I bought it, played the beginner scenario a couple of times.
I thought it captured the feel of the board game well.
Perhaps too well.
The board game is pretty clunky in some Regards but the physical action of choosing your cards etc is quite fast when done by a human.
With the computer versión there is ALOT of clicking for basic actions, which means repeated in every round.
Choose your 2 cards for your first hero, repeat for your second hero, click to start round, click to use cards and action them (attacks, movement) then click to end round.
I’ve been spoilt on much more intuitive movement and ability systems like Aow3 or xcom tactical battles where you click your unit and just click the destination to move it.
Not click unit, click movement ability, click destination, click to confirm movement or skip remaining movement.
Yes, Gloomhaven is a game about carefully managing the use of your cards, balancing the benefit of using them in a situation vs. knowing you need to finish your objective before running out. :-)
Well I like the board game, as do many, but I see no point in an SP digital version. If they MP it, I will certainly try. I heard rumor that MP is on the horizon.
I mean, I highly recommend some form of the game but whether the digital version will deliver a comparable experience in the long run is impossible to say now. And it certainly doesn’t yet. Also, it heavily depends on who you would play it with, etc. I personally feel any boardgame played solo is going to be a better experience in a 1:1 digital version because there’s no setup and teardown to introduce massive friction and the computer will make sure you don’t fuck up the rules. But conversely, a digital boardgame is never going to replicate the tabletop experience with friends, even if you can get those friends to play one with you online, which I guarantee wouldn’t happen with my local friends. (And of course, playing a physical tabletop game with someone who isn’t local to you is impractical at best.)
After playing the digital version a bit last night, it’s still got a way to go. It’s very much what you’d expect from an early access game.
It’s not going to replace my weekly group game playing the physical version, but it’s certainly going to be a go-to for solo, or in the far future where multiplayer and the campaign is done, for me and my wife to play through.
Personally if I would be playing solo and if the digital version ends up implemented well I’d play the digital version. The digital version will also have the roguelike mode too. I think it was said upthread that the digital version won’t be complete for at least 9 months, so it depends if you are OK waiting. I’d prefer not having to do setup.
That said, my wife and I have had a ton of fun with the physical version.
It’s an interesting and unusual combination to me. At the tactical level you face constant enervation, while at the strategic level you wax stronger. It appeals to me personally, but I can definitely see how some folks wouldn’t like it.
Tabletop Simulator has a pretty good mod for this. I have not actually played with friends yet (I intend to soon) but I’ve played around with it and it seems solid. A lot of the fiddling with cards and such has been scripted, so combat is pretty smooth. It takes some trial and error to figure out how everything works, but if you’re familiar with the game it’s pretty intuitive.
My wife and I made it until the end after our pace of play drastically slowed. We had beaten the main baddy a while ago, but we overlooked that we were supposed to be reading that town journal at certain points during our progress.
Overall it’s a great game. The highlight is definitely the battle system. The variety in how the characters play is very good and some have some really fun abilities. I’ve never played a game of this kind before and I just love how the whole thing works, like the rules for how the enemies behave.
Where it did flounder a bit is in the story telling and scenario paths. We made it to the mission vs the final baddy without really realizing it until it was happening, then was like - that’s pretty anticlimatic.
We played using the standard difficulty level rules and as a whole the game wasn’t that difficult. There were some scenarios that were quite hard and we failed a time or two. The final one (from the town journal) was great and we barely scraped by. We thought we didn’t have any chance but pressed forward anyway and we got the win. I was on my last turn of cards and had been low on health for a while. My wife only had another turn or two.
Also, we didn’t unlock that many classes because we only retired 3 I think. So, there are a lot of classes we didn’t try. We will be starting the expansion the next time we play. I think after that we will be ready to play something else for a while, but eventually I want to return to this to play with more characters.
I’m not sure if we will:
Just go through the scenarios and play to try out more character classes.
Start a new campaign and just keep track of progress in a notebook since we wrote on the map and book.
Try out the random dungeons.
Any idea what you guys will do?
Also, anyone have any game recommendations for people that like Gloomhaven?
There is no other game that provides the full Gloomhaven package, but:
Mage Knight has similarly satisfying optimal-use-of-hand puzzling and powering up (albeit takes forever to play).
Sword & Sorcery has been pretty fun campaign-based dungeon crawling so far but is not as deep as Gloomhaven and much more expensive.
Descent and Imperial Assault may be worth a look when played with the coop app (but I haven’t). I did not like the base game one-vs-many experience with Descent, and while Imperial Assault was better it’s still kinda unbalanced in that mold.
The Arkham Horror LCG offers quite well done horror-based story campaigns (albeit expensively and with limited replay and the requirement to build decks to play).
For uniquely asymmetric characters, I am told Champions of Hara and Too Many Bones shine, but I haven’t gotten the former to table yet and the latter hasn’t arrived yet.
For general fantasy adventuring, exploring, and powering up I adore both volumes of Hexplore It released to date and highly look forward to the third volume that was just Kickstarted.
I just generally recommend Darkest Night as a really satisfying fantasy guerilla warfare coop.
