Get ready for your monstrous night (or day), or just experience. MONSTROUS. Some monstrous size pizza, monstrous size tabletop, monstrous size of that nonalcoholic Juice (whatever that means to you) to spend Monster Time with Yourself or with your Monster Friends, Monster Kids, Monster Wife, Monster Grandma or your Imaginary Monster Friend or any other monster that you invite to play this – they will be all Monstrously happy to be here with you, my little Monster.
To the horror and mystery lovers – this would include ourselves, Eldritch Horror board game is the one that we cherish in our collection. A fully cooperative, all vs the game type for 1 to 8 players. Yes, this is a solo game as well. You and your friends are investigating strange, mysterious, paranormal events all over the world, soon to learn about the Ancient One – a monster lurking in another dimension, and attempts to summon it that will likely bring us all doom.
But not everyone thinks that way. Cultists, other strange individuals, and groups keep working its way to spawn monsters, and eventually – the Ancient One. You need to prevent it, defeat those monsters, close spawn gates before the entity is summoned, or else, defeat it, or try dying. I mean Die Trying.
Be prepared to spend quite some time with Eldritch Horror, as average playtime is 2-3 hours (general rule of thumb – 40 min. Per player). Each player selects one of 12 investigators that do possess differentiated special abilities and stats. Upgrade yourselves, cooperate with others to solve those quests and tests, combat monsters, and close monster spawning gates.
Fun
This is another Arkham Horror saga game, that is a more “streamlined” version than its ancestor, which is incredibly well-made creation. Great both for solo, and for a group experience. It has a rather strong storyline that drags people deep into the game, that sense of global danger, combined with detailed game progression stories onto each and every card.
On top of that, the mechanical, balance stuff is well implemented as well. There are plenty of chance mechanics, as well as strategy elements, such as unique 5 traits – Lore, Influence, Observation, Strength, and Will. And players are constantly testing themselves these attributes with dice (Attridubte number on your investigator’s sheet indicates how many dices to throw – much like in the Betrayal at House on the Hill. So in this game players are planning their way to buff themselves, to increase those chances of winning tests, that eventually increase your chances to finish quests and win the game.
So all of those small elements that we just described, produce a very solid experience, journey through the game that you actually want to repeat, despite the outcome of the game. But in very few cases, this might not always be true. The first X-variable is Experience that helps to enjoy the game more. It sometimes happens that “the chance lottery” of rolling dice is not that favorable to you today, and this could make your life miserable unless you got some experience and can push your “no luck” towards “all calculated, Ye Baby Ye” mood/scenario.
But if you don’t, well the game is long, and sometimes at first 45 minutes of playtime, you could notice your astonishingly low probability to win the game, that makes it just less fun to spend the rest 90 minutes of the game enjoying how miserable you are. So there you have it, this is what sometimes happens when Rather Long Playtime meets Chance. Do not give up, sometimes those super bad rolls turn the opposite in the second half of the game, in the end, to have it all balanced-out.
Replay value
One of the things that we enjoy about Eldritch Horror board game is differentiation. Besides the 12 investigators to choose from, there are 4 Ancient Ones, that you can select to fight against. Each of them is very unique in terms of their abilities, “Killer flavor”, effects, as well as representing varying game difficulty. On top of that, each Ancient one got at least 4 quest cards, and 3 of them are required to be resolved in order to win the game.
As the result, based on these variations, we would say you could have at least a few games, with the same investigator character, and the same Ancient one, that would be quiet unique and different experiences. Moreover, there are like 10 different decks of cards that you can use to provide different storylines and progression of the game. We just want to point out what ton of replay value the game offers. It would probably take less time for components to wear-off rather than getting bored due to the same stuff in the game. No worries, the quality of components is good, we are not trying to twist any meaning here!
Art & parts
There are so many components in the game!. Many different tokens, like 10 different types, card piles – like 10 different types, as well as the huge 10 game boards!!!! Just kidding, 1 game board – but a huge one! And about tokens and card decks – it was the truth!
The arts are crafty and good looking – tokens are thick, differently shaped and are great to interact with. Each investigator got its own little heart and brain tokens – representing their physical and mental health. Investigator and the Ancient Ones’ card sheets look just superb.
On top of that, each of them gots its own background story, even stories of death in case it would happen, which are of course multiple alternatives for every character ((short versions examples – I.e. “Dark pact with some supernatural entities has gone wrong”, death from physical injury, psychosis – all of which are described in a detailed enough manner).
Moreover, these details, expand towards every card element of the game – there are lots of little stories that your character becomes a part of – the immersion is real! You could even have nightmares, horror-comedy-parody style leftovers somewhere in your head, in your sleep.
We will not elaborate very much about the quality of the components – because it is good and we do not really have any concerns about it. It meets the requirements – cards, investigator, Ancient ones’ sheets are clear and visible. The only negative impressions that are spotted by some board gamers were a little too small text on cards and some tokens size, that it is sometimes hard to see the details, especially with less light in a room.
Eldritch Horror colorblindness review
Moving forward, let us do a very brief Eldritch Horror board game colorblindness review (read below). It seems that this game is playable (rating B). To verify that, let us evaluate some. Health and Clue tokens are red & green colored, but all of them got numbers or signs, plus they are differently shaped. The only inconvenience that we see are location colors and location card decks, particularly in relation to Europe, and American locations. Please note that the images below simulate the strongest, extreme colorblindness, based on its type.
Looking at the images above, we can see that Deuteranope and Protanope has a very similar color view between American and European location borders, as well as card backs. But, even with high-level colorblindness, this does not limit the gameplay, as every location card back shows capital images of respective regions. On top of that, the face-up cards indicate city names, so in case you picked the wrong deck – you can always immediately swap the card, without reading its content. So it seems it can only affect your time rather than the possibilities to play the game, we, therefore, assign a colorblindness rating of B (Playable). Please note that if you come across a different impression or experience about colorblindness, please report it to us here. We will update our information!
Colorblindness rating: B (Playable)
Price
Finally, let us discuss the price vs what you get ratio. For casual retail price without discounts (we do not disclose the average price in the text due to its fluctuations) you get a lot of qualitative components, as well as the value of the board game itself is TREMENDOUS. We think that even without a discount – the board game is worth your money. So if you happen to spot any sell-out – it is certainly worth grabbing it!