This is an excellent game for two folks holed up together trying to survive a pandemic – with a couple assumptions: 1) You either have to have at least one person who is fairly confident with tabletop games and will be responsible for learning a pretty complex rule system – or at least be willing to dedicate a pretty decent amount of time understanding the rules. 2) You understand that this game is a whole system, where you will continue to buy new scenarios and campaigns and is absolutely not a one-time investment Provided the above are true, this is a very fun strategic co-op game. This core set is actually our second set. We have been playing as a couple for about a year and a half now and we finally gave in and bought a second core set. Unless you are a person with a lot of money on your hands who wants the absolute best experience, don't buy two core sets for two players right off the bat. Definitely start with just one core set, do those scenarios and see how you feel about the game. This review will talk about the game as a system, not just the core set. TYPE OF GAMEPLAY This is technically a deck-building game, however it is very easy to find suggested decks online so if that isn't your thing, that's okay. I don't like deck-building so I often do that and then tweak as I go on. My partner loves deck-building, so he builds his own. Sometimes he manages to make terrible decks and we struggle, but that’s fun for him. There is a lot of cohesion opportunity with mechanics so if you are the kind of person who likes to maximize systems you will probably find that very satisfying in this game. You can pick a type of character you really like and keep rolling with that style, or you can try new things. If you want to play a character that's all fight you definitely can. You DO have to consider team composition though and will struggle if you play with two players and both want to be all fight all the time. LEVEL OF COMPLEXITY I'll be real, the rules are complex. We have been playing for over a year and while we understand the game well we do still sometimes have to stop and look up the exact order a certain event may happen in. Every scenario we play there is at least one quick google search to see how other's thing a particular card interaction should work. It's not bad, but it is cumbersome. Most of the time you don't notice it once you get in a groove, but when you have to stop to look something up it can bring the game to a grinding halt which has been frustrating before. LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY I would recommend this game for people who are already tabletop gamers, or are willing to be a good sport. You might fail in this game, and you might fail a lot. The good thing is that there are multiple settings for difficultly. If your crew is the type that wants to do everything the hard way then they can play with the hard rules, if you want to just enjoy the story and not feel like you could lose at any minute then play on easy. We play on standard and it's usually fine. We have had a couple scenarios that just seem totally unnecessarily punishing but that's okay. It's normal to not succeed at every single scenario in a campaign. The rules and the campaigns are laid out very well that your choices, your successes and your failures all matter and that can be really fun to see payoff later in the campaign. TEAM You will have to select a "lead investigator" who will take their turn first. At the beginning I'd recommend having that be the person most comfortable with the rules. There is also some notetaking that has to happen, so having the other person take charge of that is a nice way to split responsibilities. SPOOKINESS The content of this game is obviously inspired by the world of Lovecraft. If you don't like the Occult, you won't like this game. If you don't like spooky, you might not like it or you might be fine with it. There's always "Barkham Asylum" which is a cute spinoff of this game that is with dogs and cats. If you have a friend who might want to play but is put off by the content, maybe start with that. If they end up finding the gameplay compelling enough you might get them to join the regular game later. The Forgotten Age is also more tomb-raidery/Indiana Jonesy so that might also be a good entry point for those folks. DIVERSITY IN MAIN CHARACTERS Board games can be hit or miss when it comes to showing varied and complex characters that don't all look the same. I am a woman (a white cis woman if that lens is helpful to you as a reader), and I like to play as women in games if I can. I have played as a woman character in every campaign we have done. I have enjoyed every single one of those characters. The core set comes with three female characters and two male. Further campaigns seem generally balanced, sometimes having slightly more male characters or slightly more female characters. I believe in the core set and the first campaign (Dunwich Legacy) all the women are white. That does change later but it's still a little limited. That being said, you don't have to do the campaigns in order of release, so if you want a particular character, you can buy that campaign and play with her in any other campaign. To my knowledge there are no explicitly mentioned non-binary characters and sexuality isn't mentioned for any characters except if it’s a part of their backstory (I can only think of one person off the top of my head and that's Mark Harrigan who seems to be straight). Racism, sexism and homophobia do not appear to have been used as plot points at all in this game (at least in the campaigns I have played). While I would call this game dark and gritty, I wouldn't say it’s the type of dark that is used as an excuse to be gross to groups of people so that's nice. There are a couple cards that borrow from themes of Native Americans without a lot of context. The campaign I am currently playing (The Forgotten Age) does discuss indigenous peoples. I believe the people in that campaign are fictional and because I haven't finished the campaign I can't say whether I think there are any missteps with how it's been handled. CONCLUSION All in all, I love this game. It's challenging, its interesting, but it can be cumbersome. If it's worth it for you to do a bit of work and pay quite a bit of money, then it's a nice way to spend quality time with the person you are stuck social-distancing with. Much to our chagrin, our cats love it too and often cause havoc at the table (there are some little bits and pieces that they find attractive). In the pic I included we are using special upgraded tokens that we purchased. This set comes with cardboard tokens. Because the campaigns are long and interesting I think we will replay them once we have finished all the ones that are currently out, so long term there is some replay ability but probably not right away. Playing as different characters would definitely add some novelty as well.
