Prime opinioni:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/179202 ... ion-report
I picked the game up at Expo, and finally got a chance to sit down for my first game today. Too early for a proper review, but I'll post a brief overview of how it went and my thoughts.
I randomly selected race, class and sex and ended up with a female vampire assassin. Cool! The Abbess of Penance was the Big Bad.
My early turns were very tentative, and I was worried initially that the game was overly luck-based and swingy. With so few action points and the chance of all sorts of nasties lurking at locations, I felt very fragile during Chapter 1. I learned the hard way that mountains can be a very dangerous place for a newbie to go wandering! An early death sent me back to the Sprawl, cashless, to start over.
My opinion started to change as I got to grips with the mechanics and card distributions; mitigate risk by traveling hidden. Run from things you can't tackle. Avoid the most dangerous location types (mountains are full of nasty monsters!) until you have built up a bit.
The leveling up mechanic at chapter completion felt suitably rewarding. As the game went on I started to get an idea of pacing; at which points in the game should I be targeting chapter progression or asset collection, and where did the correct balance lie?
Before I knew it I had burned through the the four chapters, assassinated the evil Lord terrorising the locals and claimed my reward. I had a gang of bad-ass allies at my back, I was bristling with hard-core spells and fantasy hardware, and had accolades coming out of my ears. The people loved me! But the world was close to falling to the Gloom. Time to go and kick Ancient butt.
Even tooled up as I was it was a close run thing. With 4 Quests still out she started with 15 HP, but with only 3 Night cards left I wanted to go for it and leave myself some breathing room if things went south.
I started with a nova attack on the Abbess that got things off to a good start (my allies meant I had enough Study to cast the mighty Battle Elemental for a total of 13 attack dice in round 1). Then it was a war of attrition; I burned through gold (the Gold Baron level 4 skill soaked up 6 HP damage) and spells (Soothing Touch was essential towards the end) to keep myself alive. In the end with all resources burned I took the Abbess down with only 2 HP remaining. A close run thing, and a really exciting and satisfying climax to my first game.
The game probably took 2 hours or so all in. That was largely because I was constantly checking and re-checking the rulebook and taking my time. I think once all the rules are properly absorbed and strategies are established 45-60 minutes seems attainable.
After an uncertain start this grew and grew on me. An elegant system, it ticks the narrative/ storytelling box which is so essential to me, and it gave a tremendous feeling of growth; the character at the end was unrecognizable from the tentative weakling who started out on the quest.
Exceptional. More games required to score this properly, but massively enjoyable, a really epic story feel that I suspect will only get better as I play it more and the mechanics disappear with familiarity. Bravo, Tristan, on the strength of this one session I'd say you've knocked it out of the park.