After about a month of waiting for the game to actually get released already, I finally got the Castle Ravenloft board game, and they did a pretty good job, I think. The system has been crushed down to its simplest element, roll a dice, compare it to a number, and then see what happens, and the game controls pretty well. The production value is just right, although the box is pretty tall…it almost looks like they didn’t plan to include so much stuff.It does work better with a party, I found after a first foray solo, in which my character woke up next to the good Baron and knew he needed to get the hell out of there. Unfortunately, the level was crawling with monsters and I couldn’t even get close to killing them fast enough to avoid them, and my ranger eventually fell to the onslaught. It was at this point that I realized this game was vicious, which is good for a coop.
But the two player game went a lot better. Sure, there were still a lot of monsters on the board, but with two people to take care of them, and the fact that they weren’t attacking every single turn, really helped. It was still tough, as we both sat with 1 hit point when we finished the game (I had a means to heal us, but still.) It was tense, and it was with a couple of cancellations of the vicious encounter cards that helped us win the day. (That’s a good mechanic, by the way. Using experience to get rid of potential threats.)
There are some issues with the rules, as they went with pretty instead of clear…even though they are short, I still had issues with what happened when and if I was setting up correctly, which is unfortunate. But I like it, and I like all the additional goodies that I got that go with each of the adventures. It looks expandable all to hell, which I like, and I think I’ll be playing it more for sure.
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