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44 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Descent Into the Wee Hours of the Morning, April 20, 2006
Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars
My son and I are always looking into dungeon crawlers. He also thoroughly enjoys playing the antagonist force when permitted by the game, such as the cooperative Lord of the Rings game. One player (with the Sauron expansion) takes on the role of Sauron and the forces of the Dark.
Descent is a lengthy board game that involes dungeon crawling, massive creature slaying, treasure gathering, tactics, strategy, and some logical thinking. The basis of the game involves a party of heroes (2 - 4) that battle the forces of a dungeon (the Overlord player) in an attempt to complete a quest. The game comes with layout suggestions for five quests, but with imagination, the possibilities are endless.
Battles are interesting where the weapons are concerned. Many different kinds of dice exist for specific weapon types (magic, melee, ranged) and they change based on the weapon's information card. Depending on the class of character, certain weapons give special advantages (a full warrior type can roll the maximum three power dice to add to his attacks). There are a decent amount of treasures and items. It does take some time for the game to really pick up speed, which may turn off less patient players.
In addition to the basic hack and slash design, there are many status effects (burning, poison, etc) that you would expect to find in a fantasy game. There are pits, water, debris, and other obstacles for the dungeon. There is a decent amount of creatures made of plastic that are quite detailed. Many players paint or detail these models. This game contains a TON of punch out tokens, board pieces, etc.. It is simply massive (hence the price). Even though the price is a little steep, once you open the box you will understand why. The quality of the tokens is decent - they are thick cardboard, as are the dungeon tiles.
Is the game fun? It's very long. It still took us about 4-5 hours to finish our second run. However, once my heroes starting gaining some power, it was much more fun. So yes, the game is fun. There is a decent amount of freedom for the Overload player to design their own quests and dungeon layouts. Think of Descent as "D&D Lite". If you need visuals instead of just a pen and paper to role play, then Descent may be for you.
Here are some tidbits from our last session with this game:
There is a fair learning curve for this game and it requires a lot of patience to get used to the rules. Quite frankly, we've only played twice and the first time was rough since we had to consult the manual every 30 seconds. Players of similar games will likely have some difficulty accepting some of the rules (especially D&D players) because they are watered down a bit from more complex games. To clarify, I mean specific rules about line of sight, etc.. where the players are allowed a full 360 degree field of vision. Some of these rules are a little illogical, but it doesn't take any fun away from the game. The line of sight rules will create some confusion for sure. In the end, players may simply come to some agreements on line of sight rules on their own (we had to agree on some rules dealing with corners and obstacles diagonally touching corners.)
Anyhow, the early game starts off very slow, but once the heroes start gaining some items from chests, the game takes off. I felt many times (playing as the heroes - with two players the hero player just plays two characters) that the Overlord was way too powerful. He can summon hordes of monsters and keep you pinned into one room for an hour. This happened a few times, but once my characters were powerful enough, we were able to clear the rooms quickly. I finally won after two attempts to complete the first quest.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A surprise find amongst the recent bevy of tabletop gaming..., November 21, 2008
Durability:4.0 out of 5 stars Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars Educational:4.0 out of 5 stars
Purchased this as part of a blowout sale along with all three expansion sets. All four boxes for less than [...]? I couldn't resist. I am a gamer at heart and I've been looking for a way to instill this life-long love of gaming into my kids. My eldest, barely breaking through grade 1, loves this game. Although the boxes states Age 12+ I think that the use of basic maths, reading skills for the rules, and the constant evaluation of one's position and situation actually has allowed my little girl to take to this game like a duck to cliche.
Opening the box, its contents define quality. All the pieces were there and the miniatures looked excellent. Taking a bit of initial time to clean up some of the flashing present on most of the plastic mini's really helped and makes-way for possible future paint jobs. The board pieces and various markers are made from heavy cardboard. The cards a printed on semi-thick cardstock (I could've used a bit thicker cardstock but that's okay). One of my dungeon pieces had split slightly at the edge but that was easily fixed with some glue and a clothespin... now it's better than new.
The initial game has a few game mechanic issues, nothing major but the Overlord just doesn't have the variety necessary to keep the game interesting. This is simply a result from the fact that as hero-players get more experienced they will inevitably start to work together as a unit and understand the necessity of this for superior play (i.e. line of site and controlling monster spawning). However, with the expansion 'Well of Darkness', Treachery and a few other mods are introduced which fixes this problem. I'd actually recommend all of the expansions ('Altar of Despair' and 'Road to Legends') as well as they each add a much wider variety of heroes, weapons, Overlord cards, and some other unique aspects such as 'boulders' in WoD and 'crushing walls' in AoD.
I've also found that this game, if modified slightly via houserules, does very well at introducing non-gamers to my little world. I have a few friends that had never played this DnD-type of game before and once I figured out some of the problems (the game is a little long for inexperienced players) and corrected those for newbies, I was able to get them up-to-speed over the course of about 2-hours. Once they've been bitten by the boardgamer bug I start to introduce some of the more dynamic aspects of the game. Amongst my core group now I've got games down to 2-2.5 hours on average. We do have monster killing marathons every once in a while and the expansions provide some massive 4+ hour (even for experienced heroes) quests. There's something here for everyone.
I'm very much looking forward to the new 'Tombs of Ice' expansion said to hit stores sometime before Christmas '08.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Descend into your imagination with your friends!, September 26, 2007
Durability:3.0 out of 5 stars Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars Educational:3.0 out of 5 stars
This game is so much fun! We play with teenagers so it's great for them too! The only drawback is the time it can take to play. Start your games early! So far it's been a blast for everyone except the Overlord! LOL It was totally worth the $80! And we aren't even through half the quests that came in the box yet! :) One major con: I've had to super-glue 1-2 of the figurines back together so far, other than that everything is TOP quality!
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