I have to admit that I am coming into Gloomhaven kind of ignorant. I thought this looked like a cool dungeon crawler-style RPG, but I would then learn it is based on a very popular tabletop game. It can be hard for a video game to replicate a tabletop game, but from what I have seen Gloomhaven is doing a very admirable job.
How to Download Gloomhaven
You can download the game from Steam or from GOG. Click on the Download button located below this review.
The Game Review
You can either play this on your own where you control just one or up to four adventurers. Of course, you can also play with your friends in up to four-player co-op. The game has you trying to complete quests and build up the town of Gloomhaven. It is not actually as plot-heavy as I thought it would be.
Do not get me wrong, as a Scotsman myself, I got a huge kick out of the Scottish narrator who would give the details of each quest. However, if you are expecting a big Souls or Baulders Gate like story, you have come to the wrong place. Still, there is enough here to get you invested in each quest that you are going on.
There are 17 different classes that you can play your adventurer as. Each class as you would expect has their own style as well as deck of cards to use for various actions. What is neat in the campaign is that your adventurers will level up and improve, but they will also age and have to retire. This means that they will be replaced by a new adventurer, this is something I thought was pretty cool.
The combat in the game is something that took me a while to get used to. Combat is interesting in that on the surface it is very simple to figure out, but there is way more depth here than it seems. It is card-based and you get to select two cards for each adventurer in a turn.
Each card has two actions, one at the top and one at the bottom. You need to pick the action from the top of one card and the bottom of the next. Picking the wrong one can lead to disaster, so you do have to try and think a few moves ahead. Cards are then either discarded or burned, burned cards are out of the game!
One thing that felt a tad unfair was that there was no way to undo something you did by mistake. So, if you move to the wrong place or if you accidentally select the wrong action on a card you are stuck with it! This I felt was a tad harsh and an option to undo it before you locked in what you wanted to do would have been nice.
As well as the campaign, Gloomhaven also has a mode called, Guildmaster Mode. Guildmaster Mode is not really story-driven and you just go on endless quests with your buddies. Things are randomized and there is also a level designer which talented people from the games community are taking great advantage of. This is the mode that is perfect to jump in and play with your buddies.
Even though I have never played the tabletop game, Gloomhaven as a video game is something I think is very cool. I like the whole fantasy style of the game and found the card-based combat system to be fun once I got more skilled at it. If you like tabletop games and want to play a solid video game rendition of one, check this out!
