Wednesday 15 April 2015

The Witcher: Adventure (Board) Game

Where good components don't make a good game.

Which is a pity since the components are awesome.

As my brother said this game lacks something, and I think that something is excitement. This is a shame given that the components such as the board artwork, the figurines, cards and dice are all of top notch quality. The combat system is pretty decent too where injury and curses could prohibit your choice of actions, and having character specific dice and card decks I found to be fantastic. Alas it is in the main game design where the failure lies.

First of all it isn't cooperative which is odd given that the playable characters are actually friends. Instead it is a victory point race - one which is pretty hard to catch up in if you get unlucky early. The winners keep winning sort of thing. The other problem is the gathering of clues, which you need x amount of to trade for "proofs" to complete a quest. Given that you gain a clue by moving and investigation seems to have a 50% chance to screw you over (the true percentage is only 25%) turns were basically spent wandering back and forth between two or three places.

This is the first game in my collection where players got "bored", not really caring what to do because nothing seems to matter. It doesn't help that each player you add also adds around an hour to the game, so while my two player tests went for two hours a four player (max) game went for four. Four boring hours, not the four nail-biting hours of Zombicide 2 or the nightmare inducing hours of Arkham/Eldrich Horror.

In short, this game is a let down (especially to Witcher fans) and I give it only one clue out of five. I wonder if there's a way to fix it... For now though all I can recommend is for everyone to stay away from this title.

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