Recent reviews by DepressedRacoon

With a year and the main campaign of physical Gloomhaven under my belt, I knew that re-creating the game digitally would be a marathon of a project. When I bought into this, we had only 4 of the mercenaries available, a handful of enemies and one terrain type- not quite the huge box I carried across town that still takes up a whole shelf to itself.

Since then, we've seen the introduction of 3 more mercenaries, more enemies, more environments and a whole new gamemode. Is it the huge box yet? No. But I trust the team that have worked on this, listened to the discord and continue to acknowledge the long-term nature of the project.

Cons:
- Campaign isn't in
- Not all mercenaries are in
- Multiplayer is in closed beta
- Guildmaster mode is impossible to play without item spoilers

I thought I'd put the cons first because to some these seem to be the most important things that are missing. But it's also why I began my review by stating that I trust the devs. Multiplayer is coming, when it's stable enough that there won't be reactionary backlash. The new Guildmaster mode, like the Adventure mode that came before it, is a little blasé with item spoilers, although it is easier to avoid accidentally unlocking the 'spoiler' mercenary Triangles. It's also a lot closer to the boardgame campaign, and that is coming. Despite what many people who join the discord think, it's not possible to just FROM game IMPORT campaign, particularily with how beautifully designed the levels and models are.

Pros:
- Scenario design. A strength of the physical game is the genericity of the tiles, allowing them to slot in and out to seemingly any mission, but it also makes them boring and plain. Here we have beautiful designs so you always know whether you're in a crypt or the forest, and you can tell the difference between a bookcase and a desk without having to pick up the cardboard to check.
- Character models. Another weakness of Gloomhaven was the plastic models, which saw a huge increase in quality going to Jaws of the Lion and beyond, but that still looked a little out of place with the cardboard standees of the enemies, and that were often too low quality to paint. Here instead, all enemies have [mostly] living, [mostly] breathing models, with different designs between Elite and Normal. The art style is consistent between them and with the world elements, and some characters have alternate skins. Some cards have unique animations, and when they use the generic ones, it's still an improvement over the basic description of events.
- Mechanics. It's been said that you're not playing Gloomhaven right if you're not getting some rules wrong. By the brownian motion of everyone getting at least one thing wrong, the discord has quickly become well versed in exactly what "Rules as written" actually wrote. In the beginning, monster AI was a little shaky, but through this same cycle of mistake -> correction, I'd almost bet there's no mistakes left! Some mechanics from the boardgame aren't going to make it in, such as the Tinkerer's Chimeric Formula, and Leather Armour has been changed for usability's sake, but these changes
- Gameplay. Gameplay is smooth and a good translation of the game as it is played.


Conclusion:

If you want to play the Gloomhaven campaign right now with your friends, this isn't the game for you [yet], I'd heartily recommend the Fantasy Setup Tabletop Simulator mod, which is where my campaign has moved during these uncertain times and where I have set up groups of friends.
If you're prepared to wait 6+ months to play it in a beautiful complete package that removes the headache of setup, teardown and running monster AI yourself, or if you're happy to run part of a marathon with other people to get us there, helping to iron out the bugs in Guildmaster and [when it hits the masses] multiplayer, makes it all come a little faster.
Guildmaster mode is a compelling game mode as it is, I wouldn't be surprised to see it become reffered to as "the other campaign".

Good fun. Grinding to unlock some of the natural sources can take a while, and the random choices of projects is annoying when you only have a few left to atttain...
Interesting take on a god game, specialisations and projects leave you thinking about how to lay everything out to lead to the highest prosperity whilst also trying to avoid greed... Tea is overpowered, which is nice since I drink so much myself.
Remember to enable beta and use the advanced options for the tiny (50 plots) and large (150 plots). Needs some polishing in the descriptions of specialisations and bringing everything into consistency, but doesn't detract from the game.