character only for them to permanently go away. The only benefit is when a character retires it unlocks a new character
• The modifiers are just plain bullshit. Modifiers can increase/decrease or completely nullify your attacks. Ex: Having the Brute use “Overwhelming Assault”, which deals 6 damage and having it do 0 damage because of RNG. There are ways to mitigate the modifiers, by gaining Perks, but Perks are only available after you successfully finish an encounter or level up.
• The random encounters range from beneficial to completely irritating. Each time your crew ventures out of Gloomhaven, there is an encounter. These encounters have you choose from two decisions that can affect your whole party. Some of these encounters are devastating like wounding your whole party or forcing them to discard two cards before the mission begins.
• I think some missions are impossible to complete with two characters, especially if you choose characters with limited movement options like the Brute and Spellweaver

Once you get over the difficulty hump of roughly 20 hours, Gloomhaven becomes more palatable. Rolling with a crew of 3 high level characters, it becomes quite simple to crush through missions. At this point, I lost interest in playing any further. There isn’t much of a story and the only incentive to keep playing is to unlock new characters. The novelty of using a new character is fun at first, but then there is the dread of spending the time and effort figuring out the new character and losing a lot of missions along the way.