Man, I did not want to be interested in that game. It’s expensive and bit of a shelf hog and I could do without both of those right now, but I’ve been obsessing over it since the kickstarter went up. At first glance it looks like another massive campaign game that goes on forever, like Frosthaven or Oathsworn or Aeon’s Creed Odyssey, and I also don’t need that. But instead this seems to be living up to the Monster Hunter comparisons in more ways than one.
What got my attention was that the campaign and town stuff is kept to a bare minimum in this game (there’s literally only one board for the entire game and it’s so simple you could recreate it with pencil and paper in about 15 seconds), which tells me that either it’s incomplete and rushed out the door or they’re so confident in the gameplay they’re happy to let you skip the conversations with the barmaid and the band of dwarves you meet on the road and just get to the good parts. From what I’ve seen it’s the latter, this game is as streamlined as it’s packaging is not.
From the playthroughs on youtube a session of Primal is going to be about 45 minutes and I really dig that. I don’t want to have people over for “Primal night” for months on end. You can actually have a game night, play some other stuff and cap the night off with a 45 minute dragon battle. That’s perfect. Also really digging the way the monster doesn’t get its own turn, but instead it reacts to the cards you are playing. That’s so cool! And kind of mimics the way you can eventually learn a monster’s tendencies in Monster Hunter and use them against it.
I’m also really impressed with the content of the core set and for the first time on a big Kickstarter I’m considering skipping the all in pledge. If I do pledge I’ll likely only get the cheapest of the four expansions since it adds 2 new character classes (for a total of 6). The base game already has 13 monsters (and one more that’s a kickstarter exclusive), you’ll likely fight each of them more than once, and then there’s a nightmare mode for each. So that seems like a ton of replayability. The other 3 expansions add a total of 6 new monsters for an extra $100 if you go all in or $150 bought separately. Plus it’ll save me 3 boxes of shelf space.
So yeah, I’m almost definitely in for some level of backing on this one. The minis add a lot to the cost and I get that’s not everyone’s bag, but I’m down for some cool minis and I may even try to paint some of them. Bonus side hobby!
