I am a big fan of Bram Stoker's original Dracula. When I stumbled across FFG's remade Fury of Dracula here on BGG, I was intrigued. I'd been thinking of acquiring a "deduction" game for some time, but when I found this the question was settled. The wife's stamp of approval sealed the deal.

Firstly, in the spirit of full disclosure, I shall declare that:

1. I really enjoy this game and would recommend it.
2. I've only played it 5 times.
3. I've only played it with 2 players (myself and my wife), and from that experience, I imagine that it only gets better when there are more. (Dracula would certainly have some advantage in hearing the hunters' discussions out loud, rather than them all being conducted inside my wife's head!)

Disclaimers aside, here's how this review is laid out:

1. Premise: What's the story?
2. Rules/Mechanics: How does this game play?
2. Components: Is the thing an eyesore?
3. Complaints: What's wrong with the game?
4. Praises: What's right with the game?
5. Verdict: Is it worth it?

Enough blathering. On to the meat!

Premise

Dracula was killed eight years ago by an intrepid band of tenacious hunters. Or was he? Somehow he's arisen again and is on the loose in Europe. He must be stopped!

The game is set eight years after the close of Stoker's book, and frankly, I wish it was set within the book's timeline instead, even if it meant that players might end up "rewriting the ending" sometimes. I'm something of a "story purist", and following the definitive and glorious conclusion to Stoker's book, this plotline just doesn't make any sense, particularly given that no attempt is made to explain how exactly Dracula was reincarnated after being decisively killed by the hunters at the end of the book. (I quote from the rulebook: "Somehow the Lord of Vampires has survived to plot his terrible revenge upon an unsuspecting living world.") I would rather the game simply purport to play out the final chase at the end of the book as an "alternate ending". For the vast majority of people, this is a complete non-issue, but pedants like me will be mildly irritated about it. However, I'm happy to report that even I am able to forget about this offense against literature in light of the game's actual play, so let us gloss over this blemish and move on to more substantive discussions.

Rules/Mechanics

Dracula is on the loose in Europe. Four Hunters are on his trail, trying to locate and destroy him. Dracula's goal is to advance his "Vampire Track" to 6 points; the Hunters' cooperative goal is to kill Dracula before this happens. Each turn represents part of a day: Dawn, Noon, Dusk, Twilight, Midnight, and the Small Hours. Every time Dracula begins his turn, he advances the Day/Night marker by one position, and every time a new day dawns, the Vampire track is advanced by 1 point. Time is not on the Hunters' side in this game.

A game turn looks roughly like this:

Dracula moves.
Dracula moves secretly, using a "location card" deck provided for the purpose. There is one card for each location on the board, so Dracula selects the location he wants to move to, places it facedown, and places an Encounter upon it. Up to six facedown locations are left on the board, and these comprise Dracula's Trail: whenever a Hunter moves to one of these locations, Dracula must reveal the location and also any Encounters on it for the Hunters to deal with. Once a location reaches the end of the trail (the sixth card), it drops off the board and returns to Dracula's location deck for reuse. In addition to cities and towns, Dracula also has location cards for sea zones, which are blue on the back (instead of tan) so that Hunters always know when Dracula has gone to sea, even if they might not know exactly where. Furthermore, Dracula loses blood (health) and cannot use any special powers when sailing due to his weakness to running water and lack of available victims to feed upon.

Dracula places an Encounter.
After moving, Dracula leaves an Encounter on his location (unless he's at sea). Encounters include things such as Agents (Dracula's minions, which the Hunters must fight), Plague (Hunter loses health), Fog (Hunter is stuck in the location until the end of the next turn, and others cannot enter the location), new Vampires (if they make it all the way to the end of Dracula's Trail without being destroyed by Hunters, the Vampire Track advances by 2 points!), and so forth. After placing the Encounter, it's the Hunters' turn.

Hunter moves.
The Hunters each get a turn in player order, consisting firstly of Movement and then of an Action phase (described in the next section). Each Hunter moves by either Road, Sea, or Rail. Roads are reliable, but they only move you one space. To move by rail, the Hunter must roll the train die, which will result in the ability to move 1 rail segment, 2, or 2/3 (3 if in Western Europe, only two if in Eastern Europe). The die also has a 0 on it, which means the Hunter cannot move by train but still has the option of using a road or the sea. Lastly, the die has an X side, which indicates the Hunter is delayed over his travelling papers and loses the rest of his turn. The sea is useful for moving long distances, but Hunters cannot resupply, rest, or trade while at sea.

Hunter takes Action phase.
If a Hunter arrives in a location that's still in Dracula's Trail, that location is revealed and the Hunter must deal with any Encounters Dracula left behind. If Dracula himself is there, then a fight ensues between the Hunter(s) at the location and Dracula. Conversely, if there were no encounters at the location, the Hunter can do one of three things:

1. Resupply (draw new Event or Item cards),
2. Trade cards freely with other Hunters in the same location, or
3. Rest to regain health.

Once a Hunter completes his Action phase, it's the next Hunter's turn, until all have played. Then Dracula advances the Night/Day track, and the game continues.


Combat
Combat occurs when a Hunter encounters one of Dracula's agents or the Dark One himself. Combat is resolved using a combination of cards and dice: the cards indicate how you're going to fight (e.g. Punch, Rifle, Stake, etc.), and the dice define who wins the round of combat. Each Hunter has a collection of basic Tactics: Punch, Dodge, and Escape. Additionally, they can collect a variety of other Items to help them in their fight, such as Pistol, Crucifix, Holy Water, Stake, and more. Dracula always has the same combat cards available to him, but he is restricted in what he can use depending on what time it is (day or night). During the daytime, Dracula's options are severely limited: he can only use 3 out of his 8 combat cards (Claws, Dodge, and Escape As Man). Combat is resolved by each player secretly choosing a combat card to use for the round, then rolling a die to see which player wins the combat. The winner looks on his card to see what the effect is--the outcome is dependent on what the other player played. For instance, suppose the Hunter played "Punch", and Dracula played "Mesmerize". The Hunter wins the roll, and looks up "Mesmerize" on his "Punch" card to see what happens. The result indicates that Dracula takes one wound (loses one blood), and the combat continues with the Hunter and Dracula each selecting a new combat card (players cannot play the same combat card two rounds in a row, but can reuse the cards after that).


One interesting mechanic is that while there are Event cards for Dracula, he can never draw directly from the Event deck--he only receives cards when the Hunters draw them as part of their resupply action. Dracula's event cards (which have a bat on the back) are shuffled together with the Hunter's event cards (with a cross on the back) to form the event deck. The Hunters must draw from the bottom of the deck so that they never know which one they're going to get, though drawing cards is always optional (so if a Hunter isn't in the mood to chance it, they aren't forced to draw). There are twice as many Hunter events as Dracula events, and many Hunter events greatly enhance their ability to track and hinder Dracula, so it's usually still quite worthwhile to draw events even though you might end up helping Dracula. However, you have to be careful, because Dracula has some extremely powerful events as well, including "Evasion", which allows him to instantly move to any location on the board! Nothing is worse than being one or two cities behind Dracula and suddenly have the trail vanish into thin air.

Dracula must move every turn, and he cannot double back over his trail since he one has one location card for each location on the board. However, he does have certain special powers he can use in lieu of playing an actual location card. These include Hide, which looks just like a location on the back but actually allows Dracula to stay in one place and leave an extra Encounter before moving on. Also, there is a Double Back power that allows him to return to a location currently in his trail (provided it's a legal move away from his current location), but Double Back is double-sided, so the Hunters know when Dracula has used it. Likewise, Dracula can play Feed to regain blood (health), Wolf Form to move twice in a single turn, and Dark Call to get better encounters (which are drawn randomly).


Components

I have no major complaints about the components of this game. The (unpainted) miniatures are nice, the location cards look great, the event cards look okay, and the many cardboard chits are superb. My favorite component by far, however, is the board itself. The artwork on the board is very tastefully done and in addition to being pleasant to look at it is also eminently usable and quickly readable. A nice bonus component is a small reference map for Dracula--essentially just a miniature picture of the game board on a smaller card, this allows the Dracula player to plan his secret move without having to stare at the section of the board where he's at, potentially giving away his position to the keen Hunters.

The only even minor complaint I have about the components is that some of the cardboard chits were a little over the top--for example, do we really need human heart-shaped chits to act as "health" markers for the Hunters? There's not much attractive about a human heart. Something simpler would have been both more pleasant to look at and easier to see at a glance on the characters sheets. Nevertheless, this really is quite an insubstantial complaint and does not apply to most of the components in this well-produced game.


Complaints

That said, onward to my real gripes about the game! They are as follows, in descending order of severity:

1. The rulebook is not always straightforward. I find the rulebook to be somewhat poorly organized. It's certainly not horrendous, but it's definitely not great either. I think it's on par with the only other of Fantasy Flight's games that I've played, Game of Thrones. Fury of Dracula's rulebook might be just slightly worse, but then I've had to refer to it much more often than I did A Game of Thrones'. There are a lot of rules in this game, and a better-organized rulebook (or even a basic index) would have been helpful.

2. There is a steep learning curve for new players regarding events/items/encounters. There is a lot of text in this game, kind of like this review. There are 18 different types of encounters that Dracula can leave behind for Hunters to find and resolve, each of which has 2-3 sentences of explanation (helpfully provided on the back of the rulebook--this is one good aspect of the rulbook; without this reference, trying to choose which encounters to leave behind as Dracula would be horrible). Plus there is an entire deck of Events and Allies (both for Hunters and Dracula), plus Hunter Items, plus Tactics cards (your combat abilities), and then there are all the ways that opposing Tactics cards interact with each other (the effect of your Tactic card depends on the one played by your opponent). It's a lot of text for the new player to absorb (which is not to say you need to absorb it all before playing--see details below). At this point, I think that the encounters could have been vastly simplified--most of them are minor variations on the same theme--but without having played it a lot more, I would be hesitant to make the change myself. (Maybe the minor nuances really do make a difference to the expert player.) Likewise events, though there's more variation in what the events do. Items, however, are something that you really have to play with in order to learn. Each Item or combat card does certain things depending on what the other player plays, so in order to inform your decision about which card to play in combat, it helps immensely to have some idea what your opponents cards might do to you if he wins. I am getting the hang of it after 5 games, but I often still don't have a clue what the best card is to play if I'm trying to be defensive, even if I know which cards my opponent has.

3. Balance. It's very early for me to tell for sure, but we think this game is slightly biased in Dracula's favor. If you play with the original rules that a matured new vampire scores 2 points on the Vampire track, the Hunters really have to be on their toes and get a small dose of luck in their favor to win the game. We started playing with the optional rule that new vampires only score 1 point, and it's more balanced then. Fortunately this is a minor complaint, because the rulebook contains several suggestions for altering game balance--both in Dracula's favor as well as the Hunters'.

4. Game length. The game definitely takes the 2-3 hours advertised on the box, and sometimes it stretches beyond that to the point that it's overstaying its welcome a little. And yet other times Dracula gets caught unawares and mercilessly staked to death after only an hour...like last night. Not that I'm bitter or anything.


Praises

This game has a lot that's going for it, and the list below won't be comprehensive, but it'll at least cover the main bases.

1. The deduction mechanic. I used to enjoy Scotland Yard quite a bit, and in a major sense this is really a souped-up Scotland Yard with combat. The banter and bluffing between Dracula and the Hunters is very enjoyable. Additionally, there is more to the game for the Hunters than just finding Dracula--if he leaves a new Vampire as an encounter someplace, the Hunters must find it before the location drops off Dracula's Trail, else the Vampire Track advances by 2 points. These side-goals keep things tense for the Hunters, drawing them away from their ultimate goal of staking Dracula.

2. Dracula's secret movement. The location cards are brilliantly done. While in theory Dracula could cheat, in practice I think it would be very difficult to do so. Anytime the Hunters even suspect that he's cheating (for instance, they arrive in a city where Dracula should be but the player says he's not there), they can simply ask to see the location card from Dracula's deck. If the card is actually in the deck, then they know Dracula isn't lying, because there's only one card per location.

3. Theme. The theme is very well implemented in this game, and with my group, that's a must. (I actually traded away Tigris & Euphrates for this game--I liked T&E quite a bit, but it was too dry for my fellow gamers.) As the story pedant that I am, I feared that things like "flavor text" on the cards would be cheesy or just irritate me and kill the mood. However, I was pleased to find that my fears turned out to be (mostly) unfounded, and overall the theme is well done.

4. Strategic and tactical options. Dracula has quite a few options available to him, both strategically and tactically. It's quite fun trying out different strategies, either playing bold and sneaking in right behind the Hunters, or doing your best to stay as far away as possible. As I mentioned above, there is also quite a bit of choice in which Encounters you leave behind as Dracula, and sometimes this choice can save your...uh, un-life. (This doesn't change the fact that I think the number of distinct encounters could have been vastly reduced, but there is definitely a variety of options at Dracula's disposal for hindering the Hunters.) Likewise the Hunters face many choices: whether to chance travelling by Rail to cover more ground, whether to draw event cards (which might end up helping Dracula), whether to try dealing with that new Vampire at night (when they can potentially bite) or sit around waiting for daylight....I think that there is enough variation that replayability will be pretty good.

5. Minimal downtime. Once you get familiarized with the game, there really isn't much downtime, as turns go by quickly. Dracula in particular can always be working on his next move, reacting to what the Hunters do during their turns. Even though the game can stretch on for a long time, it usually doesn't feel that long since things continue to move.

Verdict

In closing, I will mention one or two points I've seen mentioned elsewhere here on BGG. Some folks complain about the randomness of the dice in combat resolution. I agree to a certain extent--the game does have the potential to come down to a die roll. In one of our games, Dracula's weakest agent (affectionately dubbed "the Knife Wench" by me due to the art on the encounter chit and her pathetic arsenal of weapons--viz., a knife) knocked one of the Hunters (Dr. Seward) down to half his health, even though Seward had some seriously lethal weapons at his dispoal (Stake was among them, if I recall correctly). Usually the hunters are able to easily smack down Dracula's agents, but the Knife Wench just kept making phenomenal rolls in combat, slowly whittling away at Dr. Seward. (In the end he got fed up and left Knife Wench in command of the field.) In this way, combat can be unpredictable. Yet I'm not convinced that it requires rules modifications to deal with. I guess the additional variation simply doesn't bother me too much. (Perhaps this will change when I lose a game because I couldn't roll a 6.)

Also, despite my complaint that the game is text-heavy and the rules can be tough to remember sometimes, I should mention that after a couple of plays this game really speeds up. The actual turns are pretty simple and straightforward; really the learning curve is in becoming familiar with the events and items. In that sense I compare it to Puerto Rico (a favorite of my gaming group): there are a bunch of buildings with special text that you need to become familiar with over time, but each turn itself is really quite simple.

My final verdict is a solid 8: I'll probably suggest it and won't turn down a game. It's absolutely worth purchasing if you like the Dracula mythos and are interested in a good deduction-based game.