Gloomhaven (PlayStation 5)
Official GBAtemp Review
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): September 18, 2023
- Release Date (EU): September 18, 2023
- Publisher: Twin Sails Interactive
Game Features:
Gloomhaven the board game has been cluttering tables since 2017, and macOS since 2021, but it's only now that you can experience the tactical role-playing game from the comfort of your PlayStation 5 since it has finally been adapted for consoles!
With over 95 hours of gameplay within the campaign, this iteration offers 4-player modes, and an all-new digital-only guildmaster mode brings 100 missions for you to complete as you learn the rules and mercenaries of the game.
As a novice board game player, I relished the fact there is an included a massively in-depth tutorial section too, because it was quite daunting going into such a challenging card-based title with little to no experience of playing tabletop games in recent years.
Packed with Content, Heaps of Replayability
Gloomhaven stacks up a lot of impressive core elements such as 17 mercenaries with unique playstyles, 50 enemies to thwart, 1000 abilities to combine, 280 scenarios with branching narratives and lasting consequences, cross-platform multiplayer, and 4-player cooperative modes.
The Jaws of the Lion DLC brings 25 new scenarios, 4 new mercs, 10 additional enemies, 22 road events, 10 new items and 24 extra battle goals, whereas the Solo Scenarios DLC give you access to a further 17 scenarios, 17 items and even more enemies to punish.
Jumping into the tutorial section you will note that the game is turn-based, card-based, and holds a definite similarity to Dungeons and Dragons, though instead of dice rolls of D&D you opt to draw cards and act upon their various effects independently.
You are taught that the two cards you draw per turn are divided into top and bottom and therefore hold four abilities that you can choose to use depending on your position within the maps. For example, using the ability to move 4 spaces can put you in good stead to travel across the maps, whereas a close-range attack move is only beneficial when up close with bandits and other enemies.
Graphically the game looks simplified but nicely presented to give you the best view of the action in front of you. There's a slight toon-shading vibe to the characters and backgrounds, and the lighting is atmospheric and dynamic in each locale.
Each menu system is lovingly crafted to display the maximum amount of information possible regarding damage, buff/nerf information, healing/defence, reputation, wealth and more. Because each character has their own sub-plot storyline, each one has side quests you can choose before each mission begins. These serve as trophy-style achievements that go a long way to bolster your stats and improve your character's overall notoriety within the game.
Special effects ebb and flow pleasingly illuminating the screen with pops of colour around each turn, with some filling the screen entirely later on in your quests. The in-game music, however, never quite reaches a crescendo that matches the action on screen and felt a little underwhelming and underutilised in places.
Each character and enemy has been well designed and is nicely fleshed out with fine detail not only in their biographical profile information but also in their bespoke appearances. I really appreciate the design that has gone into these varied characters, and I imagine this is why so many people paint little armies of figures in their attics.
Daunting at First, Engaging and Rewarding
You begin the campaign by selecting from one of six difficulties and whether or not to keep original or updated ability enhancements. The latter allows you to experiment with adding and removing temporary enhancements through rebalanced costs, whereas the former is a more classic feel with permanent effects that filter down into all future mercs too.
You then select "House Rules" or variants that you will employ during this playthrough such as advantage/disadvantage, line of sight, and summons movement. Once these are set they cannot be changed until you reset the game and begin again.
From here you select your class, choosing from Brutes who have size, and strength and can take a beating, Tinkerers who are experts in crafting, Scoundrels who are opportunistic melee experts, Craghearts who excel in defensive melee, Spellweavers who are fragile but use elemental magic, and the final Mindthief class who use psychic assaults and minions to exact damage from ranged attacks.
Each class has pros and cons, some are powerful but have low health, whereas others have high health but small attack power, so it's all about experimenting to find a balance of ability and vitality that suits your playstyle, and makes your game enjoyable.
Choosing two mercenaries to begin, you get to name them and choose their personal quest or reason for participating in the role-playing game. You are each given a random deck of cards from which you will draw two per turn per merc, and, by discarding used cards or burning a selected card from the deck, you can stave off attacks from your enemies as well as use the cards in combinations to inflict as much damage as possible.
Atmospheric Narration, But Slow Paced Gaming
The game itself plays much like D&D with a narrator, or Dungeon Master, descriptively pointing out each and every detail of the task at hand really getting gritty with the ins and outs of each character, their temperaments, and the look, feel and smells of each location. This draws you in, perfectly setting the tone of each encounter and each place you visit. There is so much lore here, so many systems within systems to understand and the source material has been used to the best effect in portraying a digital version of a physical game.
The voiceover sounds a little overly compressed, but it certainly does the job of guiding you through each encounter and battle.
As a turn-based game, the pacing is relatively slow and the set-up for each round is quite monotonous, but in fairness, this is how it would play out in a board game environment. I did find it bizarre that you can't even move around freely until you find an encounter, its all card-based regardless of whether enemies are everywhere or not.
Almost all of this game revolves around RNG (random number generation) and so sometimes it feels as though you are having a tough time regardless of difficulty. The fact remains that this game is all about the luck of the draw, and strategising what you have to hand to come out of each battle as unscathed as possible, but a lot of the time it feels like you're persistently healing, burning cards, taking a rest or choosing to take the hit, rather than using any REAL tactics to destroy the waves of guards/archers, skeletons, corpses and demons that you can see ahead of you.
Perhaps I just haven't put in enough hours to really excel in my character class yet, or maybe magic spells and elemental conjuring is simply not my bag. I definitely much prefer realism, guns and grenades when fighting, like in slightly more relaxed and more futuristic turn-based games like ShowGunners, which I really enjoyed.
A Big Game Built For Game Night Camaraderie
Having played Gloomhaven for a while I did notice quite a bit of repetition in terms of drawing cards, selecting cards, moving via cards, and attacking, you guessed it, via cards. I think that the core gameplay is probably 1:1 with what you would experience in the tabletop game, however as a video game it's certainly a differing experience to that which is intended, and perhaps sanitises away the tactile nature of a board game adventure to a point that it can feel lacking pace and energy in places.
I have a number of friends who are into Baldurs Gate and D&D so I highly suspect that they cannot wait to get their hands on this game in order to expand their gaming nights into online cooperative experiences. I could definitely see a far more rambunctious and less watered-down experience with a group of friends setting out for an evening of adventure and intrigue hacking down The Merciless Overseer, The Sightless Eye or The Gloom bosses!
Verdict
- Huge amounts of abilities, characters and scenarios
- Incredibly tactical gameplay
- Rewarding upgrade system
- Repetitious and slow gameplay
- Voiceover quality seems compressed
hmmm I'm a terrible pirate lol
