I've heard more than one person state across various threads on this forum that Descent second edition isn't even worth buying. That in the attempt to streamline the game, it has been essentially neutered, if you will. Is this just a case of the usual attendant whining? I would like to ask other people who have played the game to respond to this.. Some of the quests in original Descent took a long time, to be sure, but I think a majority would agree that it's a great game, at least until we got to Sea of Blood. From a qualitative perspective, I'm wondering how people feel second edition compares to the original.

I never played the original, so I do not have any direct basis for comparison, but from what I've heard here it sounds like 2e is a very different entity from 1e.

It's not so much an update as a redesign.

That being said, I am immensely enjoying playing 2e, as both hero and Overlord, often even when I don't win.

Thanks KristoffStark! That's good to know. I haven't bought it yet, but I'm on the verge. I think I would enjoy it too, but after some of the comments I saw I was beginning to wonder. I appreciate your response.

If you have been reading the forums I think you will find more that like it than don't. If you need more go to boardgamegeek.com they have plenty of reviews over there they are mostly positive, but some are negative. It’s a good place to get perspective; they also have a bunch of video reviews. For my part I Think the 2ed will be the game of the year.

I don't know about game of the year but the game has been quite fun.

It can definitely have its moments like when as an OL you setup an entire encounter and the heroes can finish it without you having a turn which sucks and there are plenty of 'Huh?' moments with the rules but overall it is worth the purchase.

Schmiegel said:

As a fan of 1e (own everything for it), I find Descent 2e to be a superior game by quite a bit. It is very good.

I prefer the game, both as a player (character building is more meaningful) and as an OL (I can focus on playing hard and not fiddly resources). It is much more playable too, both in terms of individual games and campaign play.

Not only that… but many of the maps (not all of them) are well balanced where either side could win by a very slight margin (i.e. a critical attack roll miss, an epic defense die roll, and/or a failed attribute test that costs one side the quest!). I think that aspect makes the game quite exciting and replayable because there are always those new tactics to learn. Also, since the game is designed to be played with 2, 3, or 4 heroes - each combination has a different strategy for both sides! I love this game

These are some great endorsements and it's very good to hear this….glad I asked, thanks guys! I'll be going out to buy it tomorrow.

New to adventure games and this game looks interesting, but between both this and BGGs boards there seems to be confusion on the rules. This is apparently supposed to be simplified from the first edition, yet there are rules set so that your line of sight can be blocked by the very target you're trying to hit? I'm not sure if I can coax my friends into playing something obtuse like that.

esin said:

Thats certainly the most uncharitable spin you can put on the matter.

A more charitable spin may be that Descent has simple and quick LOS that leaves no room for doubt. This is excellent in a board game of this nature. Does it produce the most realistic result? Not in a few instances, but that is a small cost for the simple and clear mechanics you get.

Skywalker said:

The above example is almost impossible too. As it's a corner to corner thing, if the only corner you can trace a line to is the 'back' one, then yes, the figure would block it's own LoS. However, the chances are, you'd be able to draw a line to one other corner. I can't even fathom one scenario where you can only see one corner of a square and it's a 'rear' one…

Sausageman said:

Check the example in the rulebook…..

Saying that it has been "streamlined too much" and that "it sucks" are two different things. I think there is a problem in that the quests can often be over before they've even really begun, and that the game could have a little more tactical depth to it for my taste, but that doesn't mean I think the game sucks. I certainly think it's a hell of a lot better than Descent 1.

In certain ways, the game can be said to be dumbed down. No more movement calculations for optimal movement taking in opening doors, chests and ally turn orders. But really, that's nothing.

If anything, you gain more tactical choices in 2e by the inclusion of uneven objectives. In 1e it was just kill boss vs kill heroes. War of attrition on both sides. Now, both sides have clear goals and tactical choices on how to approach them AND slow down the opponent. Should you try to finish your objective asap, or slow them down because to buy you time and do it with possibly a safer method. Do you get the search tokens (treasure) and risk the OL finishing his/her goal quicker but improving your long term game by getting more money, or ignore it and finish safely.

These choices were never there in 1e. you just kinda rammed your heroes into the monsters, or as the OL, rammed your monsters into the heroes and used some traps when you could.

For what it's worth, I think there's a lot more game in the D2 box than there ever was in the base D1 box, even if the the quests are shorter. You do get 20 quests with different objectives, 8 different types of characters to experiment and build up, etc.

Perhaps a little less equipment than before, however the inevitable expansions are sure to change that (i.e. why would they specifically state that heroes can only wear a single helmet when there's only one in the game?). There are still 43 distinct hero items by my count (notwithstanding the 3 types of potions and couple of other findable items), 72 hero abilities and 6 relics.

The conversion kit adds even more fun stuff.

esin said:

We're doing 1 quest a week at the game shop right now; next weekend we'll do Interlude 2 and we're loving 2E. We played 1E for a long time and it was such a backwards game. The heroes were rewarded for racing as fast as they could, blindly grabbing treasure BEFORE fighting monsters, and abusing the crap out of fatigue. Defense was god and got to be so broken that the OL had almost no chance to harm the heroes without carefully orchestrating nuclear strikes on a single hero--who then returns with full life & fatigue at the next checkpoint.

Now defense isn't the end-all-be-all. Getting separated and knocked out is very risky. Timing your push to the objective for the right conditions is critical. The warlord doesn't have the most mind-numbing job in existence anymore. Fatigue is still amazing, but being used for skills too, and potions being rarer keeps it from being overpowered now. Separate objectives creates a challenging stuggle to hinder your opponent while progressing your own goals.

If I wasn't clear enough, I love 2E. And the conversion kit is awesome-sauce on top of that.

I kept a campaign journal of our 1E games and I was reading it the other day. 90% of the entries were, "The scout dashed through and grabbed everything. They fatigued up and battled to kill off every monster I had. I managed to pull off a spawn + trap + rage to barely kill off the weakest hero. They waited at the door for me to finish my deck before going down." It was all numbers and there was almost no choices to be made.

Eugee said:

You were playing 1st edition wrong… in so many ways.

Could you elobrate? How did he play wrong, in many ways? I'm interested as I've been reading lot of stories about the Descent 1st Edition and things like that apparently happened quite often.

I love D2. But, it is a very different game from D1. The base D1 game was definitely favored toward the heroes to win. However, the expansions were not. When we play D1 the heroes lose more often than not. Of course, we have some house rules where heroes are assigned at random. Each player is dealt 2 cards and they choose 1 at random. Anyone who says that D1 was broken and easy with no strategy was not playing it well. There was rarely a time that the heroes had the upper hand. They were constantly struggling to make it through the dungeon and would wipe right out the gate or it would be close all the way up to the end. Of course, this is with the expansions.

D2 has similar elements to D1 but is a very different game altogether. I highly recommend picking it up if you want a fast paced hero game that doesn't require role playing. However, it is *not* a dungeon crawl like D1.