My score on Descent changes when inclusive of Road to Legend. I'll post another view on Road to Legend when I get to it under Road to Legend.

This is a review of Descent: Journeys in the Dark and applies as well to Altar of Despair which we played in addition to the basic set after we got it.

The basic breakdown of Descent is as follows

Materials-6
Rules Presentation-7
Gameplay-9
Personal Tilt-5
Replayability-8
Usefulness-7

Final Total - 7

Materials - This game comes with a ton of miniatures, and I mean a TON. The same could apply to the amount of board it comes with as well as the number of cards it comes with. The box itself is massive, bieng like a 3x1.5 ft box (approximation) in order to hold it all, and that still is close to not being able to hold it. This may seem like a gameplayer's dream with all the stuff it comes with, but the materials are sadly lacking.

I got figures which were broken (particularly the bane spider miniatures seemed to be fond of being broken off their bases), figures which you had to assemble but didn't fit together (I had one dragon that had it's wings go on nicely, one which had it's wings which almost need to be glued on, and a Demon's wings which could not fit in without great modifications in order to fit the wings in), and figures that came incomplete of all their parts (one of my dragons came without a pair of wings to put on it!) in order to assemble them together. The miniatures in that aspect, are poor.

There is no set board that comes with this game. Instead the pieces come as parts that you can set up like puzzle pieces, enabling you to set up a board however you want. For those who have used Dungeon Tiles for D&D games, the pieces and concept follow that idea, except the peices actually connect together like a puzzle fits together. It's a basic one type of puzzle slot, so pieces easily are interchangeable. It's a great idea, but there are some problems. First, these board pieces are only slightly more durable than a typical puzzle piece, and are slightly thicker. In otherwords, these pieces lack the normal durability of a normal gameboard (Dungeon Tiles in this aspect actually are much superior to these board pieces). There are many of them, and putting together a dungeon can be fun, but you have to be careful, or like puzzle pieces, they will tear.

To represent different aspects of your characters, and of the game itself, there is a TON of cardboard. There is cardboard to represent chests, cardboard to represent characters, cardboard to represent gold, cardboard to represent life and fatigue, cardboard to represent terrain, in otherwords, a LOT of cardboard. It's equal quality card board to that which composes the actual boardgame portion, so it's a higher quality cardboard...but it's still...cardboard.

The cards are made of typical cardstock used in playing cards, so nothing special, they are just cards.

And then you have several special types of dice which come and are used specifically for Descent.

The cardboard in it's usage kind of brings down the score, as I'm no big fan of massive amounts of cardboard in a game (especially paying 80 dollars for a game of cardboard), but considering all the other components, that's not the main detractor. The fact that of the state of the gamepieces such as the miniatures IS a major factor, as well as to the quality of the playing board. There's a LOT there...but it's not the highest quality.

Materials get a score of 6.


Rules Presentation - The rules are not the greatest or smoothest written rules, but they get the job done. They are decent, and above average. It's a lot of rules kept in a small space in comparison. There are two booklets (three if you include Altar of Despair), one which discusses the rules themselves, and the second which describes scenarios. The Game itself is somewhat like D&D or an RPG in this setup (but the game is far different, as the Overlord wants to kill the players, instead of running the game) as a scenario (like a module or adventure) is set up from a booklet which describes where everything is and what occurs. When setting up a game, you follow the instructions of the second booklet, and build the dungeon. There are 9 scenarios in the base games, and 6 scenarios in expansions. There's nothing bad about the rules, but nothing really stellar that stands out either. It's straightforward, and though a few questions arise occasionally, overall it does a nice job of explainin how to play.

It scores a 7 in this area.


Gameplay - The game is composed of two factions. The first is the one who creates the dungeon, and controls the traps and creatures of that dungeon. This is played by one player called the Overlord. The second faction is a group of players that cooperate to defeat the dungeon, and in this manner, the Overlord.

The Overlord has some rules of which they have to abide by. Other than that, anything goes for the Overlord. The goal of the Overlord is to make the other faction (the heroes) fail. Each turn he get's cards with different abilities on them (such as spawning creatures which allows him to add monsters to the dungeon at whim) which the Overlord can play in order to hinder, hurt, or kill Heroes. If he can kill them enough times, or wipe them all off the board, he wins.

The players cooperate to defeat creatures, open chests, and reach the end of the dungeon and complete their final goals. They have a number of spaces they can move, or they can attack, or rest, or if they are near a teleportation glyph, teleport to town and back. They have choices of powers to use with Melee, Range and Magic. They also draw three skills that they will be able to use throughout the game.

As they progress they gain equipment and experience. ALL experience gains such as improving a stat or gaining a skill is done via money. In order to increase these areas, you have to pay for them 500 gold for a stat, 1000 for a skill. In addition, they have what are called conquest tokens. Each time they die, they lose some of these. In addition, there is a sort of time limit, ruled by the Overlord's deck. When the Overlord has to reshuffle the deck (aka he runs out of cards to draw) they lose some conquest tokens. When they run out of conquest tokens, the Heroes lose the game.

The game runs smoothly, and there is very little downtime. The scenarios tend to be balanced in favor of one faction or another, but the variety adds flavor. It is NOT played like an RPG however, heroes played this way will typically lead that faction to lose the game. It is played as a tactical game of faction vs. faction.

Combat runs by rolling a number of dice. A person's weapons decide what type of dice they roll, and then they add a number of power dice (each stat has an amount of powerdice related to it, when they use a weapon with that stat, they add that amount of powerdice to the weapon's dice) to determine how much damage they do. Damage is reduced by armor points (1 armor point per damage) and then the rest applied to wounds. A fairly simple method of combat, but effective.

Players can find gold, chests and potions, along with stumbling across traps placed by the overlord, and other such devious acts.

The biggest downfall is that only one player can be the Overlord. Being the Overlord is somewhat like being a Dungeon creator (like the PC games where the player makes their own dungeons to destroy the heroes) and is it's own unique and individual game. In my opinion it's the most unique portion about this game.

That means everyone else has to play one of the heroes. This leads to my own personal tilt which I'll put below, but overall the gameplay flows smoothly, the mechanics work, and it inspires a lot of player interaction.

It scores a 9.

Personal Tilt - My personal tilt is a little lower than average. When I played the Heroes I kept on thinking, why don't I just play an RPG, or another better RPG like Boardgame such as 3.5, or Runebound. There was nothing really special about this game when I was playing the Hero that set it above any of the others. It's not bad, but it's like a tactics game where you only control one of several characters. I always enjoy employing the full team, instead of a small portion of it. Since there is very little OTHER than tactics, as it is not an RPG, that means that control on the heroes part feels somewhat limited. It doesn't really make me excited about the experience. I actually felt somewhat disappointed as I played, thinking..."this is it?" while I moved my piece about. It makes for a lot more coordination and conversation amongst the players, since you have to coordinate as a squad, but I just don't feel like I really have any control.

As the Overlord it's like playing Dungeon Creator. You get a handful of cards, draw more cards each time, and have a blast. It's the most unique portion of the game, yet you don't have the full tools as a DM does in an RPG (which is a good thing since then all you'd have to do is do some event to kill the heroes and they'd be dead), and in that you can feel a little limited at times. However it is definately fun to play the Overlord, so much so that eventually everyone will want to play as the OL, and no one will want to play as the Heroes...which means no one will agree, and so no one plays. It's unfortunate that the game really is designed only for one player to be the Overlord, as that's the most inventive portion of the game.

I did do a few where me and my wife switched back and forth playing the overlord, against two other players. That was fun, but led to downtime on the turns where I, or her, weren't playing as the Overlord.

So overall, I find it's fun for one player, but merely okay for the others.

It scores a 5.


Replayability - Since the gameboard is changeable to whatever a scenario depicts (or once you master it, however the OverLord depicts), it should lead to endless replayability. There IS a LOT of replayability with this game. However, unless you feel like designing your own scenarios, you are limited to the ones included. This means 9 games total (+6 per expansion). For 80 dollars, that's not that many play times. I suppose you could play scenarios over and over again, and I think you could have fun as they would replay differently as the Overlord plays different cards.

In addition there are many different heroes to choose from, and if you design your own scenarios, the different layouts that you can do are tremendous in number. You can make it so no dungeon design is ever the same, and since the cards are random, the OL will never play the exact same sequence normally.

There is tremendous replayability, but the restrictions of the rules, make it so that there still seems quite a bit that stays the same. However it is superior in how replayable it is, hence it gets a higher score.

It scores an 8.

Usefulness - As mentioned aboe, the problems with our playing it was that it resembles an RPG enough that we wonder why we aren't playing an RPG instead of Descent. It's not an RPG, but a tactics game, however, it still brings to mind that RPG idea. It's not designed to be one, and so that makes it feel restrictive.

As a tactics game, it also feels restrictive to the players, as they don't control their own squads, but only a single mini, whilst the overlord controls a virtual army. In that light, it's not really a complete tactics game, or RPG, but a cooperative tactics game. If you are looking for a cooperative tactics game, then this might be the game for you, otherwise it feels...lacking.

The Overlord is great to play, but only one player can be the Overlord at one time.

It's rather easy to set up the game, rather easy just to fall into playing it, and easy to spend some hours using it. If you only play each scenario in the base game once, that's around 9 dollars an evening. If you use your own inventiveness, or play scenarios multiple times, you get a LOT more for your money.

You have to be looking for a cooperative tactics style game or you will feel like it's not worth it however, and so unless the group is feeling that they want to play that style of a game, you might want to pass.

It's still a superior game for it's usefulness, in that it is easier to get everyone situated (for an experienced OL) for a gaming night than many other games, but due to how much a player might actually want to play dependant on their desires of gaming that night, it leads to a slight detraction.

It scores a 7.


So in the final summary, the game has lower than normal quality materials, has superior gameplay, but due to the way it's designed, makes it so that the funnest role of the game can only be played by one person (which I would call a flaw of game design). It has a great deal of replayability, but only for those who are in a cooperative tactics gamestyle mode. It would seem the game is slightly above average, but not a grandiose or stellar game.

It's final score is a 7.