Gloomhaven is a massive “legacy” board game where you and your friends go through a campaign of defeating monsters, finding treasures, unlocking new characters and improving them as you make decisions, try to complete long term and short term quests and strategize around resource management, incomplete information and progressively mounting odds. I had a great time playing through the physical version of the board game with my friends when it came out, but I was kinda apprehensive of the solo video game version; It is absolutely a “me” problem, but I do not have it in me to go through this whole game again.
For all intents and purposes, Gloomhaven (the video game) is a great adaptation of Gloomhaven (the board game), all the mechanics are there and they are represented well. The combat systems work perfectly fine and as you remember them (enemies were already working on some well defined logic, so it translates great on the computer screen), the turn-based aspect makes everything just feel as you remember, and there’s a layer of potential customization (special rules, more granular difficulty settings, etc.) that is also easier to manage in a digital version.
The core gameplay loop of picking two cards per turn, performing the top and bottom action in initiative order alongside monsters that predictably move and attack is still as fun, but I gotta say that the game loses a bit when played alone; you usually have personal per-player quests that can be contradictory or create tension but now you have to juggle them all in your head, and your card picks for the turn can be coordinated (while they usually are secret) which makes for an easier experience but it increases in complexity.
The game also has to deal with the constraints of certain mechanics that really need to be explicitly checked while others do not have this affordance (for obvious reasons); you’ll have to confirm whether you take damage or burn cards every single time you take a hit while at the same time if you misclick and move less spaces than you wanted - or use the wrong part of a card, there are no takebacks. Both of these things aren’t an issue in a physical game, but these are the limits of computer versions, sometimes. (All that being said, these are not big issues).
Ultimately, at around the third map, I remembered how many hours this would take. The campaign in Gloomhaven is long and fraught with discoveries, progression, encounters and upgrades and even trying to blitz through it would’ve taken me too long, for an experience I already had on cardboard back in the day. This game is pretty great, so if you haven’t played it and enjoy big chunky board games, I wholeheartedly recommend it. I might try Frosthaven when that comes out instead!
