Gloomhaven - Review @ PC Gamer

PC Gamer has reviewed Gloomhaven:

Gloomhaven review

The classic dungeon-crawling tabletop adventure is very comfortable in its new digital home.

Gloomhaven is surely the most widely-praised hobby board game of the past decade. The digital edition replicates the sprawling Gloomhaven campaign in its entirety, adds an entirely new second mode, Guildmaster, along with online multiplayer: An adaptation of the tabletop experience that leaves nothing behind. While it's impossible to replicate the magic of sitting around a table, designing it to work on a screen provides things a boxed board game never would. Nonetheless, occasionally poor performance, the lack of a few quality of life features, and a liberal sprinkling of bugs hold Gloomhaven back.

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Nonetheless, the campaign is a blast with friends and far faster than a boxed game. Four hours at the table will get you a single dungeon, with its encounters before and after, played. Four hours in the digital campaign will let quick players plow through as many as three dungeons. If you feast on this kind of tactical play like I do, and if you're very happy to let the computer handle the little details, then Gloomhaven's ruggedly narrated adventures are exactly what you want from the genre. It's the thing all good tabletop adaptations should have: A reason why I'd play this rather than sit around a table.

Score: 87/100

Gloomhaven - It's still one of the best dungeon crawlers ever made, but now it's on PC.

Thanks Henriquejr!

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I just got this. I know nothing about it. Maybe I can get my wife to play it with me. It looks complex. (Those are my thoughts picking this up today.)

I like board games but hate the fiddly bits you usually have to manage - one reason I prefer tabletop RPGs when I want to play a game usually because a lot of the "fiddly bits" are contained in the manual and in your mind and on character sheets instead of 200 little cut-out tokens…

…and this looks like a decent board game with the fiddly bits taken care of by the computer, so it might be cool.

I got bored. It's not an RPG or even a board game, it's a puzzle game. It's unforgiving to the point where if you're not interested in finding the absolute most efficient way to use your cards, you won't win (at least not if you play normal or harder).

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I got bored. It's not an RPG or even a board game, it's a puzzle game.

Now hold on dere pardner… It's okay to not like the way the mechanics work (more on that in a sec), but you seem to be simultaneously complaining about what it is and what it never claimed to be, at the same time.
It's pretty faithful digital conversion of the boardgame (so, uh, "not a boardgame" doesn't really work), which is generally described as something like a "legacy-style, campaign-based, branching-storyline, tactical RPG boardgame". It has RPG-like elements like choices and consequences (leading to branching of the plot/opening and closing of scenario choices/dialogue and exposition with choices) but only rudimentary character development (which is all that I'd expect from a "tactical RPG boardgame", but you didn't buy this thinking it would be a fully fledged RPG rather than a tactical RPG boardgame, did you? Come on).

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
It's unforgiving to the point where if you're not interested in finding the absolute most efficient way to use your cards, you won't win (at least not if you play normal or harder).

Well yep, I agree with you here. I actually rage quit and am giving it a break because some of the scenarios just seem crazy hard and require bloody minded re-doing over and over or a degree of choice optimisation I am obviously not good enough at.
And sometimes (too many times) you do have the right tactics, and you're within a couple of moves of winning, but because it's not actually just a puzzle game, there is a RNG involved, you fail because the roll wasn't with you. 45 minutes lost. Again.
I'm enjoying it a lot of the time, but a lot of the time I'm also just thankful that I didn't sink a couple of hundred South Pacific Pesetas (or $NZ to you) on the physical version. It would have ended up thrown against the wall many a time.

I played a couple of hours in the Insane difficulty setting (I know, I know) using Scoundrel, Spellweaver and Cragheart for a party composition and it took me 4 attempts to clear the first mission and 3 attempts to clear the second one (I haven't played more since got distracted with other things).

As someone who hasn't played Gloomhaven before in any format, I did find the mechanics interesting and the difficulty a bit on the tough side, but the learning curve wasn't too steep and the setting is quite inviting.

I loved how each mission has a goal and you must customise your deck/playstyle to meet that goal, rather than playing a cookie-cutter deck to win all decks. I love when games do that.

I'm likely to put more time into it at some point, it did pique my interest.

Originally Posted by Nereida
As someone who hasn't played Gloomhaven before in any format, I did find the mechanics interesting and the difficulty a bit on the tough side, but the learning curve wasn't too steep and the setting is quite inviting.

I thought the mechanics were interesting too and I like being given abilities by a game and then actually having to use them to pass its challenges. The biggest difference for me is that I didn't find the setting interesting in the least. It was very generic, and the tiny bits of briefing you receive were not enough, and not interesting enough, to motivate me to figure out the encounters.

I also didn't like how 99% of the events I got on the way to missions just punished me. I entered like 33% of my missions cursed because of some arbitary, unpredictable event result.

I agree that the narrative feels quite "bare bones". I would say that's a consequence of being a relatively loyal representation of a board game, where you're meant to just sit around a table and play some cards with friends. There seems to be more than meets the eye buried in there, though, but I haven't been far enough to tell.

I have never played the boardgame at all and picked this up on the basis of some You Tube plays .

I did alll the tutorials and played a bit on Easy to get the hang of the mechanics in the excellent Guildmaster mode and have started a new run on Normal in Guilmaster mode again and am absolutely loving it.

Got through my last dungeon this morning with just one of my three mercs left alive and down to her last two cards as the final enemy fell….amazing tension and very well balanced imo.

I picked this up a couple of months ago while still in early access, and I'm 168 hours so far on it and that's just guildmaster mode as I haven't even begun the campaign. Gloomhaven is a great game, well deserving of its #1 spot out of all board games on board game geek.

I played the board game a couple of years ago 3 times through the full campaign (twice solo and once with my wife), for probably a total of 400 hours, and I didn't think this digital version would be of much value to me but I was wrong as it's even better on PC since you don't have to manage enemy AI and can just concentrate on the strategy and the fun.

The campaign's main story is not a strong part of the game, and I could envision someone legit passing on this altogether due to that. Also, gameplay is not about moving and rolling dice (or clicking on your miz-ouse) to fight, it's about planning your team's turns one or two turns ahead, and that strategy really hits my wheelhouse of what I enjoy.

I would recommend watching a gameplay video to see if it's for you.

I absolutely love this game! I've been playing it non stop since the proper release. (didn't bother in early) Course I'd also played and enjoyed the board game too. (not loads just a handful of times) So I knew I'd like it.

It's hard, but gets easier once you know what you're doing. Highly recommended.

Daniel.

We've been playing the board game for two years now (every two weeks with a long hiatus thanks to Covid in between) and currently, I would say, the computer version is a pretty faithful adaption of the board game. Ironically, some discussions like "Hey, the computer game does this and that differently" can end with "Ups, the computer game is correct, the board game's rules are just not so simple and there have been a quite bit of errata involved" ;-)

We will definitely not switch from our board game sessions to the computer, but it's a good alternative for people who want to play online with friends or alone. Can also really recommend it.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
It's unforgiving to the point where if you're not interested in finding the absolute most efficient way to use your cards, you won't win (at least not if you play normal or harder).

Strongly disagree with this. I've never been a whiz at strategy games, but this was relatively easy to pick up, once you wrap your head around the rules and stop trying to play it like every other turn-based dungeon crawler.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I got bored. It's not an RPG or even a board game, it's a puzzle game. It's unforgiving to the point where if you're not interested in finding the absolute most efficient way to use your cards, you won't win (at least not if you play normal or harder).

Though it is a board game digital copy, I very much agree that it is more a puzzle than tactics. Just take a look at the tutorial where you have to do things in an exact order to succeed. Not really any room for different tactics or strategies.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
Though it is a board game digital copy, I very much agree that it is more a puzzle than tactics. Just take a look at the tutorial where you have to do things in an exact order to succeed. Not really any room for different tactics or strategies.

The tutorials are puzzles, it's true, although very easy ones. They are there to help you understand the rules and the abilities of different classes. But that's not so uncommon in games. The rest of the game is not like that. There are a huge number of classes, items, builds and perks to choose from. The number of options for different strategies can be overwhelming to some and there is some randomness in terms of what classes or items are unlocked first and different story choices can also have a big effect on what options you have.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
Though it is a board game digital copy, I very much agree that it is more a puzzle than tactics. Just take a look at the tutorial where you have to do things in an exact order to succeed. Not really any room for different tactics or strategies.

Yeah, except that's not true, and there are 6 different people on this thread who've played it telling you so.

Originally Posted by screeg
Yeah, except that's not true, and there are 6 different people on this thread who've played it telling you so.

I have played the game during EA for some time (not with all the classes yet) and found it more frustrating than fun because I had to burn resources (my tactics) to even move or use a part of a card.

I know this is how the game is supposed to work and I might give it another try now that it is released, but for me it was very constricting how you have to play it. Which obviously I didn't care for much. In general I don't like systems where you have to "burn" your resources for things you didn't intend them for.