Taylor Grow
United States
Frederick
Colorado
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My Perspective: I am an adventure game fanatic. I play Descent, Runebound, A touch of evil, Prophecy, Heroquest etc... Most any game where each player has a character/hero and has at least a modicum of relevant decision-making (I’m not looking at you Talisman and Dungeonquest). I most often will play these games with my wife (non-gamer generally) and two sons (ages 9 and 8) though I will occasionally play them with our infrequent play group (i.e. geeky adult men). I have not ever played D&D more for a lack of opportunity and time commitment. My review is based upon two games with four players, me, my wife and my two sons.
Aesthetics: More so than any other genre, I believe components for an adventure game require a higher standard. The whole point of the game is to visualize yourself doing something that gets your adrenaline going and so in this area I am a tough customer.
Cards & Tokens - Castle Raveloft(CR) in my opinion is not the best in this area. Compared to A touch of evil or Descent, CR is much worse because most of the cards and tokens do not have pictures on them. This may seem like a small nitpick but I find that it really slows down gameplay. Most of these games involve having several (more than 3) cards in front of you that do different things. After reading through the cards once, you want to have a way to quickly remember which card does what and I find that the pictures on the cards are a key to remembering, especially for my sons. In CR, I end up re-reading the cards on each of my turns rather than looking at the picture of the ax and remembering that has slightly higher damage than the sword as in Descent. Also, the monster cards that do have pictures, are not in color. This doesn’t affect gameplay but come on WOTC, you are not games workshop.
Figures - The sculpts look good, though I do not like the soft style plastic. Mainly because I do not have the option of repositioning the figures with the hot/cold water technique. I will just have to pretend that those curved swords are supposed to be that way. However I do like the different colors of plastic used on the monsters and heroes to help distinguish and give variety to the board for those of use without the time to paint all of the figure before the first play.
Board - I like the random tile board as I find that it really adds to the tension (one reason FFG’s Doom is still played at my house). However, again, I have to ding them in the design because of how the interlocking parts of the board sometimes cut through images on the tiles. The Arcane Circle is not a complete circle as the interlocking edge cuts through. Doesn’t that mean the Demon breaks free and eats the wizard? I am not sure if I have a way to fix this but I do think the Descent dungeons look better without the exposed connectors.
Cost - Excellent value. I am a bit concerned that the cardboard is more susceptible to tearing and marks than the nice laminated style cardboard in Flying Frog’s style productions but I do like the overall cost ($45.50 at timewellspent).
Gameplay: I will avoid deep rules discussion as the rules are online and discuss how it ‘feels.’
Attack/Powers - Most turns involve looking through your power cards and choosing an attack. All attacks involve rolling a d20, possibly at multiple targets, adding the attack value and comparing the to amour of the target/s. Save villians (think boss), most monsters have 1 or 2 wounds. Very straightforward and wonderful if you want to play with kids. You might think this is so simple it might be boring but the cards are all different ways to attack that give you a wealth of options. My wife was figuring out cool super combos with her Rogue character that really spiced things up. I have to give the designers real credit in this area in making such a simple mechanic varied enough to be interesting. Each of the characters also had a distinct feel. It is tough to tell after only two complete plays but the variety for each character seems to be high.
Turn sequence - The turns can become very involved as there are several steps and it matters what order you perform the steps in. Drawing an encounter card first is important because it might produce monster or trap which will activate later that turn. Adding a villian to the mix makes it even more involved. We found the turns non-intuitive (i.e. I had to keep referencing the exact order) though not burdensomly so. This will get better with more plays.
Incentives - With my young kids playing, it quickly became a race to see who could level up first. The incentive to continue exploring is that if you place a monster then you receive the experience for it regardless of who kills it. The incentive to kill a monster is that you receive a treasure. These carrots keep even the most selfish player at least partially working for the group.
Variety - One of the keys to adventure games is the variety of events that can occur. The encounter deck did and excellent job of mixing things up not just with traps and monsters but with other interesting variations. One event made each of us place a monster at an open dungeon corridor. We each placed our monsters as far away as possible as we were busy fighting a boss and destroying his artifact. Then the next encounter moved us all two dungeon tiles towards the entrance, putting us in range of the aforementioned monsters, which almost cost us the game when we had it easily in hand a moment before.
Scenarios- I read through the adventure book and there are two scenarios for solo play and the rest (I believe 11) for groups of 2-5. The variety is decent though I look forward to user generated content and further expansions.
Summary - Love it. Why? For me it hits a sweet spot. It felt like just enough crunchiness in rules to excite my imagination with the options available without having a Arkham Horror level decision diagram. It also was a hit with my wife (no small feat) and kids. I can count on one hand the number of games my wife has been willing to play twice in a row and none of the others had a miniature dragon involved. It also fills in the spot in my game collection previously filled by HeroQuest. A no-overload game in a reasonable time where cooperation is important (and fun), i.e. not races like Runebound or Prophecy. I also have found that it is a great game with my kids. In spite of my critiques from earlier, I would have to say if you are interested at all, by the theme or the idea you should buy it. I cannot imagine not getting your money’s worth.
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Tor Sverre Lund
Norway
Trondheim
Sør-Trøndelag
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One quick thing you either played wrong or just houseruled: Under "Incentives" your explanation of how XP works doesn't sound right. When killing a monster, that XP is added to a shared pool. And it is from this pool you have the option to level (on a "natural 20" or the Level Up card) and cancel Encounters.
Also, are you sure these figures don't reposition with hot/cold treatments? Others have posted to that effect.
Thanks for the review!
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Fantasy Quester
England
Google 'NinjaDorg Fantasy Quest'
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Gawain wrote: Also, are you sure these figures don't reposition with hot/cold treatments? Others have posted to that effect.
Dunk in hot water, adjust the figure, dunk in cold water and you're all set. Worked for my Ghouls and the Zombie Dragon.
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Bob
United States
Nebraska
In a man-to-man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine.
Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.
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Thanks for the review. My copy should arrive today. I'm sure it will see the table a few times this weekend!
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Taylor Grow
United States
Frederick
Colorado
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Interesting, I do believe you are correct. On page 14 it says "Heroes' experience pile" though I don't see where it explicitly says it is a commone pool, it seems to be implied. We had played that everybody has thier own pile of experience. The incentive for exploring is not as high then. Thanks for pointing that out.
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Carbon Copy
United Kingdom
Unspecified
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chaotic_soliton wrote: Interesting, I do believe you are correct. On page 14 it says "Heroes' experience pile" though I don't see where it explicitly says it is a commone pool, it seems to be implied. We had played that everybody has thier own pile of experience. The incentive for exploring is not as high then. Thanks for pointing that out.
" Heroes' " is plural.
The incentive to search is to avoid nasty encounter events (sometimes).
Cheers.
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Roy Stephens
United States
San Jose
California
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RedMonkeyBoy wrote: chaotic_soliton wrote: Interesting, I do believe you are correct. On page 14 it says "Heroes' experience pile" though I don't see where it explicitly says it is a commone pool, it seems to be implied. We had played that everybody has thier own pile of experience. The incentive for exploring is not as high then. Thanks for pointing that out. " Heroes' " is plural. The incentive to search is to avoid nasty encounter events (sometimes). Cheers.
Also, the incentive to search is to, you know... find the tile you are questing for and stuff.... 
Also, what Red said... a lot of times, I'd much rather take my chances with the Wolf someone just turned up on a new tile than some of those Encounter cards... Nothing quite as awful as having Strahd whisper sweet nothings in your ear, convincing you to go whack your nearest ally. Sometimes, saying "I'm sorry!!" just doesn't cut it. 
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Larry Welborn
United States
Anderson
South Carolina
My new 36g aquarium -- Danios, Platies, Corys, and Ottos.
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Are your kids able to make sound decisions or do you find that you are basically running the game for them?
My kids 9 & 7 love cooperative games but I prefer the ones such as Castle Panic or Forbidden Island where they are able to play on their own without my coaching.
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Jim Patching
United Kingdom
Cardiff
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chaotic_soliton wrote: Also, the monster cards that do have pictures, are not in color. This doesn’t affect gameplay but come on WOTC, you are not games workshop.
If Games Workshop had done it, everything would look frickin' amazing. Sure, it'd cost three times as much as it does now, but it'd look sweet.
Nice review.
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Taylor Grow
United States
Frederick
Colorado
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Larry Welborn wrote: Are your kids able to make sound decisions or do you find that you are basically running the game for them?
My kids 9 & 7 love cooperative games but I prefer the ones such as Castle Panic or Forbidden Island where they are able to play on their own without my coaching.
They are able to make their own decisions. Because all of the powers are different variants on roll a d20, add a number and compare it to an AC number, the decisions are doable. It also helps that the powers rarely interact, they are usually just chossing a card. If you wait patiently for them to read through the cards then they usually are able to make the decisions entirely withouth help. Compared to Descent, where you can have multiple interactions with fatigue, surges, weapon powers, abilities, etc. on one attack, this is much more streamlined. I always have to help out on the more complicated Descent tactics.
We played 4 more games over the weekend, after I wrote this review and except for the rule about the joint experience pile that I got wrong, everything else seems to hold true. A perfect game for a family with younger kids. I am very excited to purchase the second D&D game if for nothing else than to increase the variety of encounters and monsters.
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Todd
United States
Colorado
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chaotic_soliton wrote: Larry Welborn wrote: Are your kids able to make sound decisions or do you find that you are basically running the game for them?
My kids 9 & 7 love cooperative games but I prefer the ones such as Castle Panic or Forbidden Island where they are able to play on their own without my coaching. They are able to make their own decisions. Because all of the powers are different variants on roll a d20, add a number and compare it to an AC number, the decisions are doable. It also helps that the powers rarely interact, they are usually just chossing a card. If you wait patiently for them to read through the cards then they usually are able to make the decisions entirely withouth help. Compared to Descent, where you can have multiple interactions with fatigue, surges, weapon powers, abilities, etc. on one attack, this is much more streamlined. I always have to help out on the more complicated Descent tactics. We played 4 more games over the weekend, after I wrote this review and except for the rule about the joint experience pile that I got wrong, everything else seems to hold true. A perfect game for a family with younger kids. I am very excited to purchase the second D&D game if for nothing else than to increase the variety of encounters and monsters.
I totally agree with these posts. We played 1 partial game for learning purposes and 4 full games today. The boys, 11 and 8, made all their own decisions and could play the turns by themselves, move the monsters, do the encounters and generally had a good handle on the mechanics.
My youngest says that CR is now his favorite game by far, even more than Descent because it plays faster and is less confusing on what actions to take. My oldest likes CR because of the speed of play and the minis but would like to now try a real game of 4e.
It was almost time for bed and they were asking if we could squeeze in another game. I had to say 'no', but it was tough.
Maus
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