Let's use this thread to talk about what we've found out while playing the app about how it works and what our thoughts are. But please no story spoilers or at least spoiler tag them.
I told myself I was going to wait and play through it without spoilers, but I just couldn't help myself and fired up the app on my lunch break and went through a couple of missions and encounters to see what it's like and how it works. I decided to go with Hard mode and use my dice app to simulate how the first mission might go with the heroes I had chosen.
Mission Design and Difficulty: Hard mode seems legitimately challenging by virtue of just flooding the board with Imperials every turn. However it didn't really feel like the Imperials were snowballing on turns when I wasn't able to kill most of them off, so I think it takes into account what's on the board when it decides how much stuff to deploy at the end of each round, in fact at one point it actually asked me how many stormtrooper figures were on the board before it deployed. Also it seems that the type of enemy that appears is somewhat randomized, as each time they deploy a short little roulette like animation flashes through all the enemy types before locking down. The app is also very generous with ally figures even in the first mission which helps immensely, and is also not very aggressive about attacking your allies like a human would be, but it does eventually start attacking them. The scenario also gives you an escape route for your unwounded hero to run and hide when things start to go bad, so I really appreciate that. At the end of the simulated first mission that I played, 3 of my 4 heroes had been withdrawn while my 4th unwounded hero had run away. Interestingly in the first mission the AI didn't prioritize attacking non-wounded heroes and in fact seemed to be purposefully spreading its damage around, focusing on a new hero each round, but once all the wounded heroes were out of the way, the AI started double moving its troops towards my hiding healthy hero.
While the first mission was definitely combat focused, it seems there is actually a lot of role-playing elements incorporated into the game as well as exploration and detective work for certain missions. Mission events are often times highly detailed and really immerse you into the scene. There are tons of non-enemy NPCs in the game that players can interact with and players are able to respond to NPC dialogue Mass Effect style with select responses that alter how the NPCs in the game respond to you. Non-combat related choices can change the way in which a mission unfolds.
Encounters are actually really interesting, the one that I did wasn't a full mission that used map tiles, but was in fact a moment-by-moment flavorful description of a pitched space battle where your team of heroes had a very specific role to fulfill in the battle as pilots (which also definitely opens up some crossover potential with other FFG games), which was acted through decision trees and cumulative attribute tests where everybody adds up their successes and inputs them into the app to see what happens. It really makes these feel like a team effort and also allows for one character to feel like the MVP when a test that matches their favored attribute comes up and they carry the team through that part of the encounter.
Fame is earned primarily by killing bad guy groups, which is nice as it seems to have a direct impact on how many credits you earn after a mission, and the bigger the bad guy the more fame you get, so trigger-happy players are going to be rewarded in this game. Crates typically grant you a medpac, a small amount of credits and a supply card, but occassionally will give you 2 supply cards.
BTW, the ambient noise in the app is amazing. You can hear voices calling over the loudspeaker just like you hear in the movies on the Deathstar hangar or the Yavin IV hangar in Rogue One, or the constant sound of ship engines when your in space, or clank of dishes and voices in a cantina. Probe droids buzz and mumble when they deploy, and Stormtroopers yell "Blast 'Em!" when they appear on the app. Sadly, all the text including mission briefings are not narrated like they were in Road to Legend, so prepare to have somebody do a lot of reading out loud.
I'm really looking forward to getting this on the table with some fellow players in the coming weeks. I'm impressed by how different the app games feel to the regular campaign, way more like an RPG board game hybrid than the tabletop version.
I will say though that being limited to just the Core set bad guys is kind of lame after playing with the expansions for so long. Keep in mind that the only non-villain mercenary units in the Core are Trandoshan Hunters and Nexu, so in a mission perhaps focused around a criminal element isn't going to have very interesting criminals to fight against. Those missions desperately need for some Hired Guns or Weequay Pirates.
Edited by Tvboy
I hope you incorporate it as you update the app