5 Reasons You Should (and Shouldn't) Buy Sleeping Gods - 21+ Hour Review

[Music] foreign [Music] hey everybody welcome to board online board offline today we are bringing you our review of sleeping guides and as always our review is going to be in the format of five reasons you should and five reasons you shouldn't buy sleeping gods and also as always we have over 20 hours of gameplay in this game now our reviews usually are going to be 20 plus hours however with some smaller games it might just be 20 plays or more but with this one we did get more than 20 hours of play before we get into the review i don't mention our sponsor board game code this is a great website where you can buy sell and trade games they have a great selection of games for you to choose from if you're just looking to buy more games build out that collection get more stuff in there they always are are figuring out what the new hotness is what the uh old hotness was that people are still wanting to buy maybe and what the new hotness is going to be so be sure to check them out for your purchasing needs they also will buy games from you so be sure to check that out as well they're a really easy system to use if you're just looking to sell some games from your collection and then of course they have their trade feature where if you have a war game geek account and you've set up a trade list over on board game geek you then can put your board game geek user name into their website and uh and then board game code will build a custom trade list right there on their website for you to use makes it very easy to facilitate a trade be sure to check them out if you do click on the link in the description below so they know i sent you over there board game co makes it easy to buy sell and trade your way into a better collection okay so let's get right down to this review now first reason that you should buy sleeping guides there is a absolutely grand sense of exploration in this game uh with the let's see i believe that's actually is this the one for i have the expansion in here too yeah this is the base game so you start off right here right in this area on the map book but then you literally can just travel anywhere in the map book that you want i mean you you know uh so for instance you know maybe i want to head off this direction well then i go to page 13 and we have this is where we're at now so then i decide well i'm gonna go up uh or maybe i'll go down here right come off the bottom of the map here well now oops losing some guys over there go to page seven and there's literally no restriction you just travel anywhere you want and you can explore to all these different i mean look at all those circles in these two pages here those are all places you can explore there is so much you can so much to explore so many stories to find so many different types of terrain you see you got some kind of desert stuff going on here and that the fact that from the very first moment you start playing the game the entire world is open to you is something that i think is going to intrigue a lot of players there's nothing that's you know that's blocked off from you by you know any sort of artificial game mechanism you literally can just and to give an idea here let's look at so this is all of the game maps including the expansion tides of ruin all of them put together right here so you start uh here in this center section and then you can just explore anywhere you want and that sense of exploration is something that is really really cool and done really well you literally could just ignore all the exploration and head off straight to the farthest point on the map and start exploring there if you really wanted to so number two is uh there's what i best way i can think describe it is a failing forward mechanism in terms of the story so this book right here is and this is the base game book this book right here has uh just tons and tons of story in it tons of story blurbs that you're going to be reading lots of choices to make all kinds of you know um of of different adventures and and rewards and and consequences are going to happen inside this book but even if you fail and the way that that's done is through uh tests so like for instance um you know you've got maybe a strength test or you've got savvy here or perception or craft those are all things that this that was his name again laurent can add to you know he he can help with those types of tests and if when you're doing those tests if you don't succeed at what you're doing if you fail that test most games well you haven't done the thing you're trying to do period and maybe you have to redo the test maybe it just blocks off you know that uh story route you're gonna take but with sleeping guides so let's say for instance you were you were tied up right your wrists are bound and so you're now trying to uh you know break the ropes or something like that or pull your hands free from the ropes you do a strength test if you failed the strength test then your hands are still going to pull free from the ropes that's still going to happen but there'll be some sort of consequence or failing so maybe you take damage maybe uh maybe you know it took a little extra time and so something different is going to happen in the story these sort of consequences are going to uh basically allow the story to still unfold you still do the thing you're trying to do but with a reasonable and understandable consequence for failing the test and that fail forward mechanism helps the story to continue pushing forward it helps you feel like you're not kind of spinning your wheels or you're not unable to progress you know just because maybe it really was just a really bad draw from the deck because you're drawing these fake cards from this deck to help decide whether or not you passed the test and maybe you just got a bad draw well guess what the story still is going to move forward you're just going to have you know maybe a status added to you you know maybe maybe weakness or or you're afraid to fight or something like that or you're taking damage and that i think is a pretty cool idea so the next thing uh the number three reason that you should buy sleeping gods and you can see i've been searching for a couple things here uh in that in between that take there is uh there's so many great ways to improve your characters your characters are pretty cool to begin with they've got some good abilities they've got some good uh attributes and everything but you're going to be improving them throughout the game now the first way that you're able to do that is with these items so you're throughout the game gonna find times that you're able to go to the market and buy different things so there's equipment that for instance this one the uh lucran boiler will let you travel easier or there's recipes so this pot roast is going to heal fatigue or is going to get rid of fatigue it's going to heal for health and it's going to get rid of low morale must be really good dish you've got uh other recipes like grilled fish you this uh this equipment is the amulet of the fox that is gonna give you plus two accuracies there's so many ways this right here is the serpent scale vest three defense so you can see there's just a ton of different possibilities in here uh don't we can't forget about weapons you know you got your twin daggers here the person that uses these has four accuracy deals three damage uh and and so there's just all these different possibilities in here oh and then of course you do have some equipment that helps with attribute tests and stuff like that so equipment is ju unless it's a weapon equipment is not assigned to any one character you put it into this general pool and then anybody can use it at any given time as long as they have the necessary command to spin to use it so that is i mean there's so many cool items in here uh this right here chloroform you can spin one command to put one damage on an enemy but it can't be it can't damage their health it has to damage one of the enemy's abilities that are on their card so a lot of really really thematic and biscuits and gravy by the way it just looks absolutely delicious i love that card lots of cool ways to upgrade your character's abilities using these items but then let's talk about for going at a for four upgrading the characters themselves these uh cards right here are your fate cards or you'll draw them for fate much of the time but you'll also draw them into your hand and then you can uh equip them or train your characters with them so for instance if you gave alerts to a character well now they have an extra perception attribute and then on top of that they can discard this card at any time once it's equipped to give that crew member an additional accuracy jack of all trades is another one that gives an extra perception but then anytime during combat or a challenge you can discard this equip card for plus two to fate so you draw a fake card is not enough discard it you get plus two to fade let's find something a little different here all right here's one uh rage it adds one strength attribute and then this crew member may place damage diagonally but may not participate in challenges and so you have this whole deck here and there's some there's some repeats in here but the the interesting thing with the way these abilities work is yeah they're upgrading your character but when the event deck runs out and it's gonna run out three times in a game you run through an event deck three times and i'm not in a game in a campaign each time the event that runs out your character loses all the ability cards that are attached to them they all go back in the deck you start over and so while that might not feel great there's something similar to ability cards that do not go away these are the level cards these are what you spend experience points on and so they have a very similar format you can see for this one adds one strength attribute and it says captain odessa may have up to three fatigue tokens the third has no negative effect normally you can only have two fatigue tokens now odessa could have three and you'll notice that it names her specifically because it also has her picture on there because level cards are specific to the characters so this is the actual character progression in the game uh here's one from marco it's going to add add one cunning to marco and it's called hope it says remove one low morale from a crew member when you use the deck and then right here for gregory adds one savvy to gregory called patch up restore one health to another crew member when any player uses the sick base so normally sick bay heals one now it'll heal two alright so every every character in the game has a number of these level cards available and they range from pretty useful to very very useful uh and and so and these stay with you throughout the entire campaign and are always available for for use in that way and finally the fourth way and it kind of goes with it these cards right here the item cards the the market cards i talked about earlier there are totem cards in the unlockable cards area of the game and because you're looking for totems right that's the whole point of the game is you're looking for totems well every time you unlock a totem it's not just this nebulous thing that you unlock and okay yay points it into the game totems are items as well that give you all kinds of really cool powers so when you're unlocking these totems not only are you you know checking boxes on this page right here to start you know checking off all the different totems you found and then hopefully unlock things at the end of the game but you're also finding cool new powers with those totems that can really help continue to push the game forward and help you become even better and better as you're playing so then with the crew this is my number four reason that you should get it that you should buy sleeping guys the crew feels like they are really well defined and each one has kind of their own purpose on board the ship so let's i've got a few here i know i got something out there but let's let's see the ones i've got in here so mac mara johnson is uh definitely one of the best fighters she has four accuracy to start off with which is i'm pretty sure the highest out of everybody she has the ability to add one to a fate draw so if somehow that accuracy wasn't enough for her now she can add um an additional one to whatever the card was that she drew and she has the ability to add extra damage captain sophie odessa is kind of one of your all-around fantastic characters to have i mean even in a multiplayer game everyone has access to the captain she has one of each attribute type so there's that and then she has actually has three abilities here which is i believe everyone else only has two she can get rid of low morale she can add accuracy she can also add a defense here she has only one accuracy but if she hits she does some serious damage so that gives you reason to try to get her into the fight as well maybe try to find ways to boost that accuracy then we've got audrey williams here who only has these two attributes here craft and perception but she can repair the ship just by using command she also has this built-in uh ability to add some defense whenever somebody's being attacked and she can use this power block where audrey's second crew board ability gives an additional defense so adding to defense is a pretty big deal in this game as uh you know you don't have super high amounts of damage usually if you're if you're if you're doing it right you're not gonna have a lot of damage being thrown your way and so having that extra two defense can really help out and then you've got uh kanan over here who has the ability to get rid of the afraid is it caught afraid called frightened status so that's pretty cool he actually is a decent fighter too even though again only the one accuracy but he deals three damage three damage is a lot for a base ability and so each of these guys each of these people have these really cool rolls on the ship that you'll see as you're playing they kind of fall into this natural rhythm okay if we're fighting well these are probably the ones that are going to start off fighting and then if we need to heal up or we need to get rid of some of these statuses well i've got these guys to do that if i need a meat shield to absorb some damage i've got somebody who that's probably going to be the one that's that's going to do that and when once you realize what those roles are and then you start adding these level cards to it there's a lot of cool stuff that happens and then finally my fifth reason that you should buy sleeping guides is that the combat in my opinion is an enjoyable puzzle once you figure out strategies for handling it so if you're not familiar with the combat in this game and i'm just real quick brief overview here you're gonna have enemies that are next to each other and let's just look at one you've got three hearts here well you need to cover those three hearts to kill the enemy meanwhile if you are unable to hit the enemy because he has six defense so you've got to get your accuracy to equal that or be higher well then you're only going to deal one damage if you miss hitting them and they're going to counter attack not only they're going to counter-attack but if they're alive at the end of the round of combat then they're going to attack you as well and normally you're going to have two or three sometimes four enemies out on the board and they're all going to be coming at you like that and if you don't take out some of their ability to deal damage your damage is going to stack up really fast and you're going to find yourself on the losing end of this battle even in early game situations but once you figure out that puzzle once you figure out oh well maybe instead of going after the hearts right away i should deal with their extra damage they can deal because i'm not gonna kill them in the first round so if i knock out a lot of their extra damage then i'm gonna be okay for the following round understanding stuff like that makes a big difference in figuring out how to survive and even thrive in the combat in this game and look there are all these different enemies and yes the lost ruins enemies are in here as well but that's a ton that is a ton of enemies in here there's so many different possibilities i mean i don't want to spoil things but there's a lot of really cool stuff in here and the combat is really really worth it once you get past that initial learning curve the initial strategy learning curve all right so now let's get into the five reasons you should not buy sleeping gods now we were just talking about combat and i really enjoy the combat that puzzle nature of the combat i think is really really interesting it's it's unlike anything else i've i've found to give you some context i also really enjoy the kind of puzzly combat that you find in tiny grails so that that puzzly nature of combat is something that is not uh displeasing to me i really really enjoy those kind of different ways of of looking at combat but one thing that i will say with the combat for sleeping with sleeping gods is that it can feel disproportionately punishing uh especially compared to the rest of the game which has that fail forward mechanism all that kind of stuff that that really helps push the game forward uh combat can feel disproportionately punishing compared to what you're expecting from the rest of the game especially before you really start to figure out some good strategies for combat now don't get me wrong you still fail forward with combat but the if you if you lose combat the uh well i mean i should rephrase that you fail forward with combat if you're not playing brutal mode if you're playing normal mode then you fail forward and and you you know once everyone is completely full of damage nobody can take any more damage then basically you limp back to your ship and and you end up at a in or whatever and you recover to some extent and everything same thing with ship damage if you're playing normal mode brutal mode if your ship is full of damage which isn't a combat thing or if you lose combat by everyone getting their ass asses kicked basically then game's over so technically speaking if you're playing brutal mode which some would argue is the uh the full or intended way of playing then you don't fail forward your game is over so so there's that then i would say that with combat it's not particularly obvious what you should be going after in the first round or two of combat versus the end of combat what i've found has kept my people alive and has made the damage that they sustain um within reason and where i'm able to handle it is that i go if i know i can't kill a particular monster or i'm unlikely to kill a particular monster in the first round of combat then instead i start crippling him i go after his special abilities i go after the extra damage that that monster is going to deal that are on the card the the damage you can actually reduce and then after i've kind of crippled them then i'll go after the the kill then i'll try to kill them and that strategy you know among other things has been key in making combat uh seem easier to deal with seem like it's not such a crazy difficult thing because the first time the first campaign it was feeling like combat was just this like incredible ramp up of difficulty out of nowhere compared to what i was doing in the rest of the game so keep that in mind uh about how punishing it can feel it before you've really got a handle on it i do think once you have a handle on it then it is proportional with everything else that you're dealing with now the second thing is if you're if you're the type of person that when you're playing a game particularly a campaign game like this you don't want to have any sort of artificial reset of your skills or abilities all right so like i said with the ability cards with these ability cards at the end of each event deck and remember those three event decks in a campaign so basically twice a game uh you're going to have the ability cards that you've assigned to your characters completely wiped out they're gonna just be wiped off the board put back in the ability deck and your character will start again at the beginning of the second event deck and at the beginning of the third event deck with zero ability cards regardless of what they had on them at the time supposedly that's in the rulebook i did not see it when i was reading through the first time and a lot of people didn't see it when they were in through the first time and so you'll see in the forums a lot of discussion about this people getting caught off guard when that first event deck ends when you're building the second event deck and and when everybody loses all their ability cards for a game that is steeped so deeply and thematic and tying you to the to the theme through the mechanics and everything this is a very un-thematic moment that really catches you off guard if you're not expecting it like i said a lot of people are not expecting it i still haven't found it i haven't gone looking for it but i have been told through the forums that it is in the rulebook so the fact that it's not an obvious thing a lot of people are being caught off guard by it and it doesn't feel good the first time it happens to be perfectly honest uh and it's clear that it's done purely for balance and mechanical reasons and that's fine that's fine once i knew it was coming then i planned around it you know so so many of these ability cards have things on them where it says you know the way you use the ability card is once it's equipped you then discard it for its ability perfect i'll just make sure that i kind of burn those prior to them being removed from my characters also as an event deck nears the end of it i'm probably not going to spend two command to put rage on somebody because the when the event deck ends rage is going away you know i'm probably not going to spend two command to put lessons on on somebody uh because you know its ability isn't going to be worth the two turns i'm going to get you know at the end of an event deck compared to the two command i have to spend to put it on the person so that's something that you should definitely be aware of when you're playing and it really does have an effect on how you plan your turns is knowing that you're going to lose those ability cards at the end of the event x and then i think that some people will be a this is the third reason that you might not want to buy sleeping guides some people will be a little overwhelmed by the open world feel of it so taney grill has an open world feel and i'm referencing taney grill a lot here because that was the last review i did uh tayden excuse me taney grill has an open world feel but it is sort of artificially constrained how far you can travel in that open world from the beginning of the game it has the mechanism of the miniers and the weirdness in tiny grail to take that giant open world and basically force you to stay here you know you've got this this huge open area but really this is this is what you've got at the beginning of tinny grill sleeping guide doesn't have any restrictions like that it is literally just go anywhere on the map from the moment you start the game now uh that being said there are clues provided by the quest and sleeping guides they are generally more direct than the clue and again i'm not pulling any of these quests out all that stuff is spoiler territory so i'm not going to point that out but the clues on the sleeping guides quest are generally more direct than what you had in tiny grail so while tinny grill you know artificially constrained the area you could travel to it kind of then uh made even that feel more open world by not giving you super direct clues with your quest sleeping guys is kind of like the opposite you have that entire open world but the quests themselves give you you know it's more like hey where you know you just picked up this quest three islands to the east where the forest meets the desert that's that's where this quest needs you to go you know stuff like that a lot of the clues can seem like they are referring to multiple locations on the board so you know like that clue i just gave you maybe there's two or three islands in the east where they could be referring to them or or even on only one island but maybe there's like three uh locations on that island you could explore and and so you might still spend a few you know a turn or two trying to figure out exactly which exploration spot you're trying to go to but still it at least gets you in there in the right general area uh pretty easily but again if you want to ignore the quest and you just travel off into the sunset feel free to do that too but if that's if that sort of massive freedom that really really just open world freedom is going to make you feel stressed out is is is a little bit more freedom than what you want in a game then this the sleeping guides might not be for you number four is one that i personally didn't have any issue with but keep in mind i also play kingdom death monster solo which when you get deep into the kingdom death monster campaign you have a lot of upkeep going on there the the fourth reason you might not enjoy sleeping gods or might maybe it wouldn't be the one that you should buy is if you're planning to play solo it can be a lot to keep up with all eight uh you know because we've got these people out here is it eight or is it nine what do we have out there uh eight yeah we've got five out there right right right what yeah yeah yeah it's eight yeah we have eight people uh it could be a lot to keep up with all eight crew members because no matter how many players you play with you always use all the crew members okay and each of them has at least two i think i think captain odessa is the only one that has three abilities built onto their card so each of them has at least two if not three abilities then on top of that um each one uses a different weapon each weapon uh the the weapons all have a card that you or a card type an attribute type on a card that you could discard to deal more damage oh no no that is nine here we go we got one more person in here so there are nine nine crew members that you have to use um and then as you get the abilities most people can only have two abilities at a time that's two more abilities you got to keep your eyes on if you you know have loaded up a character um and then captain odessa could have three i believe it's her that could have three somebody one of them could have three depending on the level cards they've they've added oh and then you add the level cards those are just like ability cards as well so uh i mean some of these people have three ability card or three level cards i think is it somebody might have four i think everybody only has three maximum uh but so that's like five or six different abilities besides the abilities printed on their cards it's a lot of stuff to keep up with so if you're looking to play as a solo gamer a lot of solo gamers are used to having to deal with that you know like i said kingdom death monster for me is is the one that kind of made it clear okay that's not gonna be an issue for me i'm fine with with trying to keep all that in mind and i'm fine with the fact that i'm gonna forget sometimes and i'm gonna forget about abilities because i'm just enjoying the game but if you want to be able to always make the best strategic choice or at least have always be able to easily remember all the options available to you to make the best strategic choice then this one might be a bit much because of nine characters with two to three abilities built on to them each plus two to three abilities that you could add to them plus they're three level cards you could add to them at kabila right so keep that in mind and then the fifth reason this game might not be for you that you might not want to buy sleeping gods is that this game rewards plays of repeat plays of the campaign in two different ways first it's literally impossible to see everything even in i'd say even in three plays of the campaign i've played two and a half my first campaign i abandoned halfway through because i just wasn't happy with what was going on and you know you're getting used to the rules the first time i've played two more campaigns since then and i'm not even close to seeing everything yet i've only explored a third of the map in terms of like going to it i think a third of the world on the areas that i've gone i haven't explored everything on those areas and and then there's all that other pla area that i haven't even touched yet so all of that you know is going to leave somebody who wants to see everything maybe feeling a bit overwhelmed with the fact that they're going to play it's a lot to come even close to seeing everything the second way that it uh rewards repeat plays is that at the end of each campaign as you find totems and you discover the different campaign endings you're going to unlock additional material for the game which means that there's going to be material that uh in in the form of quest cards that you don't see when you first start playing and you don't see after three campaigns uh i at this point have let's see after three after two and a half campaigns i have there's eight boxes to check off i have checked off six of the unlockable boxes so i've got uh two more and probably let's see 12 i might be able to get in one more campaign i might be able to unlock the rest of it one more campaign but regardless that's so it's three and a half campaigns basically that it would take me to unlock everything that might that's probably gonna bother people because there's some gameplay stuff in those unlocks that is going to affect the way you play a little bit so keep that in mind as well uh and and so basically what this means is that in order to come close to seeing everything available you're going to play numerous numerous campaigns like i said at least i'd say three campaigns to be able to unlock everything and then i don't know based off my progress i would say to be able to even come anywhere close to seeing all the exploration options we're talking six or seven campaigns probably so that's the and i would say a campaign for this game takes minimum six hours i'm i'm so somewhere right around two hours per event deck is where i'm at right now with my play so if you're someone who hates missing out on story or game mechanisms and also isn't wanting to devote that kind of time to a single game which is fine that's perfectly fine nothing wrong with that but if that's kind of your style that's your mentality then this could be a very large negative for you the fact that you have to spend so much time to come close to seeing everything um and that's of course if you're someone who wants to see everything maybe maybe you're fine without seeing everything and you just want you know that one experience well then maybe it's not a problem but it is something that should be kept in mind uh as a reason why you might not want to buy sleeping gods so there you go those are my five reasons you should and five reasons you shouldn't buy sleeping gods i hope you enjoyed this video i know i didn't dig into the components quite as much as normal just because they're you know there's so much discovery in this game i didn't want to really dig too deep in here but i hope you enjoyed this video if you did please give it a thumbs up please subscribe click the bell uh be sure to check out earth rising which was the most recent kickstarter preview that or i did a game play so far the preview will be coming out right after this video come back and check that out it launches on kickstarter april 26 and this is one that i have really enjoyed play it's all paid content for earth rising but personally i really have enjoyed this game a lot so i highly recommend it and yeah be sure to come back check out my other reviews i've dropped a review for kingdom death recently as well as tayden grill and until next time if you're bored online aboard offline [Music] you

Channel: Bored Online? Board Offline!

Views: 5,101

Keywords: Tides of ruin, Sleeping gods, Gameplay, Board games, Card games, Exploration, Adventure, Totems, Gods

Id: pU85bn8lEsI

Length: 37min 55sec (2275 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021