Dark Souls the Board Game Review

[Music] hello John Ephraim Eurogamer here and this is Dark Souls the board game or rather this is the lid for Dark Souls a ball game the game itself is actually still strewn across my table but either way it is finally here is it any good I'm going to tell you let's start with the basics what's inside the box and what's the game actually like the first thing you should know about Dark Souls the board game is that it is big and it is heavy the core set alone is over three kilograms in fact which is more than seven pounds 20 Americans watching now given this as a ball game representation of Dark Souls a famously challenging video again you might find yourself wondering how soon you're going to be contemplating the words you died immediately is the answer pop the lid and you'll be confronted with a covering piece of paper that says simply you've died encouraging start then the rest of the boxes content goes like this there's a tray with all the cards you'll need to play the game the all-important rulebook two cardboard boxes and then a series of boards these boards are the ones you'll be using to make up the game map but they also contain character cards and tokens for you to pop out and use as a result although the game is a bit of a snug fit when it's new you can expect a bit of space to open up once you've popped out all the tokens and put them in bags anyway onto the boxes the smaller of the two contains two sets of dice which will be explained in due course and two trays of miniatures these trays contain your sentinels silver Knight swordsmen silver knight great bowmen hollow soldiers large hollow soldiers crossbow hollows and then the four player character miniatures which are easily identifiable from their different colored plastic the second larger box contains a bag of markers some plastic components to make boss health tiles and then the six most impressive pieces in the box the main and mini boss miniatures these being the dancer of the boreal valley Dragonslayer Ornstein executioner smell the boreal outrider Knight The Gargoyle the winged Knight and finally the titanite demon and all that gives a bloody strong impression dark souls the ball game is a really impressive package with some very faithfully recreated components but of course the real question is this is it any good the short answer is yes Dark Souls is a ball game manages to capture the spirit of going over the same encounters in order to get stronger without being tedious or unfair the sense of escalation as the difficulty of the encounters increases is a really nice touch but as per the souls games themselves it's the boss battles that truly shine I'll get on to exactly why that is in just a minute but first here's a rough idea of how Dark Souls the board game plays out mechanically you start out with a class and a fairly standard set of gear and then you start exploring the tiles that make up the game board entering each room triggers an encounter from which you cannot run until either your enemies are vanquished or one of the people on your team falls in battle each player turn one of your party gets to move an attack however on each enemy turn all of your enemies attack meaning they get far more opportunities to deal out damage then you as individuals get they even get the first go on every encounter so Dark Souls the board game very quickly teaches you that learning to block absorb or dodge incoming damage is far more important than dishing it out sound familiar it should do as in Dark Souls balancing your health and stamina is also crucially important overreaching and spending stamina has its rewards but it also adds little black cubes to the left side of your endurance bar taking damage meanwhile as little red cubes to the right side of your endurance bar if the bar fills up entirely you die it creates a nice amount of attention between being an effective combatant and not leaving yourself exhausted and open to a deadly counter-attack try not to worry about this too much however because if you do successfully complete an encounter all of those cubes immediately go away you can also banish them on your turn with an Estus flask if you've got one assuming it was a standard encounter and not a boss fight you'll also earn two souls per player all of these go into a central pool and can be spent on buying new gear and leveling up character stats it's tricky balancing act to be honest we frequently found ourselves buying new gear only to discover that nobody had the steps to use it which was really frustrating because getting to level up and put on better gear is immensely rewarding or if it's me I have it for you it's a golden-winged crest shield it's not for me it's for Matt yeah good can I use it no you would have to level up your strength twice long Matt in the old baselines okay the quality of your gear is reflected in the color of the dice you roll with blue and orange dice offering you more successes than the standard black dice rolling these improved dice makes you feel really really powerful and it also makes a massive difference to your survivability and your combat effectiveness moreover our lack of decent gear also helped lead to a point whereby our successes left us underprepared by fluke or skill we managed to take out the first three encounters without anybody dying but also nobody managed to acquire a better weapon all really level up their stats in a meaningful way nonetheless we were feeling pretty confident as we charged into the next encounter which kick the difficulty up a notch then we got slaughtered twice don't die eventually we managed to do the room and that felt great but still the lesson was clear farming souls is out important in Dark Souls the board game as it is in Dark Souls the video game luckily the encounters are a lot of fun so going over them again doesn't really feel like much of a hassle as you grow more familiar with both the enemies and the player characters each with their own strengths and weaknesses you develop strategies that help you minimize the risk of death while dealing with the enemies swiftly and it's here that the pretty generous movement rules really come into their own under several circumstances Dark Souls is quite happy for you to pick which square enemies are going to move on to which in turn helps you decide which of your party is going to suffer the next attack at first this felt like cheating to be honest it still kind of feels to me a bit like cheating however we checked and rechecked the rules and that's simply how it plays under certain circumstances you can finesse the positioning of the miniatures in the dark souls board game to suit your requirements and there's no penalty for doing so it's effectively an AI exploit but it forms one of the main pillars of strategy in this particular board game it may feel strange but is nonetheless extremely effective as I mentioned earlier though it's the boss battles that really make Dark Souls something special to be honest they are probably the most faithful recreation of what the videogame boss battle can feel like I've ever encountered in a board game in other cooperative games like LG Torah or Douglas comes rattling these boss battles feel pretty abstract the bosses you face a ersatz entities comprised of a string of the same challenges you've been attempting the whole way through only the stakes are a little higher in Dark Souls however you really feel like you're in amongst it helps immeasurably no doubts by the fact your miniatures are all circling and stalking a giant monstrous figurine the bosses in Dark Souls behave differently to the other enemies in that they have a deck of behavior cards from which you draw these determine which attack is coming up on the next turn and crucially and brilliantly however once you've run out of cards you don't shuffle them you just flip them so that they do the same attacks in the same order over again for the whole boss battle it comes this desperate fight where you're trying to get into the right position because you know what attacks are coming up next and where the boss is going to be vulnerable so you can get in position and attack them to the greatest effect suddenly you're positioning and your memory skills and knowing who's going to be in the firing line next turn becomes all-important and rushing in to deal to 3 or 4 points of damage to a boss and then seeing that you're totally safe from its next attack is a tremendous feeling I'll admit when I first saw the Dark Souls board game announced I wasn't convinced they could actually translate the experience of fighting a Souls boss to a tabletop game but I'm happy to say I was very very wrong about that point so don't solve the board game does an excellent job of taking the good bits from a video game and translating them elegantly into nice tabletop play which is fantastic but how taxing is it to actually learn or play for that matter well thankfully as I already mentioned the actual gameplay itself ticks along quite nicely the encounters are sufficiently dynamic as is visiting the bonfire and leveling up once you're comfortable with how the game plays it runs very smoothly setup isn't too taxing given how much space the game takes up and how many pieces there are although building the treasure deck at the start of the game is a bit of a faff it's not these ones simply put there are a lot of little cards to sift through sort and shuffle especially if you aren't playing with a full four player team and frankly that part was pretty tedious after that however it was more or less plain sailing for reference I played my first game of Dark Souls with my friends Matt and Joe who are among my most experienced board game friends we pride ourselves on picking things up quickly in other words of course it was our first game and so we were stopping to consult the rules fairly frequently but even taking that into account the 90 to 120 minute playtime printed on the side of the box seems way way off factor in player death restarting at the bonfire and of course soul farming and you're definitely looking at a few hours playtime here at least it's enjoyable playtime and it certainly feels like it moves along at a decent clip but going through an entire set of encounters then a mini-boss then more encounters then a proper boss is definitely more than two hours work then again to be honest if you're shelling out for a game with this many miniatures and component parts you probably already knew you were in for a lengthy ride but thankfully while this isn't a short game I certainly don't begrudge Dark Souls that extra time the whole experience is really pretty elegant the rulebook is very well set out making it a relatively easy game to pick up and the gameplay makes both the moments of triumph and crushing defeat really really enjoyable so that is dark told the board game it does a better job of translating what makes the souls game so good into a tabletop setting then I could have possibly imagined to be honest and it does so in a well crafted and really stylish way it's not afraid to cut you to ribbons mind but if you keep your wits about you you should be alright anyway hopefully you've enjoyed this video if you did please do let me know I would love to do more stuff like this and your feedback is very much appreciated if you'd like to see some more stuff from you're a gamer there should be some videos flying about my head right now and if you would like to like and subscribe that would be delightful as well there is no pressure however either way thank you very much for watching and have a lovely day [Music]

Channel: Eurogamer

Views: 856,763

Rating: 4.9426885 out of 5

Keywords: dark souls board game review, dark souls board game, dark souls: the board game, steamforged games, dark souls game, dark souls tabletop, dark souls miniatures, dark souls boardgame, boardgame review, eurogamer johnny chiodini, dark souls board game bosses, dark souls board game unboxing, ds board game, dark souls boardgame walkthrough

Id: cPfUqBf4sag

Length: 11min 11sec (671 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 21 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/bukesfolly]

For what it was, I think this was an excellent review. Dude just got right into it without any tedious intro or fixation on details, just explained what's in the box and how the game's played.

I review this review as two thumbs up.

[u/popcar2]

Oh this is out already? I remember seeing the kickstarter, it looked really neat. Apparently most people bought it just for the miniatures... But the game itself looks fun too.

[u/TheSupremeAdmiral]

For anyone interested in the rules of the game a download link for the rulebook can be found here.

[u/Tall_dark_and_lying]

I played a demo of this at Salute yesterday. Was actually very impressed with how it treated boss fights. Now I doubly can't wait for my kickstarter rewards to arrive.

[u/ShinCoal]

I'm so incredibly pumped for this, can't wait for this and the insane amount of stretch goals I go with the kickstarter, so much bang for my buck.

[u/indigo-phoenix]

A real Dark Souls board game would burn your cards/dice when you lost a battle. In all seriousness though, not sure how you would translate all the timing/precision mechanics into a board game, would be tricky. Figurines look pretty sweet though.

[u/[deleted]]

"Smao"?!?!

It's pronounced "Smo" isn't it?!

[u/mutsuto]

Oh shit!

Mine is still coming in the mail expected next week.

Fingers crossed and anxiety locked going into this video because I've regretting the purchase by default due to how much it bloody costs, it's way outside of my usual price range of any entertainment (it was the hypetrain that did it) - Buyers remorse is in full swing, please don't be shit.

watches*

Validation. Feels good. So much relief this looks not just playable, but like a damn fun time.

Also, this video was presented excellently. Nice script and reading. Great use of b-shots. Audio mixing and use of music was great.

Now the tricky part, I need to get some mates together.

[u/[deleted]]

It's a shame that (based on most reviews) this turned out pretty much as expected: a utterly boring game made just to sell miniatures. Which is probably why they hid most of the game until after the Kickstarter was funded (the fairly dull Ghostbusters and Turtles miniatures games did the same).

Although (also based on most reviews) it sounds like a variant based on just boss battles could be really good.