Gloomhaven

After they updated the game to be compatible with MacOS a bug was introduced that made multiplayer semi-unplayable. Specifically when loading scenarios non-host players *sometimes* get stuck in the loading screen permanently and a full restart is required of the game. Subsequent patches were aimed at fixing this but the issue remains and online sources claiming to have identified the issue do not fix it. I love the game but the bug makes it a poor choice for multiplayer.

Honestly, game seems fun, but is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ unplayable. First round in with a friend I encountered the loading bug. Whatever, restarted game. Find out game is super difficult. That's fine, learning curves can be fun. We fail first attempt, run it back. Loading error again but still restart game and load back in to get past it. Now we encounter a bug where our characters can't move. In a game that is super difficult and will need multiple attempts to learn, bugs that slow you down turn the learning experience into a piss you off experience. Either fix the game or stop selling it you lazy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Refund requested.

A puzzle game in a fantasy RPG wrapper. Not as fiddly as tabletop, but still fiddly. If you enjoy complicated puzzles and and the fantasy genre, this is a fun one to try. You can play with friends too...if you have any.

"playable" on steam deck is extremely misleading with the frequency of crashing/amount of bugs

Hey, neat, Gloomhaven is on sale, I say to myself. Maybe this will be a good way to see if it is something I'd enjoy rather than dropping $200+ on the gigantic board game version that is likely to just end up taking up way too much space on a closet shelf. My initial impression is that I have spent over an hour and a half browsing through tiny rules text on a hand-held trying to figure out how in the world to play this and trying to not make a mess of my starting characters and equipment. From the perspective of someone with only a slight familiarity with the board game version, this does a pretty bad job of onboarding someone who is new to the game. This is probably fine for someone who has already played the board game and more or less knows what they are doing but from a new player perspective the learning curve is almost as bad as sitting in front of a giant 30 pound box full of game pieces. For example, the board game has recommended equipment load-outs for new characters. This, however, just presents you with a long list of stuff to buy initially and it is pretty hard to parse what is actually going to be useful. In order to figure out what all the symbols on the equipment mean, you have to dig into the actual in-game rule book as the included tool tip function only tells you what some of the text on the card means. Another serious issue is that this is a little iffy for play on a handheld. Most of my play time is on a Lenovo Legion Go 2 in Windows and while it runs fine and the battery life is fine, the in game text is too small. Not completely illegible but the eye strain is real. I dug around in the options quite a bit and I did not see any options to increase the font size. Thankfully the cards and 3D models are all a reasonable size but the in game rules, story text, etc. are all way too hard to read on a handheld. I also would have expected some of the in game text to have been voice acted but it seems that voiceovers are used sparingly. If I missed a way to make the text bigger please leave a comment as I'd actually still like to play this. It does seem like a pretty solid representation of the board game but wow it has some serious issues and it is really hard to recommend to someone who isn't already inclined to want to play this.

This should be advertised as a puzzle game not a tactical RPG.

The game is excessively complicated and the tutorial doesn't even teach you a fraction of the game's core mechanics. Unless you've played the board game you will be constantly searching the internet for what some random symbol means. The difficulty is also very high early on. Unless you already know what you're doing, expect to lose the first scenario multiple times on Easy. This game feels like it was made by two people trapped in a loveless marriage. One of them said "Let's make a game that's like a puzzle, where players can to map out the optimal set of moves each turn" and the other said "Fine, but we're going to add multiple layers of randomness so that any plan they come up with is pointless anyway".

The game itself is quite fun and challenging. However the amount of game crashes, esp in Co-op play are really annoying. I dont want to know how many hours we lost due to the crashes

Just starting. Tutorials are very well explained and the system is complex but doable. I'm just following the Guildmaster roadmap as opposed to the Campaign route because it is designed to teach you the basic, essential rules. Every turn requires a great deal of thought as there are a lot of moving pieces and possibilities to consider before doing anything. I've enjoyed the puzzles set out and there is a great deal of satisfaction in solving them. Really, I'm surprised at the level of strategic depth in what is offered as a tactical simulation. The graphics are decent and the music is good for a fantasy adventure. If you like turn based dungeon crawling with a host of options and possibilities available for each individual character, then I think you will like this. Each character class has a set of cards you play with that are unique to their class. I will update as I continue the Guildmaster Quest and get further into it. So far, though, it has been really captivating to play.

I don't understand why this is so glowingly rated here and in reviews... It seems a terrible game design, the entire time you feel restricted and punished: 1 - The stupid lock-out of your used cards, can't re-shuffle unless you perma-sacrifice a card... 2 - The weird restriction on using the top/bottom opposite of the 2 cards you choose per turn. Oddly they seem designed such that you WANT to use the same half on 2 cards since they'd synergize, but nope, most of the time I only end up using 1 of the 2 cards, since the other one's 'allowed half' is giving me nothing useful to the situation... 3 - The tedious and slow 'select 2 cards per turn for each character' flow, totally slows battles to a boring crawl. My god how can you make a tactical game so slow that it bores people who like TACTICAL GAMES? I'd rather get the cards randomly, to skip that slog. 4 - The "permanently burn your cards" every time you want to rest, avoid damage, etc... Means you're constantly losing useful cards PERMANENTLY... And on top of that, a ton of card abilities cause the card to permanently burn on use too? When you have such a tiny deck to begin with... Who thought this was fun to play, when they designed it? The entire time I'm playing, feels like my shoe-laces are tied together, I feel trapped, restricted, powerless, always losing ground. Most cards feel underwhelmingly weak, and any that seem halfway useful are made to burn the card on-use. Like someone sadistic designed this... This is a terrible game experience. It feels like being on a wooden platform that's on fire at all sides, you're just degrading constantly. On the VERY FIRST LEVEL all of my characters died not from enemies killing them, but simply running out of cards since they all "burned" up from simply trying to re-fill my empty hand (you don't have a choice once you're empty) in an overly long battle with endless enemies in rooms.... I know 'rogue-likes' enjoy overpowering you on your first runs, but they usually let you get through a few levels first... This one seems to want to demolish you in the first level, and force you to grind through EXTREMELY SLOW AND BORING death-runs to get strong enough via XP or money (both terribly slow to accumulate) to even survive that lvl 1 encounter... Why would I want to go through that slow-slog again-and-again, when you stack the odds against me getting even the satisfaction of the first-level win? What the heck is this punishing mess, and why does anyone like it?? This is award-winning? I better invent a game too, if the awards-bar is this low.