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sean johnson
United States
avon
Indiana
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I get the feeling from browsing forum posts and comments on this website, that a lot of people have deck building burn out. However, as long as people keep buying them new ones will keep getting made. My wife and I are among the guilty for the constant influx of new deck building games. For instance, this the seventeenth game we have played and it is the fourth deck builder. In 2011, we got this as part of the Gen Con math trade. We did not know much about it, but it had deck building which we both like. It also has zombies which I like. Is it a game worth keeping though?
Game Overview
I am going to make a leap of faith and assume that if you are reading a blog posted on boardgamegeek, you have at least a passing familiarity with Dominion. Innovation is not Resident Evil's strong suit because it borrows heavily from Dominion. Like Dominion players start with ten cards, have a hand of five cards, get 1 action, 1 buy, and discard everything at the end of the turn. Resident Evil then builds on top of this formula. This game adds unique characters that all have their own special abilities. It all also adds a dual currency. The currency cards have both. There is gold, which is used to buy new cards and there is also ammo, which is used to power weapons. Weapons need to be powered to Explore which is the new element this game adds. The game has a "mansion deck" which consist of monsters. Each monster has a health that players must meet or beat with weapon damage. If they do this, they kill the monster and get to keep it for points. If they fail, the monster does damage to them. When a player's health is reduced to zero they come back in with a lower max health. If they would ever come back with their max health at zero then they are eliminated from the game. Assuming no one gets eliminated, the game continues until the big bad monster in the deck is killed. Once this happens, players add up points from killed monsters and that player wins. True to it's video game routes this game has three "game modes". Everything I described is for the base "story game mode". There is also a mercenary mode and versus mode. However, a lot of the base mechanics are the same.
The Game We Played
We played the story mode using one the scenario set ups. My wife played with Claire Redfield and I had Leon Kennedy. Her belief is that the penalty for failing to explore is minor, so she started exploring almost immediately and while she had some successes, she had some strokes of bad luck, and died twice. This meant or her max health was now 30, and failing to kill some of the bigger monsters could kill her. This caused her to really slow down. Meanwhile, I used an action card that allowed me trade out my starting ammo/gold cards for the better ones (The card I was using "Inventory Management" works just like Mine from Dominion). I also invested heavily in an action card that allowed me to have +2 action and retrieve a weapon card from my discard pile. Leon's special abilities were pistol focused. Most weapon stacks have a high powered weapon buried in it, and I got the high powered pistol. This let me do extra damage when using multiple weapons a turn, and Leon's ability allowed me to use each pistol twice a turn. I was effectively able to kill something every turn. Claire's special ability made all gold worth +10 more so she was able to buy multiple copies of the expensive but powerful longbow. However, she was not able to get up to high damage totals as reliably as I was, and she was hampered by low health from taking unnecessary risks. When the big bad guy came up, I was able to generate the 90 damage to kill him and ended the game. I won it 33 to 16.
Our Thoughts
My Rating 3 (it's ok)
My Thoughts: I so badly want to like this game more than I do. I feel like there is potential for a good game. There are some neat ideas in this game but they do not come together all that well. The game also feels very limited, like there are not enough actions and options.
Her Rating: 2 (do not like)
Her Thoughts: I like that this game takes longer than Dominion so I can feel like I am actually refining a strategy, but overall it is boring. There are other deck building games I would rather play. I also agree that it feels too limited, but I do not want to mess with an expansion to see if that fixes the problem.
Verdict
Combined Rating: 5
We have only played the story mode, and it is my understanding that the Mercenary mode is better. While I would be interested in playing that mode, I do not see our opinion changing that much. We have other deck building games that we really like, and this game does not offer anything those other games do not. Resident Evil the deck building game, it turns out, is a game that we do not think is worth keeping.
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