While the partially pre-defined character creation aspects don’t allow you to flesh out your individual avatar and make them as unique as you would in a traditional roleplaying game, the classes all feel distinct and avoid slotting directly into tired fantasy tropes – although the archetypes definitely float in the background. As in an RPG, players keep a record of their own experience, gold, items and skills on separate character sheets, unlocking new perks and abilities as they level up, while a party sheet makes a note of experiences that affect the whole group. Gloomhaven harnesses the legacy concepts established in Pandemic Legacy and SeaFall in arguably their most natural fit yet, as completing missions and encountering the surrounding cast of non-player characters unlocks new location stickers to place on a central map board which serves little other purpose than to simply track the current state of the world. ![]() ![]() There are 90 separate scenarios included, each of which takes around an hour or two to complete, providing easily over 100 hours of unique story and experiences to explore. Players create their characters, track experience earned through both combat scenarios and other events, and set out into the eponymous fantasy world in search of treasure, renown and a good fight. Let’s first condense Isaac Childres’ enormous creation as much as we can in a sentence, Gloomhaven is an RPG in a box. Yet, it has been achieved, and – without overstating it too much – Gloomhaven may just be to the tabletop what Ulysses is to literature, Lawrence of Arabia is to film or The Beatles' White Album is to music. Quality over quantity, as the old adage goes: it’s much easier to achieve something small but perfectly formed than it is to produce a vast work of greatness.
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