Found a gem of a game : Gloomhaven

cheyane

I was quite enamoured lately with turn based RPG (have always been actually❤️) and I have been very deeply immersed lately in Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous but I wanted to try something else. Some time ago I had come across Gloomhaven but I plumb forgot about it. 

Then for some reason I saw it on youtube and I got all excited and bought the game. I have no idea how to play this dungeon crawler. The creator of this game Isaac Childres  actually wanted to get away from dice rolls and the usual orcs and goblins when he made the game. It's quite a brilliant game and bloody hard to boot. I failed the first few times to even get past the second room of the first scenario because I was too cocky thinking I could play this just after reading the rules which took 70 minutes and is in the menu of the game itself. I picked myself up and diligently watched some youtube for added assistance I sorely needed and was stunned by how much strategy I had completely missed by just reading the rules.

The game has a very nice voiced narration and rather witty set ups. Looks gorgeous and is really challenging. Very fascinating classes and races (love the mindthief) I had to drop the difficulty down to the lowest and I completed the first scenario but I am going to redo it because I missed the chest and loot in the last room. You have to loot before the last mobs dies or you miss everything.

It's really an eye opener on how well a table top game can be translated into a PC game and do it so extremely well. 

The interview

Quizzical

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2751554000

That's what you need to know in order to play well.  It's mostly a matter of learning how to play defensively and manipulate what the monsters will do.

Gloomhaven has an unusually high density of interesting gameplay decisions.  Every character and nearly every move, you have to stop and think about what to do next.  It doesn't just go on autopilot where you use the standard rotation from your cookie cutter build like most MMORPGs.

cheyane

You can play it with 3 other people but it will harder the more mercenaries you add. All in all I am quite happy I bought the game. Thanks for the tip @Quizzical

According to that guide you link it says play defensively and my problem yesterday was I think I played too defensively. I didn't have enough damage because I had a Brute and the Tinkerer, I should swapped the Brute out for the Cragheart, he does massive AOE.

Scot

A definition of Deja Vu:

Scot heads of to Steam, a new game he has not spotted! Only to find it is already on his wish list, that's what comes of not following games in development and having a wishlist which is way too long.

Theocritus

Been on my wishlist for awhile...Just waiting for a nice sale....Spring sale should be coming soon.

Scorchien

Glad you like it and it  has alot of systems and features i usually go for , But i hate the Art/Models..etc... Cannot get past that

cheyane

Theocritus said:

Been on my wishlist for awhile...Just waiting for a nice sale....Spring sale should be coming soon.

I bought it from Fanatical for 27.55 Euros instead of the 34.99 Euros it was on Steam. This site is not at all shady and an authorized reseller like Green Man Gaming and Humble Bundle.

 https://www.fanatical.com/en/

Quizzical

cheyane said:

You can play it with 3 other people but it will harder the more mercenaries you add. All in all I am quite happy I bought the game. Thanks for the tip @Quizzical

According to that guide you link it says play defensively and my problem yesterday was I think I played too defensively. I didn't have enough damage because I had a Brute and the Tinkerer, I should swapped the Brute out for the Cragheart, he does massive AOE.

I'm not sure if you noticed the author on the guide I linked.  I wrote the guide, which is why I linked it.  Besides, doesn't the length of the guide look like the sort of thing that I'd write?

By "play defensively", I don't mean "pick a support class".  Rather, I mean, try to mostly avoid damage rather than just charging at whatever you see.

While the monsters do scale with your party size, if you're playing solo (meaning, you control all mercenaries), I think that having a larger party tends to make it a little easier.  If a separate person controls each mercenary, then a larger party presents a lot more coordination problems where different people want to do different things.

cheyane

Oh you wrote it wow it is very detailed and well done. 

Scot

Quizzical said:

cheyane said:

You can play it with 3 other people but it will harder the more mercenaries you add. All in all I am quite happy I bought the game. Thanks for the tip @Quizzical

According to that guide you link it says play defensively and my problem yesterday was I think I played too defensively. I didn't have enough damage because I had a Brute and the Tinkerer, I should swapped the Brute out for the Cragheart, he does massive AOE.

I'm not sure if you noticed the author on the guide I linked.  I wrote the guide, which is why I linked it.  Besides, doesn't the length of the guide look like the sort of thing that I'd write?

By "play defensively", I don't mean "pick a support class".  Rather, I mean, try to mostly avoid damage rather than just charging at whatever you see.

While the monsters do scale with your party size, if you're playing solo (meaning, you control all mercenaries), I think that having a larger party tends to make it a little easier.  If a separate person controls each mercenary, then a larger party presents a lot more coordination problems where different people want to do different things.

Hat tip for that guide which is now in the browser folder Gloomhaven for when I buy the game.

Rungar

i like turned based games but I don't like card games. I have this one but just cant get into it. 

cheyane

Rungar said:

i like turned based games but I don't like card games. I have this one but just cant get into it. 

I have always had a different impression of what a card game is. Gloomhaven seems to have cards that are given and you're not earning cards as go along. I mean earning cards isn't the main focus.

Here you are given a set of cards and they work like a choice of skills. Each turn you can use 2 out of 4 skills and some involve looting and movement. The game isn't focused on getting more powerful cards in your battle but rather how you use the cards you have in the fight. This seems to be far more tactical than how traditional card collecting games are about. I too don't enjoy card collecting games but it is my honest opinion this isn't such a game.

This game seems to focus on how each scenario is tackled by what skills you possess. The skills are in the form of cards but it is the juggling of the top and bottom skills on one card and combining it with a second card and your fellow allies skills that is the main thrust and playing strategy. It's very different from a  card game as I know it. I could be wrong about card games having no real experience in them though but Gloomhaven does not draw cards from a  deck. You go in already possessing the cards. 

Quizzical

Rungar said:

i like turned based games but I don't like card games. I have this one but just cant get into it. 

It depends on what you dislike about card games.  Gloomhaven is emphatically not a collectable card game.  It's also not pay to win, as it's a one-time payment with no microtransactions, though they are working on an optional DLC.

There are several types of cards in the game.  Some of them are basically used as a random number generator instead of rolling dice or using more traditional computer-based RNG.

Items are also cards, though in the digital version, that's largely meaningless.  The digital version does still make items appear graphically as cards.

Cards in your hand that you play two per round are almost entirely deterministic, with only the exception of losing one at random if you do a short rest.  There isn't any card drawing mechanic here.  You start with all of the cards, and when you do a rest, you remove one card from the discard pile and return all of the others to your hand.

City and road events are cards in the physical version, but don't appear that way in the digital version.

cheyane

I went back in with my Puppet Masters' guild of two mercenaries and I played very carefully planning my attacks and was thoroughly pleased with my strategy but it took 2 and a half hours to clear three rooms. I managed to loot everything by keeping the last archer alive until I looted. I read the descriptions over and over again I simply loved pushing and forcing them to do stuff with my Mindthief. I really kept reading the cards in my hand to make sure I got the best result and using the items and elements on the Cragheart while he 'me smash' the enemies. I know that I took a very long time but it was far from boring. It really was interesting to think very hard on what to do. 

If this is just one scenario the remaining 94 scenarios are going to provide a load of content. Even though I had replayed the same beginning areas for the third time neither the city encounter nor the road encounter was repeated. That is really a lot of variety. I know I am gushing a bit but gosh what a nice game this turned out to be.

Quizzical

There are 82 city events and 69 road events possible.  Initially, there are 31 city events and 30 road events available.  The rest of the events can get added to the decks when some particular thing happens.  In particular, the first time you unlock a particular class or retire a mercenary of a particular class, it adds a city event and a road event to their respective decks.  Most events can only happen once in a campaign, though a handful can be repeated to ensure that you don't exhaust all of the cards.

City and road event outcomes depend not just on which of the two options you pick, but also in some cases on whether you have a mercenary of particular classes in your party at the time.  Less commonly, the outcome can depend on your reputation.

For the most part, the city and road events are just a digital version of what is in the physical board game.  They did add one new city event, however.

Scot

Rungar said:

i like turned based games but I don't like card games. I have this one but just cant get into it. 

Rungar, I have no idea why you were banned but hope you get back soon and do follow the rules you are a solid poster and these boards will miss you.

DigDuggy

I played the actual board game.  Didn't know they made it into a computer game.

AlBQuirky

razor247 said:

Another CARD game....why do they waste their time on these things

Some players may enjoy card games?

I was wondering how close to the board game this iteration is

Quizzical

AlBQuirky said:

razor247 said:

Another CARD game....why do they waste their time on these things

Some players may enjoy card games?

I was wondering how close to the board game this iteration is

The campaign is basically a digital version of the board game.  It also has a guildmaster mode that the board game doesn't.  If you just do the campaign, there are only a handful of differences from the board game:

1)  some scenarios had one monster removed to make it a little easier
2)  enchantments have been completely repriced using totally different formulas
3)  they added one city event not in the board game, in addition to the 81 that are
4)  difficulty scales further, with "friendly" and "deadly" as the extremal options, in addition to the four in the board game
5)  they added several "house rules" options to let you use the same rule as the board game or change a rule
6)  a handful of things were modified because they decided it was too hard to program, including scenario #82 having different rewards for different end conditions, 

eoloe

razor247 said:

Another CARD game....why do they waste their time on these things

AFAIK, it is a tactical boardgame. Yes, there are cards in boardgames.

Sovrath

Scorchien said:

Glad you like it and it  has alot of systems and features i usually go for , But i hate the Art/Models..etc... Cannot get past that

yeah, I'm debating but the art design, even though it's done well, is not my thing.