It’s a fine game. I somehow managed to play through the first adventure set of three scenarios included with the game – twice, with different character sets – before I wanted to move on to the next set of adventures, the Dunwich Legacy. That’s a lot of gameplay for $35, and a chance to then decide whether you dig it or you don’t, and whether you want to buy more…or just want to sell it or give it away and move to something else.
And the intentionally failing each mission thing is weird. As charmtrap notes, you may fail a mission…but it’s rarely campaign-ending. This ain’t Chutes and Ladders. This is Lovecraft. Failure and worst-case scenarios are what’s supposed to happen! And no one’s keeping score, either. I mean, I guess if you’re an inveterate min-maxer this may be something to struggle with, but…don’t be that guy.
And if you find that you’re getting your ass kicked, the game makes it very easy to adjust the difficulty with the omens in the bag.
This – more than any other Lovecraftian boardgame that I’ve played (I’ve not played Study in Emerald, sadly) – gets the atmosphere, theme, and storytelling aspects right. I find the gameplay mechanics to be clever, but it never feels like someone’s stapled a theme onto some mechanics. Rather, they work well in concert together.
Here, we even have an Arkham Horror LCG thread going: