Gloomhaven - Jaws of the Lion Review

HiddenX

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Thumb Culture has reviewed Gloomhaven: Jaws Of The Lion:

Gloomhaven & Jaws Of The Lion PC Review

So you want to know about Gloomhaven eh? Well, if you got to that city it's yer funeral, but I'll tell yous what I know. A few years back, this fella by the name of Isaac Childres designed a board game. Gloomhaven he called it. Bloody fun that thing was. In any case, it got real popular, and suddenly the folks over at Flaming Fowl Studios have an idea. "Hey," they says, "what if we made that Gloomhaven into a video game?"

Blam! That was it!

Now here we are! The game mixes tactical-RPG gameplay with dungeon crawling and it's bloody marvellous. What? You don't believe me? Well, all right then I'll explain a little more. But remember, when all of yer free time is pulled in by this gem, that you asked for this. Don't come bawling to me when you don't got enough hours in yer day no more.

There's Doom, and Gloom, and Things Go Boom! In Gloomhaven!

I 'specially don't want to hear about all yer awesome experiences with Gloomhaven in that comment section down below. No sir, keep yer problems to yerself. In fact, if you have to bother someone, why not yer bloomin' friends. Share the misery around.

[...]

As true as those things may be, my last word on Gloomhaven is that it was an utterly difficult bastard. Despite that, the bloomin' thing kept pulling me in anyway, and I loved every blasted second of it. All of which is why I'm giving Gloomhaven the Thumb Culture Golden Award, one bastard to another.
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Gloomhaven & WotR, the two games from the past year I really still want to play. This DLC supposedly offers 4? new mercenaries and some new scenarios.

Anyone been playing this? Solo? I've watched some Twitch streams and it definitely seems like it would benefit greatly from having a regular group of mates to play with.
 
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Gloomhaven & WotR, the two games from the past year I really still want to play. This DLC supposedly offers 4? new mercenaries and some new scenarios.

Anyone been playing this? Solo? I've watched some Twitch streams and it definitely seems like it would benefit greatly from having a regular group of mates to play with.

I greatly enjoyed the board game Gloomhaven a few years ago, spending several hundred hours (a huge amount of time) with it playing through its long campaign with one person and also twice solo.

I was skeptical about the digital release but I went ahead and purchased it when it got out of beta last year and it's as great if not greater than the board game (albeit lacking the social element of the board game) and I ended up with 388.1 hours on it. It's one of my top 5 favorite PC games of all time.

I purchased the board game Jaws of the Lion when it was released and it's in my view only so-so. It is in my view a good entry point for board gamers who are not used to the high complexity of a game like Gloomhaven, and I would recommend it from that aspect, but I don't think I plan on getting it on digital. There's nothing wrong with Jaws of the Lion other than being somewhat simplified (which is not in itself a negative) but it's mostly more of the same for me once I've already played through the main campaign of Gloomhaven multiple times.

tldr: I highly recommend Gloomhaven.
 
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Highly recommend Gloomhaven as well, whether or not you should start with Jaws of the Lion would depend on how used to extremely weighty/complex games you are. The base Gloomhaven boardgame is too complex for many people, the computer game might be even worse if you aren't familiar with the base game. Jaws of the Lion was made for the type of person who might enjoy that style of game but who just wish it was quite a bit simpler, or that it allowed for more of a learning curve.
 
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