1 hour ago, Tubb said:

I'd like to comment:

First, I have never played descent, and looking at this game makes me think this will not change soon. I'll wait for a better product.

I think the art is not exactly what we are used as fantasy players. Perhaps the art direction has done a poor job choosing this kind of art for this kind of genre... this art (in my opinion) would suit perfectly in a cyberpunk genre game. Or perhaps a modern warfare game. Or an urban modern environment.

But not medieval fantasy. Medieval fantasy suggest traditional colors, complex and desaturated palettes, smooth shadows and lights, volumes, evocative backgrounds...

Sketchy looking characters with duotone textures backgrounds and pop color schemes DON'T say "medieval". High contrast shadows aren't for medieval themes... (it is VERY difficult to mix both concepts, but if you dare to do it and do it right, then you got a gem like Darkest Dungeon).

Extreme palettes of flat colors are for superheroes and modern comic books... but all this stuff simply doesn't have nothing to do with fantasy art.

Is like using steampunk chrome aesthetics in your next marvel champions expansion... sure it would be "original" and "different" but it would be horrible and a bad decision... and people would be upset, simply because the art chosen by the art directors REQUIRES to FIT the theme.

That makes me thing that the main purpose of this game is NOT to tell a good story, or to include wonderful and original mechanics... the purpose is to make you freak out giving you 3d environment, groundbreaking aesthetics, great minis... and an expensive B I G box that, now that I see the content... is TOO big... that suggest me FFG has done it again, big empty boxes filled with air.

And now that I have mentioned it... 3d environment... Why?

You say an app will make your games more agile... good luck placing cardboard trees and cardboard stairs... and again... what is the purpose of having these elements? what does this add to the experience? rules for different levels work perfect in other systems, using coloured lines, and different straight levels don't exactly make a prettier board... it makes it impractical and in my opinion, unneeded on a dungeon crawler. Come on... you CAN'T pass UNDER the elements, so, what's the difference between 3d stairs and drawn stairs??? where's the enjoyment once you have seen all the cardboard placed over there?

For this price, I'd prefer the contents of Gloomhaven. With a good story you DON'T need 3d cardboard chests... in fact they look ugly. I REALLY prefer an obstacle printed in 2d... OR a real plastic model for doors or chests. But 3d cardboard trees?????

So, in my opinion they seem to have prioritized aesthetics over gaming mechanics and story... and they have done a very poor job. And the price is simply excessive... taking into consideration that you will need a new expansion and/or miniatures box after a couple of missions...

And I really jhave enjoyed a lot of app driven games, UBOOT for example is a wonderful app driven game, very immersive! or MoM, a wonderful game that I have played a lot of times... but seeing the screens with the crafting system, the weapons, the experience... it seems TOO MANY rules and mechanics have been displaced outside the board. Even inside graphics in the app are terrible... the interface seems poor, the pop-up windows don't have elaborated backgrounds or borders, everything is flat... again everything makes me think about a cyberpunk game and not a fantasy setting.

Sorry for my poor english

your english is very good, and i think you make the point here. Is exactly as you say.

Im pretty sure that if FFG reads messages like yours gonna learn something... but ultimately they doesnt reed neither hear...

I want this game to succeed. I hope there are a lot of people out there who don't own a dungeon crawler that pick this up as their first one. For the components and development on this game, $175 seems completely reasonable and compares quite nicely to what Games Workshop puts out these days.

What excites me most is the 3-part canpaign. I really want to see the story unfold!

That said, I don't think I'll be buying this. Maybe if this came out instead of Heroes of Terrinoth, I would have grabbed it, but by now, my game cabinet is just too full to receive a game like this.

Oh my goodness, getting more of a look on FFG's site. This does not look good.

8 minutes ago, Budgernaut said:

I want this game to succeed. I hope there are a lot of people out there who don't own a dungeon crawler that pick this up as their first one. For the components and development on this game, $175 seems completely reasonable and compares quite nicely to what Games Workshop puts out these days.

What excites me most is the 3-part canpaign. I really want to see the story unfold!

That said, I don't think I'll be buying this. Maybe if this came out instead of Heroes of Terrinoth, I would have grabbed it, but by now, my game cabinet is just too full to receive a game like this.

Saying that a game seems reasonably priced and at the same time that compares to what GW puts out seems to be an oxymoron... XD

9 hours ago, tomkat364 said:

My biggest issue is the app. It's one thing to have an app that serves to expand a playable game, but to have the game entirely dependent on the app is not cool in my mind. Am I the only one concerned that the game will be unplayable after Armageddon? What am I supposed to do with this game when I'm sitting on a pile of ashes with no electricity??? (and yes, I am serious)

Same. Hard pass. I want a board game, not an electronic game with plastic toys.

I collected, painted and played every and all expansion for Imperial Assault, app and regular game. I love Star Wars but my true love is fantasy, however the game system was just spectacular. I got Descent 2ed once we had gobbled up all of the IA content and played the RTL app, bought a few of the smaller expansions to flesh out the class/item choices. We played everything for the RTL app you can play without buying the big boxes, really liked it, thought it was great. Descent 2ed was like as traditional as fantasy can get for me, which is exactly what I wanted. I've played Gloomhaven, it is a fun game, and although I prefer to roll dice in my games, I enjoyed the ability to manipulate your luck with the deck system. However for me Gloomhaven wasn't a traditional fantasy setting, I also wasn't in love with the over the topness of it. Honestly the set up take down for that game gave me a headache.

I see this game leaning more towards GH, which makes sense as it wants to compete in that market space, however I think they completely missed the mark on what has made them successful to this point. It shouldn't have been "Hey lets do what they are doing" it should be "Hey lets do what has been successful up to this point while updating or modernizing some aspects of the game."

Not only that, but they are completely disregarding the game up until this point. Everything we own from 1 and 2 edition is not going to be useful for this game? That really, really sucks.

I dunno, maybe I am over reacting off of what I saw, but I passed on LOTR Prime Days sale which was dirt cheap for this announcement, thinking "Nah that will be my next dungeon crawler investment" and now I am kicking myself lol.

And all of this stuff I have talked about happened BEFORE I saw the price, then I just couldn't even believe it. Like Gloomhaven retails for about $1`40 Canadian at my LGS, and they want $100 more for this? Granted I haven't seen ALL of the content yet, but Gloomhaven can last a casual group about a year for sure just with what is in the core..

This really is to bad, I would have loved to deep dive into another Descent game, but right now it isn't looking that way.

Do you like paint by numbers? You, too can create your very own Descent: Legends of the Dark artwork by following these 5 easy steps!

But seriously the comic book looking flat, limited palette artwork is a big turn-off. The textures used for the dungeon/water/lava/forest were extremely simplistic and bland. Coming from Descent 2E, the artwork in general is a huge disappointment.

Also the 3d terrain is super gimmicky - I'm not talking just about the HeroQuest furniture, but about the cardboard-slot platforms that looked very wobbly during the twitch stream (and will undoubtedly add to setup/teardown time). I will say that I thought the addition of underlays for water and lava is a pretty cool idea. I liked that aspect of it. I think the card-flipping is a cool mechanic, too.

I'm lukewarm on the app - I assumed it was a foregone conclusion and had prepared myself for that. Only time will tell if app-driven board games will still be relevant and playable after 10 years (Imagine if you could only enjoy a game of HeroQuest by playing a VHS tape. 'The best part of HeroQuest is the VCRrrrrrr!!')

All said, I had been super hyped about this since it was first teased and the reveal with the poor character/tile art and general tile design really deflated that hype. By the time I saw the $175 price tag I just laughed....

That will teach me to get excited about a FFG product in the future.

I was super excited when the game was originally leaked. I love Descent 2nd Edition and was eager for a new instalment. I also love Journeys in Middle Earth and am more than willing to jump on board another app driven co-op game: but I, like many, was left hugely disappointed by the live stream yesterday.

I'm an aesthetic kind of guy and the character art was a huge turn off for me: I really don't want to be looking at those muddy. cartoony caricatures every time I look down at my character sheet (and that helmet!! How does she get through doorways?). I could kind of get over this though, if I squint and the gameplay is good enough, but the price tag is what's really nailed it for me. $175! That's probably going to be close to £150 here in the UK. I didn't by Gloomhaven because it was out of my price range, this even more so.

I don't mind the item art so much - it kind of reminds me of Clank! (another of my favourite games) - and the minis are fine. The tiles had me balking a bit when I first saw them but I think they'll look a bit better in the final product, so I guess they'll be... functional. The 3D terrain I don't care about at all though and, if that's what's bumping the price tag up, I'd be more than happy to go without for a more affordable game.

So, long story short: I was excited until yesterday, not so much now...

Printed 3D cardboard game board, app-driven... I see the an absolute ton of potential in those bullet points. I even like the stylized character best out of all the Descent artwork I've seen so far.

But what they've shown of the board so far looks so unbelievably bland . Sure, the miniatures seem to be more than just a step above all the previous Descent stuff, but they also lack variety between smaller and larger miniatures compared Ed 1 + 2. About the same amount of minis (39 vs 40), albeit larger, as the second edition, terribly bland looking game board elements and the app beeing a great unknown without a full demo, is making this look reaaaally unattractive at 175$.

I'm no stranger to throwing 200$+ after a miniature blender kickstarter, or 700€+ at the complete Descent 2nd edition collection. But I need to see something that compels me to spend the money and a monotonous game board with a handful of alibi 3D staircases does not.

I've played with 3d cardboard terrain before and it can be amazing, but the terrain in this game doesn't look good enough for the price.

An example of good cardboard terrain:

7 hours ago, Deathseed said:

16 hours ago, tomkat364 said:

My biggest issue is the app. It's one thing to have an app that serves to expand a playable game, but to have the game entirely dependent on the app is not cool in my mind. Am I the only one concerned that the game will be unplayable after Armageddon? What am I supposed to do with this game when I'm sitting on a pile of ashes with no electricity??? (and yes, I am serious)

Same. Hard pass. I want a board game, not an electronic game with plastic toys.

Same here ! If only the game was giving us cards, like I'm saying everywhere !
But no. The game should have the two system : fully co-op for the ones that love it, and Overlord system for the one that love it too

But no app, since the app can be a card system, then, go on a card system

How disappointment!

this was a great chance for a BIG BIG GAME! with all the best things from first and second edition and imperial assault. With new features like gloomhaven, maybe legacy elements and something like that. Also the compatibility with the first and second edition heroes and monsters was been cool!

...but now we have a appboardgame in cartoon style with 3d tiles...

maybe for a new audience from 7-14 years...i think so...

what a shame!

I'm not sure how they expect anyone to support this after they've shown they care little about Terrinoth games as anything more than a testing ground for rules for the REAL IPs. This is a lot of initial investment to drop for not a ton of of content, which means expansions are basically a requirement. Does anyone actually believe that FFG is going to market this properly? Does anyone actually believe it will even get more than like 2 preview articles on their site? How many times should we go through Runebound, RuneWars, Battlelore, etc. before we all realize that they explicitly set these things up to fail from the beginning, and claim "poor sales" as a reason to cancel them when they never marketed them in the first place?

Hard pass FFG. I can't even find the energy to be disappointed about the app. At some point your fans are going to start holding you accountable for all of your decisions in the past few years.

2 hours ago, rugal said:

Same here ! If only the game was giving us cards, like I'm saying everywhere !
But no. The game should have the two system : fully co-op for the ones that love it, and Overlord system for the one that love it too

But no app, since the app can be a card system, then, go on a card system

Forget the fight aspect for a moment. How can you simulate interaction with environment by different characters? How can you simulate the fog of war aspect of exploration? How can you simulate different outcomes with different success rate? You can say "easily - with a Book of Secrets". Sword&Sorcery utilises this system, and thanks but no thanks. I'd rather click a button in the app and see what happens, than spend a minute going through book pages.

It was a great emphasis during the stream - it's not 3rd edition. That's why there's no Overlord. It's a fully co-op adventure/exploration/dungeon crawler, not a 1-vs-many skirmish game.

I've solved what this game is and why I don't like it...

Its a digital choose your own adventure story book with added action figures.

Also what if the writing is bad, like really awful.. Writing style and enjoyment of narrative is a really personal thing but without any idea of the story and the writing the narrative could suck balls, you have no way of know... At least with a choose your own adventure book you can read the intro and the synopsis, its also a few quid not £150.. Middara is a narrative heavy game that I think is a direct competitor to this, it and Oathsworn I can see are in the exact same space... But both those games you can skip, just read the highlight or have alternative just dungeon crawl adventure modes... This doesn't and thats trouble if the writing sucks.

However I still wish them the very best and the action figures do look wonderful.

14 minutes ago, crimsonsun said:

I've solved what this game is and why I don't like it...

Its a digital choose your own adventure story book with added action figures.

That's brilliant, thanks for the laugh

This game is definitely going the RuneWars route, save your money and don't buy into the Titanic here.

Unless FFG still has time to change some things with the feedback we are giving them... but it sounds like the beta did not go well for feedback.

19 minutes ago, FrogTrigger said:

This game is definitely going the RuneWars route, save your money and don't buy into the Titanic here.

Unless FFG still has time to change some things with the feedback we are giving them... but it sounds like the beta did not go well for feedback.

Do we know anything about the beta? I haven't seen that.

Having been a beta for other games I wouldn't assume any issues with this are the fault of the beta. Different developers have different goals with beta.

Big disappointment. I also was super excited about this.

But now we have:

- terrible looking art

- clearly unessessary 3D boards and assets they just didn't get to explain why we should want this

- lack o class system is a downgrade

- bland maps is a downgrade

- even less heroes to play is a freaking downgrade

- cutting out Overlord for me is a big no! I don't mind this being app driven so long it still have the signature overlord playing mode.

- clearly is a game with much less content than Gloomhaven, witch is not THAT expensive

- from the live stream, they seemed so focused in competting Gloomhaven they took a lot ideas from there and forget about what makes Descent different. Yes, I'm really worried that this gonna be an Gloomhaven wanabe app driven

- for that price it should be a comprehensive experience out of just one box and top notch components. But no, they even have two other boxes (pretty much as big as the first, as I recon) announced. How much they'll charge us for those? $175 either?

No, my friend. For what they put on the live stream, I think it's not worth.

I'm really sorry for that. I really wish I like this, but, for what we have now, I'll pass. So sad.

I have two major concerns with this product, which I think looks kind of cool.

The first is with the app. I'm not really going to get into the issue of support since that's far off. I'd love them to promise to make it open source should they go out of business or discontinue the game but that's theoretically not happening for a while. An app is great if it's doing boring busywork or creating random effects that are hard to do without a closed box, something that board games have a hard time with. For instance Arabian Nights has a huge textbook of story events that you need another book to cross reference in order to create random effects that can't be spoiled easily. Looking through that slows down a lot of the game leading to bored players during downtime. Something like that would be much better handled by a computer program. However when the app is taking too much of the game play onto itself (card decks, die rolls, player and monster movement) then at a certain point the question isn't "what is the game gaining by using this app?" but "what is the purpose of having physical table top props to go along with the game that is 90% on a tablet everyone is crowded around?" It feels a bit too early to really see how Legends in the Dark will handle it but I think it's a concern where halfway through the first session players start asking why bother with the expensive minis and setup? Mansions of Madness 2.0 and Journeys in Middle Earth walk this line pretty tightly.

The second is the price. I've said before I've been burned on some of the things Fantasy Flight has said they would support only to have them canceled out of the blue sometimes within months of their release. Netrunner 2.0, Dark Heresy, Disk Wars, Runebound, Runewars, Genesys (which is notable since it was basically quietly shelved before one of its resource books was even released), etc. Heroes of Terinoth has basically been forgotten after Warhammer Quest was rebranded when the Games Workshop license was lost. With a $175 buy in that's more expensive than almost any board game I can think of that isn't either some crazy collector's edition or a Kickstarter loaded with buy ins. In addition if this is only "Act 1" that has several other issues. Will those acts even come out? If this doesn't sell well initially will they just cancel it like they have with other lines leading to an incomplete game? They don't have to worry about the license being pulled out from under them like Netrunner or Warhammer but there is a history of just quietly stopping development on expensive risks, Runewars being the biggest example of this. Almost two hundred dollars for an incomplete experience with the promise of future expansions we have no idea the price of is asking a lot from the consumer. When the product is untested and $175, I probably will be waiting to buy it until after I see that it will not be abandoned and it's worth that very high price tag; the problem there is that the more people that are doing that, the chances of it being successful enough to get that support will be lower and Fantasy Flight's track record in those situations is spotty. It's going to have to be very good to compete with the saturated co-op dungeon board game market where there's a ton of lower priced alternatives.

It feels really negative typing that all out since the game looks ok to me from the images but that price really sets the bar high and creates a barrier where I can't just buy it on impulse.

Having slept on it I still have issues with the Tiles, that one is not going to go away. I've rationalized everything else, including the price- though this is a FOMO sort of thing as someone that has been adventuring in Terrinoth for a long time. I have felt the concern that Terrinoth might be a test bed for other IPs, yes.

I would like to see more of the app in action, and like Crimsonsun, I would like to know more about the writing - this last will make or break this entire line. The truth is, and I hope I am wrong, that I felt an impression from the stream that they were almost 'tentative' about the whole release. Like the creators and designers were having to 'go it alone' without the presence and support of a strong Marketing engine to push them along. Its way early yet of course, but from my experience marketing either over-pushes or woefully under-pushes - you hope for the earlier even when it gets 'in the way' and starts laying in pressure and eating up time and resources.

All this said, I am likely willing to take a risk for the designers and hope this is one of those games that just knocks it out of the park with surprisingly great writing and narrative with interesting emergent-from-all-the-little-systems gameplay. Like I alluded, I guess feel if the fans aren't behind them they may be out their on their own - and so is the whole idea of Terrinoth.

Not a small amount that price or entry, though.

5 minutes ago, Cotgrave said:

I would like to see more of the app in action, and like Crimsonsun, I would like to know more about the writing - this last will make or break this entire line. The truth is, and I hope I am wrong, that I felt an impressions from the stream that they were almost 'tentative' about the whole release.

There is another upcoming stream that they mentioned that will be a gameplay demo, that is why they didn't dive deeply into it this one. I didn't catch the date, but they mentioned it so its already planned. Since what they did mention about the combat, interaction with map pieces, and narrative is all in-app, we should see a decent demonstration of it soon.

11 minutes ago, kris40k said:

There is another upcoming stream that they mentioned that will be a gameplay demo, that is why they didn't dive deeply into it this one. I didn't catch the date, but they mentioned it so its already planned. Since what they did mention about the combat, interaction with map pieces, and narrative is all in-app, we should see a decent demonstration of it soon.

I am looking forward to both! I knew about the mention of a article on combat, did not catch mention of the next steam content. Thanks for the head's up.

I am quite surprised how many comments are on the negative side really.

To me there are so many good ideas, interactive storyline, 3 dimensional terrain you can interact with, weapons to upgrade and craft, heroes with different dice and ways they play using the dice, elements that true to 2nd edition with fatigue and surges, models that look great (surprised me). I can potentially see this as the dungeon crawl i have waited a long time for.

I get the areas people are highlighting, overlord needed to go really to make this a co-op journey - keep that for another competitive Decent 3rd edition, tiles i get were so good in 2nd edition but i feel like they want the terrain to overlay and pop not the tiles (just my judgement) so i can see the disappointment a bit, i personally quite like the art and am very glad its not just a reprint of Runebound and Descent heroes once again - have we not had enough of those now ?

Ok price - yes high no doubt but then take a look at things - how much is Massive Darkness 1 lets say £120 core set (not kickstarter) - and that game has none of the impacting elements or storyline this one has and the gameplay is pretty bland as is treasure or being chucked the items you need, and the campaign was laughable. Massive Darkness 2 i backed it , but again i see more interesting things here than in that one which costs $145 plus $40+ postage to get any sort of campaign and a lot more if you want to add extra model sets - yes it has a lot of models but i pretty confident that Legends will provide me with a better gaming experience. I have seen other decent dungeon crawlers on kickstarter, and this one feels like it will beat most of them and the money is not coming up front.

Chronicles of Drunagor is an interesting KS to compare with - has a kind of 3d element and tries to do interactive areas using a book and is campaign - costs between $99 and $269 plus postage - i did not back that and i would take a punt on Legends over that one too given its app campaign.

Or you could buy heroquest remake for £150 from zatu - is that a better game than this ?

I spent £175 on sword and sorcery which is also a storyline led dungeon crawl adventure game - and actually this is one my favourite dungeon crawlers and was worth every penny lol

But it goes to show that not everyone is down on this - quite the opposite for me. I would likely sell other dungeon crawlers i own to get this one if i needed to raise the money. I really hope it is a major success line for them.

I would have to sell some of my 2e OoP boxes to get this. Sword and Sorcery has become our go-to and Legends looks like it's trying to do similar things as well as similar bits of GH, but falling short.

The new game looks like it's trying to find the bits and pieces that made solo/co-op games popular recently, trying to keep some 2e mechanics, trying to get the "rpg-in-a-box" aspects, and trying to get some 3d "gimmick aspects, then cramming them all together. I think that's going to be a huge part of the criticisms: other games do what FFG is attempting, but better. Like the interviews from a year ago said, "they were looking at what was successful and taking notes." however, their notes don't look like they really went past that phase.

Then slapping a cartoonish/comic art style on top. Like, I get it, as an artist, I love Wayne Reynolds art for Pathfinder and his new stuff for D&D and MTG, but this new art is no Wayne Reynolds. And, whoever designed the card art was not in the room for the tile art.