Batman™: Gotham City Chronicles - Shut Up & Sit Down Review

hello and welcome back - shut up and sit downs chronicles month and if you missed our review of chronicles of crime you can go and check that out but today we have got Batman Gotham City chronicles BAM today we have Batman Gotham City chronicles and this the second we have but today we have Batman Gotham City chronicles we're just we're just gonna be reviewing these first five Batman Gotham City is that it there's another box as the master detectives among you may have guessed from this stunning raft of miniatures Batman Gotham City chronicles is a Kickstarter game where the more back as they got they loaded the game with yet more minis this is just the base game without any expansions and to be honest it's so big that we worried it might break our standardized reference pair which is why we have brought our standardized reference a kohlrabi now we know what you're thinking is this kohlrabi bigger or smaller than the kohlrabi in my house don't worry they're exactly the same exactly the same as any of the Kauravas you find inside your house but this is a game which is back on Kickstarter now which is why we're reviewing it and actually is pretty much a game we've reviewed before in the form of Conan which came out a few years ago in 2016 we found Conan to be thematic silly and plenty of fun you can crash through a wall roll some dice kill a snake be mobbed chuck your ax to your friend as you're dying act and then he could throw your axe to kill the boss from about 30 yards but Batman Gotham City Chronicles is literally twice the game of Conan twice the miniatures twice the scenarios twice the rules and twice the number of boxes these are the expansions that they're currently selling for the game this is just the base game which costs one hundred and thirty dollars plus shipping Wow it's literally the second most expensive game we've ever reviewed on sit down after Kingdom death monster I mean you can even put out all the boards together to form this sort of panoramic view of the time that all of the characters went to a model village I'm not sure why these posters are so small but I'm not sure this post I don't know what's going on now in this review we are only going to be covering the base game sometimes when we review things we say hey look this is the base game this expansion but that's when you're looking at maybe 50 60 bucks for the whole patooty this is a hundred and thirty dollars so it doesn't really matter if the expansions are good if this isn't good and on the surface the base game alone with all these boxes and all these bits looks like the ultimate Batman bat game experience players pick a scenario starring one two or three heroes you set it up the good team picks their heroes and bat gadgets and all of this stuff and then they face off against the final player who controls the bad guys usually the good guys then have an objective to complete and the bad guys have to jog around sort of running interference like a basketball team on defense and this also means that Batman has gone down from Conan's two to five players to two to four players it's a slower heavier game but it doesn't mean that if you're a big fan of Batman and there's bad things you want in it they're probably in this base game how about Harley Quinn she's in the Box batarangs we got batarangs the Scarecrow he's here he's doing weird stuff back claw hole grappling coy of course we've got it bad girl yes bat woman sure Batman yeah man back of course how about calendar man no that is that's too specific there are new rules for elevation and difficult terrain as well as skills and special items to improve your ability to jump climb or fall but that's just for starters there are literally rules for being lucky frosty which is different from being cool and even having an imaginary friend that's because every character they packed into this box has been brought to life with a handful of these special skills and that's before we get into the expansion that adds Batman's our 'mobile which comes with its own manual of how to play and then you've also got that Arkham Asylum expansion which adds modular funhouse carnival boards and of course the Wayne's Manor expansion which comes with an actual natural dinosaur stop being distracted by all these hot bits we need to teach them a bit about how to play the game no no no no I want to talk more about boxes within boxes with things that you can unbox Matthew Lee's alright fine well you can do the boring stuff and I'm gonna go and seal the kitchen floor and play with these and drink rabbina oh I have arrived inna so the foundation of Batman is the same system that we liked in Conan for the good guys that's about teamwork and managing your stamina Matt was being whimsical earlier when he compared this to a team sport but actually that's pretty apt when it's the good guys turn to act you don't actually take turns instead you can discuss what you want to do and then alternate your actions I'm gonna move here I'm gonna punch this guy I'm gonna shoot at him I'm gonna go round here and so in doing this carefully you will slice through the bad guys like questionable seafoods moving through a digestive tract but also you're gonna be making use of the rules for hindering a lot if you want to do something like move out of a space or disarm a bomb and there's other people there that's gonna be a problem unless one of your buddies is in that space distracting them and so Batman becomes a game really of knowing exactly which of your buddies is good at what and at what range and for how long and then leading on your buddies like a one-legged buddy having junkie who's addicted to buddies Batman you're better at punching people you punch that guy I'm better at computer and so long as we're talking about all the different heroes you can play I love how Gotham City chronicles handles characters that do not kill they have this special symbol on and what that means is if they find a weapon with the same symbol that can't use it which led to an example of playing the manual that cracked me up where Batman finds a submachine gun can't use it and so gives it for one stamina to Commissioner Gordon who then presumably uses it to shoot the Joker in the head thanks Batman but whichever hero you're playing the entire game is going to balance on a seesaw of risk and rewards because of this stamina system which is tremendously freeing if you run up to a guy you could spend three stamina and almost certainly put him through a wall but that's wasteful perhaps it's better to spend just one stamina and maybe you'll knock him out or maybe you'll waste your turn or perhaps you could spend a stamina to move past him and just run away but is he gonna catch you up and how much stamina should you save to guard against your attacks because as you take damage it's your stamina that enters this wound zone and this system is so thought-provoking and freeing but what I love most about it is it lets play as be heroes staking everything on one roll of their own superhuman abilities like a gambler cashing in chips at a roulette table and as for the villain they get an even more lovely tactile things to play with on their turn in addition to being able to spend their own cubes which they also get back a little bit every turn on rerolls or guarding or extra movement they pick which group of villain they want to activate costing them one two three four five or six cubes I'm gonna activate the prisoners but then they go to the end of the queue but you can always activate them again if you can afford it these lovely systems of planning and gambling this fabulous tactility this was the heart of Conan but it's actually only the floor of Batman with with a more elaborate structure on top to support a fancier fictional goons it's me commissioner got Mac there's something in the sky outside look out there in the night sky can you see it oh I see it alright it's the criticism symbol I have to get to the critic cave blah shut up and give me the key see a basement [Music] hello my name is bat Critic man and I'm here to comment in this review Wow yes because this game is a usability nightmare and I need to take control of your review Matthew oh that's fine I wasn't really doing much anyway but you're a good man Matthew we have to start with this manual which is 55 pages long with no index credit where it's due monolith has put out how to play video but it's 45 minutes long from spending that long learning to play a game I want it to be a twilight imperium where I play all day or a glue maven we're learning the game it's just the first step on a grand campaign Batman Gotham City Chronicles is neither of those things it is in fact a game that can take as long to set up and teach as it does to play now part of the problem here is that every character and every enemy has these tiny icons referring to their special skills and all of these must be found in the manual and memorized by everybody before the game can start tiny icons that sometimes just for fun apparently have their colors changed in any kind of sensible world there would be a reference for this on the back of your character sheet but no such luck the good news is that fans of this game have made a load of reference sheets that you really must print out before you start playing Gotham City Chronicles bad news is there are dozens and dozens of these pages and also I think is interesting the fact that they've basically made these character sheets look like science fiction computers from movie with little pop-up you are some cool things but the thing is science fiction UIs in movies are unusable and stupid and not things that should exist in any kind real well that's a good point Matthew thanks all right Craig I also want to draw a special attention to something nuts in the mission booklet which is where you'll find the special rules for each board in the form of elevation thickness of walls special moves and in this case promontories which is written nowhere on the board and so that's another thing you have to print out and give to people and I've got to say if your game has special rules for all the different areas on the board none of which is printed on the board then the only board I'm interested in is the drawing board that you have to go back to you because you designed the game that's really quite awkward oh good one that that critic man that's really good Joe even with the reference sheets though you're gonna encounter bizarre things like how this forklift is not something that Catwoman can climb over because it's an impenetrable wall or that this is not a window but a mind bogglingly inappropriate lighting effect it also really bugs me that the scenarios in this booklet aren't in any order at all so every time I plan to search for a scenario that might have less setup all the villains I want or one that's easier for the heroes or with less special rules why would you not at least order it by play account putting it in an order this random feels like it must have been more work overall there is no getting around the fact that when you play Gotham City chronicles the person teaching the games face is gonna be constantly checking one book or another Oh Millicent you chose tear gas as your bat gadget that's really fun for you now I need to find the rules for hazardous gas again and these are not fun books to try and pass what your friends are waiting I mean oh my goodness how's this for an example of poor layout I was going absolutely spare trying to figure out who starts in any given scenario is it the heroes or the villains turns out the answer is hidden in this sand timer symbol if it's blue the hero star if it's grey the bad guys start what what else am I missing on this page where is there a plus next - every single hero in this book does that mean anything what does this meter mean is it perhaps to trap my patience as it rapidly runs out but back critic surely these are just minor annoying speed bumps for the first time you play the game and the second time you play the game and the third because every time you play you're gonna have different characters and equipment and villains and boards and objectives all with their own rules and we have to be clear usually games being different every time you play is a good thing but in Batman it's not an option it's not fun and it's rarely for your benefit so much of this rules gunk is a kind of CPR it's the developers frantically trying to breathe life into all of the different miniatures and features and settings that the Kickstarter promised and that one the developers a ton of backers but it unquestionably makes this game worse this game would be so much better if instead of 25 heroes they just gave you for Batgirl Catwoman Robin Batman and they made sure they were all unique and fun and most importantly if you made sure they were all balanced for all the scenarios you might use them with boom I just made your game easier to play more fun and cheaper what is this I'm a super critic - now I've got a name I'm Robert no that's not cool a knight Robert hey the thing is one of these problems that you are talking about they're all just like their problems the players who are experienced who love the game will get past those ok ok but let's think for a second about Conan Conan wasn't a perfect game but it was pretty easy to start playing it and just enjoy what was cool about the systems you can teach it quite fast and then player to get stuck into fiddling with stamina rolling dice and making mistakes and if your team bought a scenario that was fine it was a game I'd often play twice in a row have a silly fie quickly set up a different scenario have another silly fight it was shallow but it was still fun and my friends went home happy now Batman despite BoardGameGeek having it down as a straight reimplementation of Conan is a very different game and I should know I went back and played Conan to check the scenarios in this game for whatever reason are designed with much less of a combat focus a combat that is inarguably still the coolest part of this game my god when you're Batman and you use your combo ability and you spend one cube to go back BAM and you knock out two people with just a couple of dice rolls that feels amazing so cool we played one mission where I came into the bank like this and I came by and I swept out that's okay I just was there and like I push that guy out and then I jump through here and then I kick through a wall and then I threw tear gas into that room so the guards couldn't get in jump through that room and then a man came at only to another the man was like a fresh white face and I threw an exploding bat-arang game and he almost killed him one hit and how did you feel I was amazing and so cool did you win that scenario oh no he won't even close we lost we lost really badly right and that in a game full of unexpectedly fricative moments is the worst thing about Batman which is what's fun is completely different from how you win they've taken Conan's very silly foundation and tried to do something much more serious with it it's as if they were trying to set up an office workspace in a bouncy castle mostly the scenarios in this game aren't won by fighting but by performing complex manipulation checks perhaps hacking a computer disarming a bomb or in this scenario collecting evidence and this is going to take up a lot of that stamina that the game gave you to do cool stuff it's like you're Paras giving you some pocket money but then charging you interest most scenarios give you just seven turns to complete the objective which is pretty crappy for a game that takes this long to set up but let's not get into that of those seven turns you'll probably have to spend at least two of them resting to get your energy back which is pretty apparent for a game this slow but again let's not get into that leaves you with just five turns to complete whatever tedious objectives you're instructed to do and often that means that all of your moves have to be perfect you can't waste one cube of stamina on anything fun sometimes it means you've lost the scenario because for your back gadgets you chose a grappling hook and batarangs and a cape because you didn't pick the armband computer that would have improved your hacking skills to make the checks doable which possess approximately a million miles from what we liked about tonin which was to paraphrase hurting things in gotham city chronicles we've got a game we're trying to arrest a villain would be considered letting your team down yeah that's right this games poor usability doesn't just extend to learning the rules and setting up the scenarios it means that the components don't quite do what you expect here we've got a batman game we're a villain like mr. riddles or the joker man might only move once in the entire game far more of a threat all of the minions you see these about two dozen quantity of bad dudes they belong to one two three four five six different categories of bad dude each with their own start lines and bad dude little role icons and who rolled their own bad dude attack dice all at different skill checks and by the way these dice no longer have the little symbols on from Conan to help colorblind players and all of this stuff has to be passed by all the players if they're going to plan all of their moves in a long chain which they kind of have to do in this game because remember those objectives are awful oh it's just a mess but that's not to say that there isn't some genuine magic here the sculpts are wonderful and the ZIF bank pow of the combat when you're punching out foes or shooting them hooking them up with these systems is electric oh wow a lot of fun you're going in a wrong direction these are conciliatory comments and for that you don't need back critic man anymore okay oh well look I mean it's not all roses and peaches here there's a lot to be fun had here but I crucially feel that there's just way too much of it yes you have all this variety between the different missions but at the same time like this quantity of plastic all in one box particularly at a time in the industry where increasingly we're seeing more and more publishers putting out fantastic little experiences tiny little boxes seeing this BAM off the plastic only one place makes me feel a little bit queasy oh holy what's up man how are you doing what were you talking I was just getting some some olives you just missed like back Craig man he was just here he was just here yeah he was so cool I cannot believe you missed it ah thing was cool was it was so cool no handsome and smart handsome yeah I just want to like kind of pull out that cape and like all his leggings up a little bit okay his knees just caress his thighs I know a bit massage I know I think you're fantastic man was here he wouldn't wonder with all of what you're saying I can't even imagine his glutes must be like he looks like he works how a lot let's just dream if we move on to the conclusion of the sure so pros and cons cons I hate transporting it hated learning the rules I hated setting up the scenarios I hated teaching it I hated constantly having to go back to the rule books mid-game because there's all these wooded little fiddly rules interactions and I hated the objective design pros I really like when you can finally done all that you throw a battery and you're awesome guys and you knock someone out it feels so good right it feels amazing however how would you feel about that if you paid a hundred and thirteen hundred and forty dollars for it pretty horrible how would you feel if you had paid three hundred and twenty dollars for the base game and all of the expansion stuff I'm not actually even willing to imagine that hmm yeah we think if you want to fiddle with these systems of stamina and the river then you just want to get come on kids it's simpler and cheaper and gets out your way mmm just go Conan and I mean honestly though maybe this gigantic box of things is great if you just want really brilliant Batman miniatures no have you heard of a game called the Batman miniatures game I'm a company called I believe in Knight models mm if you've played Warhammer you'll know the deal here the Batman miniatures game is a game where you can buy the faction you want whether that's the penguin and his gangsters or just a one-person faction that is Batman and then you have fights on your kitchen table we reviewed it on the site a few years ago haven't played it personally but it is supposedly very very very good so there's a bit of a surprising recommendation at the end of the video isn't it because not only is that specially a better game gives you more flexibility of what you want to collect and even with the sort of terrain you have to buy it's probably cheaper hello oh sorry I just got distracted thinking about bat critic he's just so awesome you know Oh bat critic you really are so cool and handsome thank you night Robert but we have to keep our eyes on the prize lime in this wall that's right but kids at the top of this wall is where they keep their youtubers who are really successful have loads of subscribers and people who click the like button wow that sounds amazing I knows but if people wanted to have done that already and one of watch other videos there's other videos that we have done this way I'm so tired

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 360,849

Rating: 4.9314394 out of 5

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Board Game Review, Review, Board Games, Board Gaming, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Quintin Smith, Matt Lees, Batman, Batman: Gotham City Chronicles

Id: cIjeDoQ2C4w

Length: 23min 38sec (1418 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/mitchell617]

I've played the game four times, and I haven't quite made up my mind. I can say that they hit the nail on the head about using stamina for objectives when the real fun is in the combat. The most fun I've had has been coordinating with my friends to eliminate baddies across the board, and that has happened too little in comparison to the amount of time we've spent trying to hack a computer or arm a bomb.

[u/CaptainPotassium87]

I would throw out that if anyone wants a simpler, cheaper Batman miniatures board game, Batman: Gotham Under Siege from IDW is really fun and can be bought for only $35.

[u/meisterwolf]

they are right about the rulebook, all the rules etc... i tried playing once so far and i ended up reading for like 2 hrs haha....

most of it is like insane design decisions on the player boards and icons. like just put a word there instead and it will save minutes. put a damn index in a rulebook...how hard is that?

[u/seethemoon]

I’m here to make a very specific and minor comment: I love that yellow table cloth / topper / whatever it is.

[u/Scorpion393]

*Suit up & Sit down

[u/ewokonfirepi]

Having bought Conan second-hand at the UKGE last Sunday, I was holding my breath for part of this review hoping that they wouldn't say that Batman obsoletes it. Was quite relieved when they started pointing out its flaws and saying it was Conan but overcomplicated and with worse iconography.

[u/LKTrashmouth]

ITT: People who spent $400 on a board game yelling they don’t agree with a site who’s stated mission is acting as a bridge to the non-gaming community.

Of fucking course SUSD isn’t going to recommend a game this expensive with a extraordinarily poor rule book. You can disagree with their take on the game. That’s cool. But their goddamn mission statement is to help acclimate new gamers to the hobby and this fuckin’ game ain’t cutting it.

[u/GreatWhiteToyShark]

Pretty well in line with their podcast discussion. It does have a bad rulebook and quite a lot of skill icons, which make the game harder to learn than it should be.

I do take issue with their negative point about scenario design, I think it is pretty good actually. Batman isn't just a ninja, he's also a detective, a tactician and a leader. Making the scenarios focused on things other than just "knock out all enemies" makes the preparation, teamwork and coordination for the heroes more rewarding, and much more thematically satisfying as well as more consistent with the source material.

My advice to anyone still interested is just to grab just the core game (I say this as an all-in backer from last year). There are more than enough toys and scenarios to enjoy here, and the gameplay is indeed very fun. Just be prepared to play a lot of it before you feel fully comfortable with the iconography and map layouts.

[u/G8kpr]

Checked out Batman miniatures game due to Quinns recommendation at the end

$60 for just the rule book alone, $20+ per miniature or $55 for a set of minor characters. At first glance i thought they were pre painted, nope. Not painted, and some assembly. Damnit, warhammer all over again.

Looks neat, but also looks like a fucking giant moneypit.