Gloomhaven board game review: "The ultimate tabletop dungeon-crawler" - lemenmaress61

Our Verdict

This is the titan champion of co-op tabletop dungeon-crawling. Nothing other compares.

Pros

Joyfully designed combats
An plethora of scenarios
Implausibly, shockingly long

Cons

Incredibly, shockingly long
Needs second apartment for game box
Seriously, it weighs more than than most infants

GamesRadar+ Verdict

This is the heavyweight champion of cooperative tabletop dungeon-creep. Nothing else compares.

Pros

+
Gleefully designed combats
+
An embarrassment of scenarios
+
Incredibly, shockingly long

Cons

-
Incredibly, shockingly long
-
Needs second flat for lame box
-
Seriously, it weighs more than most infants

Gloomhaven is a board game that takes a year or more to complete. But you shouldn't let that put you off. To be frank, I don't mean you even have to clos Gloomhaven to enjoy it. The joy lies in the journey. Therein way, it has much in common with the best tabletop RPGs than the best get on games.

For extraordinary, this is a dealbreaker. Why would you play a limited-scope board back when you could craft your own characters and stories in the best Dungeons and Dragons books? For others, that's the solicitation. Gloomhaven is a few hundred hours of tabletop fantasy that doesn't require the body or commitment of TRPGs.

Get rolling

This add-in game sits someplace 'tween an anile Fighting Fantasy book and a 200-hour RPG like Skyrim; it's a keep-crawling adventure with a branching story, loot to plunder, and permanent bonuses to unlock as you search the gritty world in and around Gloomhaven metropolis. Atomic number 3 that would paint a picture, its greatest strength lies in the rules around exploring and fighting. These encounters force players to make consistently interesting choices around how to use their quality's abilities for best event.

To Gloomhaven's credit, it does all of this without the frustrating stochasticity of dice-founded fights - you rely on power cards instead. These are very simple but healthy-equal, and attack values generally stick to nice low-level numbers from one to five. It's easy pure mathematics that speeds up gameplay kinda than die rolls that can tank an whole scenario impartial because someone's got bad luck that week.

Because players are pleased to keep what they'atomic number 75 planning to do with them a secret (which speeds up fighting and helps stop populate from telling others what to brawl), the tradeoffs you'rhenium forced to make for each one turn are some of the well-nig gratifyingly insensitive board game choices I've ever come over. Since you assume't know what your allies and enemies have planned until everyone has chosen, you've got to outguess all decision in a sea of plan of action possibilities. Do you need to move and attack this round? What if someone else takes out that enemy first? Should you get greedy and loot alternatively?

Plus, movement is just American Samoa important as attack. Gloomhaven's scenarios are very positional; you always wishing to be in the right place at the right time, be it near enough to lure enemies into a trap or to pick up some treasure they'll unload when they're defeated. Yet, this also means that you can ne'er quite get everything you neediness in your turn. Specially one time you start trying to use Loot cards to exact items from dead monsters, and doubly so when your fellow adventurers reason Chaos by moving monsters before you've level gotten to behave.

Entry-level

Those interested in the pun but WHO Don River't want to take the rumbling absorb can check out Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion, a simpler version with its own unique scenario book. That'll let you know much faster if you enjoy how Gloomhaven's incomparable, card-settled combat plays out.

And friend, your fellow adventurers will do vindicatory as untold chaos as the monsters. Trust me when I say that this is one of the funniest, most enjoyable things in Gloomhaven. I laughed at the unfortunate choices others had made, or the frightening fix I'd gotten myself in, sensible as much equally I shouted in triumph when I claimed treasures or killed five monsters at once.

What we're left with is a brain burning enjoy. This is an action saving game par excellency - one and only where how much you can get done is as important as what you can get done. Indeed, Gloomhaven power just be the tightest action economy game I've ever played. Some fights feel like every calling card is a vital alteration to the stakes of the scenario.

Your party ventures forth

Speaking of stakes, this is technically a legacy-style game - one where choices have permanent effects. That's because a session of Gloomhaven starts with you picking a scenario from one of 60-advantageous missions that unlock over time. Unless you're trying casual mode (which offers money and experience but lacks imperishable consequences), these combine into a large campaign that changes the overall state of your world. Since some missions can buzz off locked out by choosing or completing others, casual way is the only 'canonical' way to experience every scenario. This helps make your game feel more personal.

Especially due to the fact that each adventure starts with a random event offer choices with rewards or penalties. Say you find some brain dead priests on the moving. Behave you fora the bodies, or hand them straight-laced burials? You mightiness get prize and a curse from one option, Oregon a blessing from the early. These add bonus and penalty card game to your deck for the coming scenario.

The encounters are shaken up still more by the game's variety of adventurers. Gloomhaven's characters are a diverse lot, ranging crosswise many fantasy archetypes. None of them are quite an likewise. The Mindthief specializes in illusions and guile, for example, while the Cragheart is a iconoclastic fighter WHO can change the layout of the battlefield but risks catching allies in its splash-damage attacks. Personally, I was a huge fan of the Spellweaver; this character uses elemental effect tokens generated by its own and allies' abilities to lay out huge and devastating personal effects, simply they'atomic number 75 extremely fragile compared to others.

Frankly, I could go along and on some those classes; they're where the most interesting binge in Gloomhaven comes from. All unrivalled is chock-rumbling of complicated power kinetics that still fit within the simple rules of Gloomhaven's attack, locomote, buff, or rifle spectrum, and things get even out wilder every bit you unlock the gimpy's 11 separate classes. This broadens the possibilities on the far side anything I'd guessed at to include summoned pets, unhealthful debuffs, and push-your-luck self damage.

Because Gloomhaven allows you to customize these characters via items, perks, and Enchantment (which lets you spend gold to MBD perm increases to a card with a sticker), no cardinal versions wish be the comparable either. Namely, you can custom-make your hero towards a fated combo or tailor yourself for specific enemies. Active piles of skeletons? Need that armor-piercing card with you.

The bequest mechanics help to keep things fresh

Thither are as wel ways to undergo bonus perks, which I loved, past fulfilling randomly-dealt Battle Goals during each scenario. Things alike 'kill five monsters' or 'gain sevener or fewer experience' are great causes of harmless inter-party conflict as players are forced to act egotistically to maximize their benefit.

You can start new characters fair oftentimes as fit; each hero has their own personal call for to fulfill, after which they retire. This is a delightful part of Gloomhaven, because it broadly unlocks a new class surgery encourages someone to try out a refreshing style of play. That counters the fatigue of playing the same thing night afterwards night for a year.

Leaving a bequest

The legacy mechanics help to keep things fresh, too, but this is where things become shakier. Gloomhaven is Sir Thomas More about those military science battles than the unravelling of mysteries or popping undecided boxes for new game mechanics. That's not to say in that location isn't box-popping to be done, of course; there is, and information technology's fun. But information technology's not a constant sport of the game. The only consistent new stuff would atomic number 4 the bits of narrative you bring out as you exhaust a dungeon surgery region of the world.

Although these stories are now and then exciting, IT's a weaker part of the experience overall. Having played the entire campaign, I can only loosely remember unshared tales that unfold in the name city. In fact, characters solely stood out because they became the butt of jokes around the table. "It's this same merchandiser again, isn't it?" someone would say. "I'm starting to think this ridicule hires bandits and pirates himself to collect the insurance money."

I'm destined there are more or less that enjoy the fancy stories told here, and I was always glad for the communicative framework holding fights together, but countertenor literature this ain't.

What's more, disdain missions existence given smorgasbord with their personal layout of dungeon tiles and enemies, most are just about clearing enemies, surviving attacks, or retrieving treasure. Sometimes you can complete them very easily, excessively - it's not hard for an invisible Scoundrel to just unravel in and grab the treasure chest to win.

I john recommend it for the adroit, fantabulous, and genuinely refreshing gameplay

Nevertheless, these scenarios are every designed to scale with the level of your party, and it's nice that they're genuinely nonlinear. In my testing, there was only if a single instance where we could choose just one foreign mission.

I can buoy't recommend climax to Gloomhaven for its plot as a result, and in that location are some some other board games operating theater RPGs that coif it punter. But I can recommend it for the clever, excellent, and genuinely refreshing gameplay.

Overall - should you buy Gloomhaven?

That's a lot to take in - Gloomhaven is a huge game, some literally and physically. Still, I look bound to repeat that I think it's a biz you can never finish and still dear. You don't have to finish every adventure to get the most stunned of it, either.

Yes, Gloomhaven is at long las a niche gamy despite its broad invoke and overwhelming popularity. It's an exercise in dungeon tactics, clever combos, and character building, meaning it's not a game that everyone will enjoy. I love it though, and it's unequivocally the best at what it does.

Gloomhaven

This is the whale protagonist of co-op tabletop keep-creep. Nothing else compares.