You wanna play a game?
I knew about Flaming Foul studios from their first game the now delisted Fable Fortune. It took the whimsical world of the Fable games and turned it into a CCG. Personally, I thought it was brilliant but alas it wasn’t to be and ended too soon. Their next game is the one that the studio is known for and that is Gloomhaven. Gloomhaven the video game is based on Gloomhaven the board game. While I enjoy playing board games, I never got around to playing Gloomhaven, despite having an interest personally I don’t have enough friends who want to play long board game sessions sadly. Which is why I was so excited to hear about the video game version, the PC version came out a few years but now we have the console release and well… read on.
As I said Gloomhaven is based on the board game of the same name, and based on what I have read and seen from fans of both it is an almost exact 1:1 match which should excite fans. I was excited as well upon booting up the Xbox version, but that excitement soon led to crossed eyes and me weeping in a corner; you see Gloomhaven is a deep, deep, DEEP game. It has layers of complexity and approaches with its various playable mercenaries and many cards.
MSRP: $34.99
Platforms: Xbox (reviewed), PlayStation, Switch, PC
Price I’d Pay: $29.99
The story of Gloomhaven is made up of events in quests instead of having a clear or linear narrative. Players have many quests simultaneously, so they are given the freedom to choose which quests to undertake, with their decisions affecting how the game unfolds. When players start, they select their mercenaries and whatever their aim is that motivates their adventuring, once players complete the mission be it accumulating an amount of gold or killing a certain boss they will retire, and a new class will unlock.
Gloomhaven’s classes are really interesting even if it was quite bit to take in. Each mercenary comes with 30 unique cards, making each class play differently since they have diverse strengths and stats. Players choose from two to four mercenaries for their party: more party members, more enemies in each dungeon. To be victorious, players need to complete each scenario’s main objective. Mercenaries gain new cards as they level up and players can choose which ones to include in their decks. Cards can be enhanced to make them more powerful or add a status effect to them and players can use items that they purchase in game to power up their mercenaries.
At the beginning of the round players need to choose two cards for each character. Cards have two abilities on them, one on the top and the other the bottom. If players choose the ability on the top of one card, they can only use the bottom ability of the other card and vice versa. Some abilities have a mark on the card that shows it will be taken out of the game upon use, whereas others will simply be discarded; discarded cards can be recovered after a long rest, similarly to how spell slots are revealed in D&D. Every mercenary has a deck of attack modifiers, with players able to spend Perk Points to improve them. In addition, there are status effects such as stun, poison, and immobilize that are also crucial for strategy.
Dungeons are divided into a grid, which includes obstacles, traps, and doors. Line of sight is in effect here meaning doors will need to be opened to see what is behind them and things happening outside of the players’ view will be invisible to them. Layouts are randomly generated as well as the enemies which means that players will be in for a new experience every time. The randomly generated dungeons as well as the voiceover and music is a welcome addition and improvement from the boardgame which obviously wouldn’t come with all those ‘bells and whistles’.
Gloomhaven was a tough one to review not because the game itself is bad, despite feeling clunky to navigate using a controller; no, it’s just after playing for many hours I realized that it’s just not for me. Its systems are deep and allow some great tactical plays to happen. The game allows for players to enjoy with four of their friends but much to my chagrin it doesn’t have a quickmatch function; so sadly, I was playing solo. I think with friends this would be more fun, just like playing a session of D&D is more of a blast with friends. I would recommend this version for those like me who were intrigued with the board game but just know that Gloomhaven is not for the timid.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.
