Descent: Legends of the Dark Review - A New Kind of Dungeon Crawler

i can't remember the last time i've had as much fun with a board game as i have with descent legends of the dark and i mean can you really blame me this game has a cat burglar that is a cat and a burglar a cardboard 3d dragon skeleton and a crew management mini game in the style of championship manager and yet as much as i want to pull out my megaphone and yell go buy this game i have to temper my zeal because this box comes at the gentle price tag of 175 american dollary dues and for that many dues i can't exactly carry on yelling things like oh wow i love this game i love this game but to tell you why we have to go back to the beginning to the mystical far away land that some people call minnesota fantasy flight games who have kindly provided us with a review copy of descent is a company that always pushed board games into bold new directions dauncher noor and gave us a cupboard full of cardboard we now fondly remember chief amongst that cardboard was a game called descent journeys in the dark its premise was simple it's like dungeons and dragons except without the improvisational storytelling you have a dungeon master they control the enemies and adjudicate the scenario and every other player will take on a fantasy trope traipsing through a dungeon brandishing a sword or a bow or a broom or whatever despite appearances descent legends of the dark that being the new one i know the naming is confusing is not a continuation of this line it borrows the core concept as in this is a dungeon crawling board game and it uses the same ffg proprietary fantasy universe terranov but that's where the similarities end legends of the dark ditches the one versus all experience and replaces the dungeon master with an app and completely reworks the mechanical system even terenoth is no longer the same bland regurgitated bowl of fantasy peas and falls more in line with the one we've seen in legacy of dragon hole and in that it's the most on-brand ffg thing ever appropriating existing settings and pushing things in new directions with big bold expensive steps and yet believe it or not the fandom did not take to it kindly when the script was written dissent wasn't even released yet its bgg ratings have been bombarded with ones out of 10 by people who have not played the game but efka why would people already be hating on it that's actually a pretty good question chief amongst the complaints are price character artwork and also bad game whatever that means which felt odd to me i'll admit that the eon flux elf art style is definitely a choice and as we say here in britain not everyone's cup of tea nobody says that but it's also heaps and bounds above the dungeons and dishwater character artwork in the old descent neither has the price argument felt very genuine from an audience that continuously shells out 300 plus buckaroos on all in kickstarter pledges but i guess those do really have to be the reasons because what other possible motivation could these angry men have to trash the ratings of a yet unreleased game i guess we'll never know or i guess it could be that bad game reason talking of which let's talk about gameplay on paper descent legends of the dark plays out like your fairly typical dungeon crawler you control a character you move that character on a map split up into squares and to attack you roll dice more specifically here you'll only be rolling a single die that's based on who your character is each die will produce successes surges or advantages folks familiar with descent will recall surges also returning here is the fatigue system although completely reworked let's say you're attacking a monster you roll your dice you get two successes what does that mean each success will be multiplied by your weapons damage so if you're attacking with a three damage hammer and you get two successes you'll likely score six damage i say likely because with dissent things are not always as simple as they might seem more on that later but what if you've got a surge well depending on who your character is at worst you can convert a surge into another success most characters will have an additional effect or even various skills and weapons that translate surges into really powerful effects for example if you're playing as varix the dragon hybrid with torn off wings you can spend one surge to get not just two successes but also expose the enemy meaning every subsequent attack against them deals more damage because they're still salty and vulnerable after that scathing article you wrote about them and that's the power of journalism the game is at its best when you've gone through a few scenarios and have multiple options to spend surges on but even early on this potential for hefty decision making and it's all got to do with fatigue and fatigue is a system that's a little more involved first let's go over advantages by itself an advantage result does nothing but you can always gain fatigue to convert that result into another success additionally just like with surges various weapons and skills will let you gain fatigue to power abilities and just do cool stuff but where does all that gain fatigue go well i'm happy to report that in descent fatigue works just like in the real world you sold your own and ignore exhaustion until it's too late and then you have to tweet apologizing that sorry there's been no new video but i'm suffering from burnout talking of which i'm going to go and have a nap and let efka finish the teach cool so i guess i'm doing this now okay so the thing you need to know about the scent is that everything is a card cards no there's a health dialer card aren't you like napping okay so the thing that you need to know about the scent is that everything below 250 gsm is a card your skills are a card your two weapons are two cards in the sleeve that together form one card even your character sheet that's a different size and shape counts totally as a card and all of these cards have a fatigue limit on them some of them more some of them less some cards even have abilities that let you put fatigue on that card and do something cool like this rallying cry to me my companions all right see that was emotionally exhausting so we put some fatigue on that card if a card is full of fatigue naturally you can't use that ability again and in the case of the rallying cry that even makes thematic sense to me my companions i'm already here thankfully as an action you can flip any card over got tired of that bow don't worry just flip it now it's a well-napped pair of swords with a totally new ability so flipping cards becomes a whole thing filled up your weapon with fatigue no worries just flip it but then you no longer have a ranged weapon or maybe you lost access to your ability to heal furthermore what if it's not just full of fatigue what if it has a reroll token on it too you flip that card you lose all tokens on it let's amp it up a little bit more what if it also has a terrify token what if it also has a scar token you want to flip it because you want to get rid of the terrify token because otherwise at the end of every round it's going to put one fatigue on it if your card is maxed out with fatigue that converts into one damage but whenever you flip it hard with a scar token you take two damage immediately so which is the right choice and now imagine juggling four of these decisions simultaneously just like the mysterious exoskeleton i found in my garden the other day descent sheds the familiar trappings of hit things get damaged heal to a more nuanced ability management system healing barely enters the equation with a scanned few cards letting you regain hit points most of the time you'll be in this case literally flip-flopping between powers that find more effective ways to do damage or clear fatigue or maneuver your enemies into more favorable positions while simultaneously trying to eliminate whatever threats the app keeps throwing at you because the enemies will keep hitting you until you are out of health 1. it'll be fine in which case you'll take an injury and reset your hit points to full if you go to zero again you'll upgrade your injury to a more severe one and if it happens one more time well frankly there isn't another time you lose this is a welcome and more interesting reprieve to the tropes of dungeon crawl affair but descent is also generous it knows you have more things to do on any given turn so instead of the standard two actions you get free although one of them does have to be movement which is really nice i can just whack things twice if i want to it feels so good have you ever whacked something before it's great you know what's better whacking things twice but not in a mafia type way don't do that it's a seemingly small change but that's the thing about descent small changes that have a profound impact it reframes the question of what will i do on my turn to how will i do it yeah i can hit an enemy twice if i want to but will that be enough to eliminate it however if i spend an action to switch my weapon to the other side it might have a damage type that the enemy is vulnerable to i'll only be able to hit it once but i'll hit it for more damage and then next turn i can attack twice with full impact by adding an extra action descent facilitates a play space for these considerations to flourish it's like a fun sandpit i can build a castle or i can bake some sand buns but with a lot more murder okay so the systems are cool but i bet you're asking why descent there's already plenty of great dunder and crawlers out there and if you're paying descent's price tag then you can literally have the gloomhaven of the crop the answer once again is generosity descent cleverly positions itself for a different audience if you want a highly tactical skirmish game you're already covered instead you have a box with 3d terrain cool minis a fun combat system and most importantly 16 elaborate expansive scenarios that are completely different from one another playing descent felt less like a puzzle and more like an event every time we started an adventure we had no idea what to expect because so far none of them have been anything alike we've infiltrated bandit camps hunted demons and even rescued miners and that's only the first three scenarios and that doesn't even quite get across how elaborate things get with the start of each scenario you only build the initial elements of the map but as you progress you don't just end up with something grandiose on your table you feel like you actually traversed the landscape it represents doing my best to avoid spoilers here so i won't go into specific detail but if you're in a rocky mountainous location then the mechanical design of the scenario will ask you what does it mean to be in a rocky mountainous location what obstacles will you have to navigate how will you interact with the map this is what sells the cardboard 3d terrain to me yes it was fiddly and tedious to build but you only have to do it once and then you can keep it assembled in the secret storage compartment ffg can innovate as much as they like but i guess they'll always return to having a cardboard canyon in their box importantly these vertical tchotchkes aren't just here to immerse you if i have a naf cardboard tree on my table sure it might make things pop but i don't exactly feel like i'm in an actual forest instead 99 of the time a piece of 3d terrain is an indication that this is something you can interact with from altars to lectans to cauldrons to bookshelves all of these are a not so subtle hint that you can go here and find something cool to advance the story the very first time you interact with the tree you'll get three options of things to do but this isn't just a tree it's a tree that teaches you a treacher every other subsequent tree you'll find in the game will have these three options but every so often a fourth one will appear that's more scenario specific elevated terrain works in a similar way there's scanty a rule that refers to one thing being on one level or another but if there's something that is above you with no visible way to clamber up then congratulations you have just stumbled onto one of the many scenario puzzles not every scenario is a winner in one instance we found a scenario end puzzle that was easier to complete by just hitting the bad guy then interacting with the system that was so obfuscated we're still not sure how it works but this is more exception than rule and it all ties back to having three actions per turn because now the options are hit monster twice flip your card and hit monster once or interact with that mysterious piano and then hit monster once or and not that this ever happened there is the option to interact with every shiny bauble on the map and then spawn 17 monsters that kill you i think that it would be reductive to say that descent trades in crunch for flavour not just reductive untrue but there is an emphasis shift and it puts descent on a different perspective table i think one of my favorite mechanisms in any board game is what just happened you roll a die and surprise sucker that's not what you're expecting huh but in descent the surprises come not from the mechanisms but from the scenario design you reveal a new map tile you pull a book from a bookcase you plunge your head into a cauldron and go well blimey gertrude none of that would work if the characters and the story didn't carry the weight and in descent well in descent you have this wizard with a burning bird for a pet and it is represented by this miniature so i don't really know if i need to say anything else you make your own decisions descent sports the most diverse cast i've ever seen in tabletop it's such an easy win that i'm genuinely surprised more publishers don't go for it but the team at ffg didn't rest easy because these characters are fleshed out in narrative the villains are fleshed out in narrative and the world is fleshed out in narrative don't get me wrong nothing here is surprising this one is happy and reckless this one is just nice this one is welsh and this one is grumpy this one is also grumpy but a different kind of grumpy everything in descent falls into predictable tropes the villain the threat the world the main cast everything is something you've seen before and you've probably seen it done better but you've never seen it like it's here in board games and i bet that's more than most of you expected dissent just straight up bombards you with words and making board gamers sit and read something on a screen with no voice over narration is certainly a brave choice but it also makes the clever decision of delivering the majority of the story through dialogue much like empire the fantasy basketball video game from developer supergiant games the same one that gave you hades all these words thankfully then aren't wasted they create space and in that space the characters the villain and the world can breathe just like with scenario design not every moment is a winner apparently it's too hard to resist not referencing hannah barbera cartoons but there's enough here to make it all believable and because i believed in them i started caring about them yes me the same old fat who generally doesn't have time for young adult fiction i can't guarantee that genre-wise you will enjoy this but i was more surprised than anyone that i did the other boon of framing everything as peppy and vibrant is that this game is approachable by a much wider audience parents frequently ask us hey can you tell me what's a good dungeon crawler to play with kids well finally i don't have to answer with i don't know takanoko certain scenarios will require you to bring a specific character along which is where you might ask what if no one's playing that character this is a dungeon crawler i saw a character i liked i put a ring on it i can't just bring a different one in descent no one character is yours instead whenever you set off on a mission you compose a roster for that mission out of the available six this is once again a genius decision that i'm surprised more games haven't been doing all along i like playing a character but you know what i like more playing more characters if you ever played gloomhaven and were like i like this character but i'm 17 scenarios away from retiring it and i'd really like to try something new you'll know exactly what i mean pro tip if you see someone else play as let's say chance and they do something cool like hit a monster for 20 damage and you're like i want to play that character now just say hey is it my turn to take a chance on chance they'll not only be amused by your witticism but also morally obligated to pass that character along no matter how much they would hate to part with them exploring different character combinations adds another layer to dissent strategy finding a pairing that works is fun tinkering with that pairing is better yet because of the game's crafting system when you explore new environments or defeat monsters you'll get rewards sometimes that reward is just straight up money but more often than not you will get crafting materials those materials can be fed into recipes that will let you create new items or better yet item components each weapon has two parts that can be upgraded with various things you've crafted these upgrades are not represented with physical components and will only activate once out of every so often after a few scenarios you'll have enough upgrades to customize your roster with different abilities complementing whatever character loadout you're deploying and that is where things get really spicy the potential for combinations is ludicrous if you are so inclined to take chance with you you can give him an upgrade that only hits about 25 of the time but it will net you an extra success for every negative condition on that enemy that in itself is already ludicrous but then you compare him with a character whose weapons or skills can impose conditions and then that character's weapons can be customized to impose more conditions up to a potential limit of eight best yet because these abilities aren't represented with physical components you're not sinking in a quagmire of cards that would turn this fighting adventure into an accounting adventure if you're keeping track of all that in your head then my word the tension is out of this world because there's a chance that everything is going to come up milhouse and if you're not well then every so often you get a lovely murder present i haven't had this much fun tinkering with a squad since xcom 2. which brings us to the achilles heel and yes it is the app and no it's not what you think sure if you're a purist and can't stand the idea of computer-assisted board games you were never gonna buy this anyway and i'm not here to convince you go live your life be free but if you want my sincere opinion this app is great it's robust makes everything concise and clear and simplifies a lot of the stuff that clogs up dungeon crawling systems i know that the upcoming sequel to gloomhaven will have crafting and let you gather components and initially i was alright bring it but now i've had the app track all that stuff for me i'm not sure i want the hassle of dozens of cards on my table that have no direct use in combat it's just clutter i like that the app is generous with the undo button i like that each miniature can represent different monsters i like that it keeps track of various conditions and calculates damage and i like that it obfuscates what the monsters are actually doing making me learn through experience the first time i encountered this faith thing i was like how hard can it be and then the app said it was doing something with its arms and i was like okay whatever and then i hit it trust me never again it reminds me a lot of the journeys in middle earth app but only in that it makes that app look like a total embarrassment of a trial run each monster feels distinct the story is much better there's a line of sight tool there's various mini narrative events your characters have a whole narrative progression system and an achievement system that unlocks new skill cards there is just so much and because of it descent can go wide and deep at the same time and all of these systems still feel manageable if they printed it all onto cardboard i genuinely doubt my table could take the weight of this game but descent is just too easy i want to be very careful and very specific here because there's absolutely nothing wrong with games being easy but i don't think descent's intention was to be that easy there are four difficulties in descent journey standard heroic and warfare we started the game with standard which i think is the intended general difficulty and in one instance i did indeed run around spawning every enemy in the scenario and guess what happened nothing it wasn't really even a challenge heroic isn't much harder than that and warfare won't forgive you silly decisions but is otherwise manageable i think it's really great that there's a broad range of difficulties i think it's exceptionally welcoming to have a difficulty with almost no chance of failure and i really really really like that you can switch difficulties for each scenario but i did miss the game being challenging and making me work for it and i think the broad range of difficulties intend to offer just that a broad range of experiences for a broad range of people but it misses out on one of these ranges look ffg warfare was cute but upping the damage and defense of your monsters isn't going to cut it when the actual difficulty of the game is more reliant on the scenario that you're playing rather than the difficulty you're playing at you might say hey that's more of a scenario design problem what has the app got to do with it well everything if there was ever an advantage to having an app-driven board game it's that things can be fine-tuned and difficulty increased we'd really love to see some scenarios with updates that offer more challenging versions and maybe an indicator that a particular scenario is more challenging than the average one since if you do decide to up the difficulty and fail there's no replaying it if you're really into gloomhaven for the burn then maybe hold off on descent until you see that happen and finally the bane of all dungeon crawlers the rule book bad rule books in fantasy romps have become somewhat of an industry cliche but i'm genuinely shocked at how poorly structured the rule set for descent is especially from the company that paved the way for excellent rule book writing this thing is fine and fine would be fine if that's all it was but these rules are like an iceberg with this booklet just being the tip and the rest of the rules existing in a rules compendium that as of writing is only accessible in the app which again would be fine if a i could print it out b it wasn't nearly impossible to access during combat and see if it didn't have half the rules missing anyway let's take a look at potions as an example if you craft a potion recipe every player will get one copy of that potion as long as there's enough in the card pool that's pretty simple right but then during scenarios you might get a potion that you don't have a recipe for do you get to keep it at the end if you don't use it if you do who can use it next since the inventory is shared between all players between scenarios can any player use it or just the person who got it i found out the answer but only by the privilege of asking the designer directly and this is just one example the rulebook is laden with ambiguity and it's genuinely quite frustrating looking things up in the app and its structure is byzantine on a good day honestly for 175 bucks i expected a little bit more unless descent is one of those games with a living rulebook in which case my request is please don't it's a very old-school grognady approach to game design and most people hate it and that's it that's the review what about all the other stuff what other stuff like how there's too much reading or how it's so reliant on the app that it feels like a video game well we didn't find any of those to be true oh yeah so is dissent great should they buy it i mean yeah if they want to did you like it of course i did would you buy it fgr i'm too cheap to buy new socks when they have holes in i just mend them [Music] so that's a yes then absolutely but that's because descent is the right game for me just like gloomhaven is the right game for some or too many bones is the right game for some or all three together at the right game to some anywho i'm not being responsible for anyone that spends 175 bucks on this only to hate it they can make their own decisions they're grown-ups and i guess that's it you might be wondering what to do next well you could fold up the laundry or i bet you haven't cleaned out your sink in the while and if those don't sound exciting you can watch one of our other videos i bet that's a lot better than watching out your sing you could also support us on patreon you'll get access to bonus videos like my series on my top 97 games of all time and also access to a patron only discord server and finally you'll have your name added to this list of wonderful people who have already done that bye bye [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] what'd you do that's pretty

Channel: No Pun Included

Views: 63,284

Keywords: no pun included, board game, review, npi, boardgames, boardgamegeeks, brettspiel, brettspiele, jeuxdesociete, tabletop, games, juego de mesa, gamenight, descent, descent: legends of the dark, ffg, fantasy flight games, new version, 3rd edition, third edition, dungeon crawler, dnd, dungeons and dragons, d&d, fantasy, rpg, role-playing

Id: H2ae7fOamXI

Length: 31min 21sec (1881 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/blarknob]

implying the backlash is due to sexism is just fan blaming. I doubt any of the critics even noticed who the designers are, I know I didn't.

[u/mattlove]

I was going to skip this because I didn't think it would be up to the level of kickstarter dungeoncrawlers, but I saw Efka raving about it on twitter and bought it on a whim.

I've got about 15 hours played, have done 3 scenarios (but had to replay the 1st and 3rd due to some rules mistake I made).

Honestly, I'm having a great time with it. There's been some app related issues I've had (one of my Feat's isn't working which has locked one character out of gaining new ones) - but it's kept me coming back which really speaks to the strength of the experience I think.

I've been playing solo on Heroic w/ 4 characters, and it's just enough for me to manage. Each scenario has been a nailbiter for me at that difficulty as I've learned the game, and I think that's the only part of the review I really disagree with - I've played a ton of Gloomhaven & Too Many Bones and find this to be about as difficult as the more difficult situations in those, at least so far.

The tactic system they talk about is I think one of the biggest strengths - it's like learning enemy patterns in Dark Souls. Once you know that this means this text means an enemy does this, it really feels good. The way the game hides things from you with the app keeps it dangerous but not unfair, and as your in game power grows, your experience out of game with it helps you as well - it's honestly a great feeling.

If you like dungeoncrawlers and can afford it I don't think anyone's going to have a bad time with this.

[u/ComingUpWaters]

Seems smart to avoid the "digital game" argument entirely the way they did. The offhand Xcom reference, the discussion on difficulty settings, and Efka's opinion on the writing quality all showed how personal a narrative experience is. They didn't find the app an issue, it seems like NPI regularly plays video games and are biased that way, they're not going to change minds on that front. Journalism can only expose so much.

[u/Epic_BubbleSA]

There does seem some opposites forming between this and journeys in middle earth. NPI disliked journeys because the app wasn't in-depth enough didn't like how bland the monster tactics were.

But enjoyed Descents app due to how much heavy lifting it did and hide monster information.

It is weird and I would love to hear other peoples comments on the writing. Terranoth isn't know for its um innovative writing (literally generic D&D 101 stuff). I can understand them bouncing of Journeys though given how it needs to piggy back off Tolkiens work.

Its kind of the reason I just went hard into buying journeys now that the next expansion has been announced. I still want the majority of my game play to be on the table and from the looks of descent it feels like its missing that with item improvements being on the app and minimal dice rolling.

[u/LiquidLogic]

I've been following the game since it was teased, and not once have I seen a person say they didn't like the game because it was designed by a woman. Its the artwork, 3D cardboard, app, and price that were the main sticking points for people. For NPI to suggest that the hate for the game comes from angry, misogynistic men is shameful.

[u/ScubaSteveEL]

It's a very fun game. $175 is a lot so there's a value element but the game itself is really good.

[u/cat9090]

I was initially entirely uninterested in this game however the more I've heard about it, the more I'm tempted by it. I've heard the app is fiddly with high player counts but I'm mostly intrigued by this as something to play with just my wife. We really love gloomhaven with our gaming group but after quarantine that idea of a dungeon crawler that me and my partner can get stuck in is very appealing.

I just wish it wasn't so expensive. 190can is a huge asking price. I really wish there was a version without all the extra terrain and multi-level bits that could bring the price down a touch. As it stands this would be the most expensive game I own by a good 70 dollars which is hard for me to justify.

[u/stormquiver]

I'm enjoying this game a lot.

[u/Zaorish9]

I have never seen any of this "backlash", at least not on this forum. Where is it?