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Post by Zguy on Oct 16, 2012 10:52:53 GMT -5
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Post by lordgersh on Oct 20, 2012 10:34:53 GMT -5
Short version: I'm not buying it anytime soon.
Longer version:
Don't get me wrong, I've heard good things about this game, and the basic premise is pretty entertaining: an empire and resource management game in a D&D-style a la Forgotten Realms shell. But I have a few problems with it:
1-I'm hurting my nerd cred here a little bit, but the most I've ever really gotten into the Forgotten Realms is playing Zhoran, a Swordmage, which is a character class out of the Forgotten Realms 4e handbook in a game based in Eberron. I've never read any of the Dark Elf books, never read any of the Elminster books, never immersed myself into the Underdark, Cormyr, Ten Towers or the like. That means that playing a game with that setting would not be nearly as fulfilling to me as playing, say Castle Ravenloft: a module which I ran once, and played in twice (and frankly, would love to run again). Speaking of...
2-Castle Ravenloft was the last D&D-style game published by Wizards of the Coast, and while I won't say I got burned by it, I will say that the game was something of a disappointment. What was promised by the game was an entertaining, cooperative one-hour dungeon crawl that was different every time, with well-balanced characters, high difficulty, and high replayability. What we got was an entertaining one-hour dungeon crawl that feels markedly the same every time, with an undeniable NEED for a cleric in every party, medium difficulty, with a high probability placed on dice. The atmosphere is nice, and the game is fun, but it was lacking the variety I really wanted. The problem was then compounded by a flat out reversal of two major selling points for the game:
A-That Wrath of Ashardalon would have characters that were different and interchangeable with the ones from Ravenloft
B-That additional scenarios utilizing one or both games would be available online to DND insiders.
Neither of those came true. Admittedly, while the Ashardalon characters were interchangable, there were not significantly different that the first ones. Yes, they had different powers, but it was Fighter/Cleric/Rogue/Ranger/Wizard vs Fighter/Cleric/Rogue/Paladin/Wizard... if it had been Paladin/Bard/Sorcerer/Barbarian/Druid (originally promised) that would have been a reason to think about purchasing Wrath. Double that if the next game released had Swordmage/Warlord/Warlock/Monk/Psion, but instead, they went for the Forgotten Realms angle again, and you can play as Drizzt...
3-With this skepticism I have because of reasons 1 and 2, I'm not going to be interested in this game until I play it. And I haven't played it.
4-I have too many other board games I'm interested in. I finally bought Pandemic (which, incidentally does everything that Ravenloft tried to do [in terms of difficulty, replayability, character balance] without the facade of Ravenloft) but I still have the following games on my list:
Small World (plus expansions)
Settlers (still don't have it)
Caracassone (plus expansions)
Clue (I love the original Clue!)
Red Dragon Inn 2 (and maybe 3)
Expansions to Dominion (1 down, 5 to go!)
In addition, I've heard good things about
San Juan
Battlestar Galactica Board Game
Axis and Allies Guadalcanal
plus a few others
So basically...
I'm not buying it anytime soon.
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Post by Zguy on Oct 21, 2012 13:18:08 GMT -5
I can understand all those points entirely, although I will make one comment about Ravenloft. The guy who posted this mentioned that he HATED Ravenloft, but he loves this game, so that might be a nice difference. Although he didn't mention his background with Forgotten Realms, so I really have no idea if he has read a lot of the books which may change his view of the game vs. others who haven't.
Thanks for the summary though. I'm not sure if I'll get the game - especially since I know very few people in the area who would be interested in playing.
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