Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Middle-earth is Overrun (Review of The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth)

This week I finally finished my grand adventure in Middle-earth. It did not end well. In the final scenario, my heroes were overrun by the forces of evil and the land was swept into darkness. We fought bravely, but in the end my fellowship succombed to fear and perished. This does not set things up nicely for the fellowship of the ring - poor Frodo will be down a few members as he heads into Mordor.

Does this game suffer the same fate? Or does it rise up to conquer the critics?


TOTAL PLAYS: 14 solo, 2 co-operative

COMPONENTS
All of the components are top-notch. The miniatures are some of the better ones I've seen. They remind me of Gears of War in terms of sturdiness, but not detail. They're detailed enough, I've just seen better. The miniatures in games like Imperial Assault and Descent are very flimsy compared to these - I'm not scared to pick these up for fear of bending them. The map pieces look really good, they look like a beautiful sprawling countryside when placed altogether. 

The art on the cards is ok, although I find it a little boring that each version of the great bow has the same picture. Couldn't they do a cooler looking bow each time? The same goes for the other upgradeable items (daggers, swords, armor, cloaks, etc.). I don't mind them reusing the art from the card game, it's great art, but they seemed to go a little too lazy in some ways.

My biggest complaint here are the cards. I know that Fantasy Flight loves their mini cards and they do work really well for items and loot, but I'm really missing the regular size cards for my skill deck. It would make it much easier to read, shuffle, and enjoy the artwork. I know it would increase the table space, which is already sprawling, but I'd still prefer it. 

For this game, the app is a major component as well. I find the app very smooth and streamlined, although a little difficult to read at times. I also find that I need to look at it A LOT and it takes me out of the experience a little bit. 4/5

RULES
Fantasy Flight Games has a really good formula for their rulebooks. The Learn to Play book (smaller rulebook) teaches you in a quick, step-by-step way how to get into your first game and gives you the basics. The Rules Reference book (larger rulebook) gives you a detailed, alphabetical list of all the terms and rules that you'd need to find mid game. I can only think of a very few rules that I was unsure of based on the rulebook. They were so minor, however, that I just made a decision and went on without checking out FAQs or worrying too much about it. Overall, great rulebooks. 5/5

GAMEPLAY
Here is where the rubber really meets the road (or the ring meets the hairy hobbit's finger?). There were a lot of really great things about this game and then a few that irked me.

+ I really enjoyed the card play in this game. Having a deck that you can alter throughout the campaign and "purchase" new cards using your experience as well as receiving new titles was really fun. The whole scouting mechanism was a big success. There were some big decisions to be made - do I prepare this great card so I can use its ability or do I really need to make sure I have a success on the top of my deck so I can defeat that enemy or search that ruin?

+ For the most part, I think the game felt balanced. You had to make smart decisions to win, but it wasn't too easy or too hard. The completionist in me wanted the time to get every single search token every time, but it makes thematic sense that you need to leave some things behind and prioritize what's most important. It also felt like a reasonable number of enemies came out to attack you and if you really focused your attention on them, you could wipe them out relatively quickly (as Gimli and Legolas tend to do), but if your attention was split on a few different important areas, the enemies might get out of hand.

+ I've heard some complaints about the fear damage, that it makes it feel too much like a Cthulhu game instead of a Lord of the Rings game, but I actually enjoyed the dual damage system. It felt like it gave more variety to the players. A little hobbit like Bilbo couldn't take much physical damage, but he was known to be very resilient and determined to accomplish his quest, so it makes sense that he'd have a high fear resistance. I admit, this doesn't really work with a character like Gimli who has a low fear level but seemed pretty fearless in the books (with maybe the exception of entering the Paths of the Dead). It's not perfect, but it work alright.

+ The exploration works well. I like finding new little nooks and crannies and watching the app reveal these new spots that you have no idea about. It's the kind of thing you can't really get without a good app. Even when I was feeling frustrated about the complaints below, I kept playing because I wanted to explore everything!

- The first half of the campaign doesn't feel very Lord of the Rings-y. I don't want to spoil anything, but it's pretty generic fantasy. You don't really feel like you're in Middle-earth where magic reigns and everything is tied to one epic adventure. It seems a little mundane. This picks up as the game progresses, but it's sort of a "meh" start. I hope future campaigns do a better job of this.

- I found at least one adventure really boring, repetitive, and nearly impossible. Not wanting to spoil anything, but I felt like I was just running around for no reason and then making a guess as to what I should do. Not ideal.

- In the middle of the campaign I found a few adventures where the tests seemed really lopsided. The thresholds for passing them were too high too fast - I didn't have any time in the adventure to build up my prepared cards or inspiration tokens to mitigate things. I'm ok with it being hard, but one whole adventure for me was impossible to win.

Overall, the goods outweigh the bads. To a pretty large degree. I just wanted to make you aware of what those negatives are in case they're a bigger deal to you. 4/5

REPLAYABILITY
Let's be honest: this is a FFG game and will have a zillion expansions. There will be new characters to control, new enemies to fight (one expansion already announced), and new campaigns to play through (I believe there is one of these announced already too). There will be a lot of replayability through expansions. But what about the core box?

The nice thing about how the app takes care of things is that even if you replay a scenario, it's not exactly the same. The map set up is different, side quests might come at you at different parts of the campaign (there was one that I saw in my first adventure in a multiplayer game and in my last adventure in my solo one), and items/titles will be found at different points in the story. A second playthrough will maintain the same main story, but it will be laid out at least slightly differently and the extra stuff won't look the same either. Add to that the fact that there are significant choices you need to make that you might make differently another time. Plus, when you lose an adventure, you don't replay it, you continue on. How does a loss or win affect the next adventures? Pretty significantly, in my experience. Plus, there are 6 playable characters in the core box for you to try out and see which collection of them works the best for you (do I like Gimili best with Legolas or Beravor?). All of this to say that yes, this game comes with a lot of replayability in the core box. 5/5

FUN
This is what it all comes down to, isn't it? No matter how pretty or innovative a game is, if it's not fun, what's the point?

If I had to break down this game into percentages, I'd say that about 10% was frustration with the tests, 10% was looking at the screen too much, 5% was placing tokens, and 75% was actually playing the game and having fun. Considering that Gloomhaven, my number one game, is about 50% setting up tokens and 50% having fun, that's not a bad ratio. Although, Gloomhaven is definitely a tighter, more strategic, more indepth game, with better choices. 

That being said, I really did enjoy this game. I like games that utitlize cards instead of dice and I think LOTR makes some great strides in how they use the skill deck. There is a lot of mystery and exploration which keeps you guessing. It's very exciting to me to search a token, get a high test success, and end up with a really cool title that you get to prepare right then. That to me is reminiscent of Middle-earth, where you stumble upon wonderful magic, powerful artifacts, and dangerous allies. This is not a perfect game by any means, but it is really well done. I'm excited to see what comes down the pipes with the expansions, if they add any minor mechanic changes that will tighten up the problems and if their next campaigns are a little more engaging. 7/10

TOTAL SCORE - 25/30

In my opinion, there are a few thematic and mechanical mistakes in this game, but there is a lot of good stuff here. I really enjoyed my solo playthrough and have already started a second one (this time controlling the four heroes I haven't used yet - a little much, but I've used 10 before in Black Plague, so why not?).

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