Eldritch Horror - An Introduction
Game Specs
- Advertised Player Count: 1-8
- *Actual* Player Count: 8 feels like it's on the heavy side to me, but honestly, otherwise, I think this game works well at any player count
- Playing Time: 120-240 minutes (I'm pretty sure I've never played this game for 4 hours - we've either won or been dead before then. Don't let the playtime scare you off because it really does vary wildly. But until you're decently familiar with the game, setup will take up some time)
- Age: 14+
- Premise: Each player is an investigator in this co-op game, doing everything y'all can to stop Ancient Old Ones like Cthulu and Yig from awakening and devouring the world.
I'm going to open this game introduction in an unusual way by asserting the following opinion: I enjoy the hell out of Eldritch Horror despite coming to the conclusion that it is not a good game.
"Ok, so, is it worth playing/buying, or not?"
Ever have a movie or book or song that you think is objectively not good, but you enjoy anyway? I know I've got plenty of those, and a lot of them are things with which I grew up that didn't necessarily age well, but which I still enjoy. There's often an odd conflation between art that is "good" and art we enjoy. We use phrases like "guilty pleasure" to convey that we like something we know we "shouldn't like." A friend of mine once told me how much he hated that phrase and that he was banning it from his life. If we like a song or book that is often considered bad, why should we need to apologize for that? And I think he's right: I'll own the things I enjoy while still admitting that they're not "good" for whatever reason.
So, why do I play Eldritch Horror? I play it for the story and the suspense it can generate. Each player is an investigator seeking to save the world from whichever Ancient Old One is trying to devour it. Originally, the game was designed to differ from the incredibly popular Arkham Horror in two ways. The first was that while Arkham Horror took place within the confines of the city of Arkham, Eldritch Horror was designed to span the world. The second was that Eldritch Horror was meant to be a slicker design that ensured the game ran more quickly and more smoothly than its predecessor.
I was hooked from the moment I tried the game because I loved the intention of its design, the aesthetic, and (as silly as it sounds) the setup. For anyone who has played fantasy football, you may have had an experience similar to mine in which your favorite part of the season is the draft. It requires a bunch of research and planning, but it sets the stage for the rest of the season. I feel similarly to Eldritch Horror: there are so many components that set the tone of the game to come, and I love that!
Each player plays an investigator that gets two actions per turn: travel (move), prepare for travel (get a train or boat ticket that lets you move further), rest (heal), acquire assets (buy new gear, allies, etc), trade (things with another player), Focus (gain a reroll token), and some other special actions that relate specifically to your character or the space you occupy on the board. It sounds like a lot, but it's really not awful. Some actions are only used in very specific circumstances, and since it's cooperative, ideally, you're working with other people at the table to come up with the best course of action.
At the end of the day, though, for as different as each of the characters plays with their unique abilities, and as vastly different as the Ancient Old Ones are from one another, the game still comes down to dice rolls and bad cards draws (usually from the Mythos deck). You can have the best strategy with the best setup, and if your dice are just cold, then none of it matters. And that's just bad game design. It's true that in most cooperative games, there are game elements that happen to align in such a way as to be utterly punishing. But between the cards AND the dice in Eldritch Horror, it can often feel as though luck is a much, much bigger factor in the game's outcome than skill. And that's poor game design.
All of that said, I am almost always happy to get it to the table. As long as I and everyone around the table are prepared for the notion that no matter how good it looks good for us, it can turn on us for *no reason* at any moment. Also, while I enjoy playing with other people, this is one game I'm very, very happy to play by myself. I can set it up, thematically, however I want, and I can take my time with it; I often make a couple of moves, play a turn or two, then let it sit like a chessboard until I'm ready to come back to it. The game is definitely not for everyone. Additionally, the notion that it was a sleeker design than Arkham Horror went out the window when they released a bunch of expansions for it. The game desperately needed the first expansion so that encounter decks didn't get reshuffled quite so quickly. But after 7 or 8 expansions, the game is absolutely bloated with mechanics, characters, tokens, and side boards. One doesn't need to play with all of them or anything, it's just a lot for one game. And so they really lost sight of having a game that's Arkham without all the bloat.
That said, I own every expansion, and there's only one of which I'm not very fond (spoiler alert: it's the last one they made). But all of the rest of them offer new Ancient Old Ones, and so offer new gaming experiences (from a thematic standpoint, anyway). And ultimately, this is why I play the game: the thematic elements are very well done, shape unique narratives around plays, and I often find myself thinking about games long after they've ended.
Bottom Line: I love the game. I likely always will. But if I'm being completely honest, there are some really big design flaws here that prevent me from saying "it's a great game." It's worth trying, because maybe you'll like it! But I'll never sell it as a "good game" so much as I'll sell it as a game I enjoy experiencing.
Comments
Post a Comment