UberTurtle

As a big fan of the board game who primarily plays solo, this game is amazing to have (this game can be played in multiplayer as well, but I have limited experience with that so I can't speak to it personally). The time/effort saved by not having to manage the monsters means I can do 2-3 scenarios here for every one scenario I would have done on Tabletop Simulator. Additionally, the game looks good, which is certainly pleasant. And the extent to which the game recaptures and recreates the board game campaign is more faithful than I ever could have imagined it would be. If you've never played the board game and have no idea what I'm talking about, whether this game is interesting to you or not is just going to depend on whether you like turn-based tactical dungeon crawlers. Gloomhaven is probably the best turn-based tactical dungeon crawler of all time. Do note that this is less RPG and more "puzzle" than you probably expect. It's not a puzzle in the sense that you have to solve pre-created puzzles, but rather the stamina and action system will make turns and scenarios into combat/optimization puzzles. You won't be rushing in with your tank, healing them with your healer, and dpsing with your damage-dealers. You'll evaluate the board and try to figure out the best way to get through the room, killing the enemies while taking as little damage as possible and expending as few resources as possible. All that being said, there are some RPG-like elements in the sense of the campaign progress: you earn gold and experience with which you improve your character over time. Additionally, you'll improve the town itself over time, which unlocks additional items for purchase. Most significantly, your characters will all have life goals and when they complete them, you'll unlock completely new classes to play (there are 6 starting classes and 11 locked classes). The mechanics of most classes are so significantly different that the novelty and excitement of unlocking and getting to try these new, different classes is amazing. So that's all of the good, how about the bad? Well, honestly, at this point, just bugs. Lots and lots and lots of bugs. In about 40 hours of play since the campaign released, I encounter on average one bug per scenario. They are pretty much never game-breaking or scenario-ruining bugs, but they are definitely there. Additionally, many scenarios have special rules that aren't adequately explained in the UI currently. I know that both of these issues are currently being heavily worked on and the company plans on continuing to support the game for a long time, so I'm sure these problems will be resolved, but for now they do drag the score down a bit unfortunately. Regardless, I still would not hesitate to recommend this game, and the longer it's been since this review was written that you're reading it, the more likely the game is even better than the assessment I gave here.

This game, in its current state, is very firmly a 7. It could easily have the potential to be a 9 very soon, but for now it still leaves something to be desired. There are 3 modes: Escape, Extraction, and Hunt. Escape is a very L4D-style run through the map and try to survive. Extraction is basically a take on Horde-style holding a point against waves of enemies combined with escort quests. To me, both of these modes are pretty shallow and don't really have much that keeps me wanting to play them more than a couple times. The real fun to be had in this game is in the third mode: Hunt. Hunt is an up to 8 person free-for-all where the goal is to be the last person alive. There are zombies everywhere that you must deal with in addition to other humans, and when a person dies they become a zombie as well who tries to hunt the remaining humans. Everyone starts with essentially the same equipment: a random melee weapon and a pistol. A ton of random weapons and ammo are placed around the levels so you're supposed to want to try to fight through zombies in order to secure equipment and be better prepared to take down other players (as well as survive the zombies). In reality, that's not really what happens. The zombies are comically easy to avoid in the beginning of the game because there are usually very few bunched up, which will happen later due to gunfire, and there are no player zombies (the only zombies who really have a chance to catch you while you're running). So what happens is that everyone just sprints to the nearest location they know that spawns weapons and hopes for something good. Thus, your likelihood of winning the game is mostly determined by where you spawn and the RNG of the weapon-spawner (unless you do lame it up, which I'll get into later). If you get one of about five different weapons (2 SMGs, 2 assault rifles, or the best shotgun), it is impossible to ever lose a gunfight to someone with a pistol and thus you will simply dominate anyone you see early on who wasn't similarly lucky (which creates a very unfun mechanic of "oh look, the first person I ran into, 20 seconds into the game, had an AR15, I lose... awesome!) And speaking of the AR15, this gun is just brokenly stupid. The other assault rifle, the AK, has terrible recoil and thus is very difficult to kill at a distance with the ironsight. The MP5 is probably the second best gun, but is significantly far behind the AR simply because it has difficulty killing people at range. The AR dominates close and long range. An easy solution to the early gun lottery would be to make strong weapons start without ammo so that it takes longer before that amazing assault rifle you found comes online. It's still RNG, which ****, but at least it wouldn't feel so punishing so soon into the match. There are also a lot of bugs in the game, not the least of which is hit detection and randomly invulnerable zombies. With your melee weapon you can one-shot zombies by using your power attack (right-click) and hitting them in the head. Except sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can hit the same zombie (AI zombie, not even a player zombie) in the head, seeing the blood indicating impact, with your power attack 10 times before it will die. This is a problem because typically you need to move quickly while clearing zombies, and when you melee one you need to keep running so the ones that are chasing you don't catch up. But when the zombie in front of you doesn't go down in 1-2 hits, not only is he hitting you, but the zombies behind are going to trap you, and you're basically dead. So this time you didn't lose because of the early RNG, you lost because randomly super zombie, which is no less annoying. Finally, equally a large problem, is that the actual easiest way to win at Hunt is simply to find a hiding spot and stay there the entire round (this is more of a problem on 2 of the 4 maps, but can be done to reasonable success on any of them). Other people who are going for weapons will end up running into other people and getting in gunfights, drawing zombies. Then people will die and those player zombies will hunt the people who are running around (because a: they have a better idea where they are due to gunfire sounds and b: given how long it takes to destroy a closed door as a zombie, it's an extremely unproductive and boring use of time to check hiding spots for players). Thus, you're rewarded for playing as boringly as possible. An easy fix to this problem would be to use a Battle Royale-type system for moving people out of sections of the map routinely. This could fit into the game by being a Walking Dead-esque zombie herd that swarms slowly through the map, bit-by-bit, checking every spot. In the end, the game has a lot of potential, and sometimes ends up being very fun, but currently due to a lot of bugs and a few mechanics which don't feel rewarding at all, it usually ends up being as much frustration as fun.