Gloomhaven – the game with multiple game-of-the-year awards from several prominent board game reviewing websites, is amazing for most people. Gloomhaven allows a World Of Warcraft feel from a
board game where you grow your character through scenarios and an ever-changing world/game layout. The game box weighs over 20 pounds and has many different cardboard printed rooms, plastic game pieces, and several cards you use throughout the various scenarios and game setups. The game is guaranteed to keep you entertained for hours with complex scenarios in which you battle various in-game monsters, with special movement mechanics, to collect resources and grow your character.
So, what is the issue if Gloomhaven is so great? Well, for starters, everything that makes it great kind of… makes it not. For one thing, the board game weighs over 20 pounds if you did not catch that before! It is not a game that you easily travel with to game board clubs or other events. With between an hour and two hours of gameplay for one scenario, you will have to invest weeks into gameplay to get through all the scenarios.
That is, if you can figure out how to play the game. The rules are in wire-bound booklets because they are so thick. Do you want to use a YouTube video to learn the game rather than read it? Prepare for a 25-minute lecture where you hope to grasp the game concepts. Have a question about the gameplay after watching – you almost have to use an appendix to look up the answer in those books. There was a lot of frustration having a small group play and not fully grasping how the in-game mechanics work.
While you can play this game by yourself, you have to have someone invested in playing with you. You have to teach the game, which likely takes a half-hour, then play two hours through a scenario, and then hopefully have those same people play with you again to take advantage of character development. Unfortunately for my group – we lost! The game beat us! My party members (two people plus myself) lost against scenario 1. Two hours down, and cannot even say that we at least progressed onward. The rules may allow for defeats, and I could be wrong, but we have to redo scenario 1, which takes another hour or two.
Gloomhaven is probably a great game for those “mega” board gamers. It was definitely not for the casual gamer who dislikes complex rules and long scenarios with the possibility of
losing. While full of customizability and thought-out scenarios, it was too big for a casual gamer who wants to have fun quickly like me.
If you are a big board game gamer or think my opinion is way off, you can purchase Gloomhaven from Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LZXVN4P/ref=nosim?tag=DSLASHGAMING-20 – As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases
