GLOOMHAVEN

In the old days, when we were still children and technology hadn't advanced enough to create wonderful digital worlds full of adventure, board games were the outlet for our imagination. Gloomhaven, in its original form a quality tabletop RPG, follows our modern habits and is now available in digital form for the dastardly adventurers who want to explore its dungeons in search of gold and glory.

At its core, Gloomhaven is a party-based tactical RPG that can be played either singleplayer or in co-op with 2-4 players. The game includes a full and extensive campaign, additional modes and support for modding, multiple difficulty levels, many different classes to try out and corresponding skills to develop as you wish. At least in terms of content we have no complaints, Gloomhaven is a rich package that is guaranteed to provide dozens, maybe even hundreds of hours of gameplay. The key question we'll be asking is whether the gameplay of the board game translates just as successfully into the format of a video game.

So let's answer immediately: Yes, turning Gloomhaven into a PC game was almost entirely successful. The only substantive complaint I had during my time with the game was the occasionally clunky interface that sometimes went overboard asking for confirmation for even the most common actions when it could have undergone some streamlining to ask for fewer clicks and speed up the action. Otherwise the mix of RPG and choose your own adventure elements with tactical turn-based battles works so smoothly that it doesn't at any point betray the game's origins as a board game.

In the overworld of Gloomhaven you will have the opportunity to customize your characters' equipment and skills, buy items from the local shop and complete certain quests that progress in a visual novel/choose your own adventure style, i.e. with a short written description of the event and a choice between the resolution methods offered. The outcome of these quests is not decisive for the success of the main missions but may make your life a bit easier or harder depending on the outcome, giving you some useful reward or imposing some debuff. The meat of Gloomhaven, however, lies in the individual missions you'll have to complete by showing off your tactical skills in turn-based battles.

So it's time for battle! Successful completion of a mission depends very much on the wise management of your team's skills and the correct assessment of the battlefield and the strength of your opponents. The skills available to each character are represented by cards that have two different possible actions on their face. Each round you select two cards and at the end of the round the cards used are marked as discarded, so they cannot be used again until you rest. Unfortunately, however, resting permanently "burns" a card until the end of the scenario and if you run out of cards the character becomes exhausted and drops out of combat! Card management is the key to success in Gloomhaven because you need to make sure you get the most out of each card every time and select it for use in the right situation. The truth is that it will probably take you some time to fully understand the details of the combat system and get a feel for the usefulness and proper timing of each card, so prepare yourself mentally for quite a few missteps at first. Even on the lowest difficulty level, enemies don't mess around!

So this is Gloomhaven, a tabletop tactical RPG with light role-playing elements and an emphasis on dungeon exploration and tactical turn-based combat, which has been transferred to digital form with great care and attention. Obviously it can't be compared to huge Witcher 3-type RPGs, it doesn't aspire to that anyway. What it does seek to offer, the gaming experience of a classic tabletop board game for one or more players, it achieves in an almost flawless way. The slightly cumbersome interface and the high degree of difficulty until you become familiar with the combat system are the only flaws worth mentioning in an otherwise excellent package.

A second opinion - Pavlos Geranios

Painful. That is in a single word the description of one's first engagement with Gloomhaven, the showcase board game of the last five years. The game that managed to break the (already counted on the fingers of one hand) consistent D&D groups to devote themselves exclusively to it. The combination of card management with RPG elements, the existence of dungeon crawling, and all of this framed by the "Legacy" mechanic catapulted Gloomhaven consistently to the top of BoardGameGeek's preferences. Placing a heavy emphasis on the gravity of any decision either in random encounters or during combat, Gloomhaven is a tough challenge for even the most accomplished players. The "puzzles" of the battle grid and resource management (i.e. cards) are formidable foes in every round of combat.

As already mentioned by Alexandros, the adaptation of Gloomhaven to our screens is considered highly successful. Having followed somewhat tangentially the development of the game since it first came out in Early Access I was impressed by how well-designed the final version is. I personally found the UI quite friendly and fully explanatory. Its tutorial is very well thought out and introduces the player perfectly with increasing difficulty and progression. Having played a few sessions with the board game, I can say with certainty that the work done to introduce even the most uninitiated to the philosophy of its mechanics is exemplary.

But the star of the show is in the campaign: the success of digital Gloomhaven lies in the fact that you don't need to have a team to play with regularly. Having all the scenarios of the board game you can fearlessly plunge into its dungeons. Quite difficult (hence the "painful experience"), already from the first dungeons, you will feel the immense satisfaction of coming out - relatively - unscathed having fulfilled your goal. Of course the setting is appropriate and "fits" perfectly into a digital form, i.e. it's not a board game that dramatically loses in feeling and experience when your teammates are absent (which is of course covered since we can meet online!). Rest assured that fully completing the campaign is not a trivial task, but we're looking at a three-digit amount of gameplay hours! That's until its super-successful board game sequel (it's already reached millions of dollars in pre-sales on Kickstarter), Frosthaven.