Etherfields Review

hello everyone this is cinema and this is johannes and you are watching board gaming ramblings and today we are taking a look at ether fields from designer michael raj and it's published by awaken realms this was one of the big kickstarters in 2020 it's been a lot of buzz around this game so here are our opinions yeah and if you wonder because i know many people have wondered why we haven't done this before it's because we did film this review and then i decided it was a super good idea to delete the audio and save the project at the same time so that the audio was gone but no we are filming it again so let's talk a bit about ether fields this is one of those strange reviews where we don't have the board on the table because we can't really show you a lot because this is a story driven campaign game where basically every component in the game is a spoiler yes so that's super quickly what this game is all about you are dreamers in the dream world can't celebrate really a lot more than that and you're gonna travel around to different dreams so you're traveling around this uh overworld map basically kind of like a video game where you have random encounters and stuff like that gather resources and then you go into these dungeons basically it's a dream crawler instead of attention google but going into these kind of dreams while you where you will be enjoying some kind of story and solving some mystery and doing some tasks the game in itself is pretty simple you're moving around doing different actions i'm telling you either loose or you're in the scenario and then you're back on the world map and you're gonna rinse and repeat that throughout the campaign yeah there is two campaigns in the base game and then there's like a gazillion different things in the um the the kickstarter stuff we have not played the whole campaign so we cannot like it's not gonna be a review of the whole campaign we have played maybe half something like that i do not know but around that somewhere because it doesn't tell you how long it is but somewhere around that i think we have played so so so just so you know before we go into the review yes so as always let's start with the artwork and components let's start talking about this board the layout of the board has been changed since what we originally saw on the kickstarter page uh which now makes it when you're playing with a bird the most important part of the board is really far away uh if you want to sit like the right way facing everything in front of you the right way which we usually prefer yes i like reading things yeah and there's a lot of small details on some cards and it's then very very hard to see when it's far away so you can play without the board and we tried that as well but we ended up actually cutting the board in half and placing the two parts beside each other so we can sit next to it each other and see everything the right way yeah this was for me when i opened the game yeah i opened the board i placed it i was like what is this and i haven't followed the kickstarter closely so for me it wasn't like a huge shop and i went back to kickstarter like that's not how that bird looked so they have changed the board into that after play testing on tabletopia and tabletop simulator so they had tested the game online not in real life because of kovite and everything and they didn't have any problems because people had to zoom in and turn around but you cannot do that in real life you cannot i cannot sit at the table i'm just like oh i'm just gonna turn the board around and swim into that you can't do that in real life and that what ended up making this board one of the worst sports i have ever seen even if they had just basically put what was up here down here and changed it that would might have worked and if you play this with four players you probably might want to play it diagonal or not diagonal but sideways but then again i think most people would either like to read things the right way or upside down yeah like reading sideways is horrible so not we're not going to spend like 10 minutes on this i could because my my it's my blood is boiling on this because it makes no sense and it's it should have been two boards yeah yeah that would be perfect because then we can choose and i'm very happy with contour board yeah so i recommend that solution and it felt horrible i had never done that in any game as well it felt so wrong yes so we are going to continue with negative points because now we're going to talk about this rulebook which is amazing no it's a gameplay manual which it says so some people have said there's no word no problem with this rule book they are lying they would then david and play the game know the game and then we will begin like oh it makes sense so most of the rules for the game or some of the rules of the game are in this box or in this book i would say most of them are in this book but they're not very easy to find especially when you read the rules to learn them nothing makes sense luckily there is an index at the back without that you wouldn't really have a game without that you would be like because first time you play the first couple two three times you play you will be constantly looking at this page i'll be like i don't understand what anything means so learning this game is a real hassle and that's so weird because tainted grail had this super cool solo learn to play guide so if i wanted to learn the game and usually i'm the person to read the rules so if i needed like another way to really learn the game i would just open that and it would teach me like okay it's like a mock-up scenario i'm a move there i knew that action and why they did not make like a tutorial deck like a super small scenario they basically there is a prologue to know like there is a small start scenario but if they made that with the how to play turn to turn move there do that in a better way because there is like the tutorial makes no sense if you haven't read the rules and the rules makes no sense if you haven't played the tutorial and it's just so many things that they have wrong another thing this was a niche pick but i have no idea why they have chosen to do this why would they make a round called a turn and a turn named around that makes no sense like who in the right mind saying who's around is it now yeah oh it's my round no it's my turn to do something and i'm sorry but these are things and this is some of the things that makes this game not be good for many people and this is very sad because sport alert it's a very good game under all of these horrible things but many many many people will never experience that because it's such a hassle to learn the game luckily if you're getting the game now or when you're getting the game there is an unofficial and they have actually posted it on the the updates as well a person made basically the the learn to play a guide which they should have done themselves um so the rulebook was a hassle to get through when you actually play the game it's fine but but the first time we played it was not fun no no no nope nope it was not i was almost giving up on the game because i i didn't know what i was doing yeah i i was asking questions and you didn't really have the answers and nothing made sense and in the beginning before you get into the story and you are like involved with the characters and stuff you need to have this solid foundation for me to actually get on board it's like that with a book before i get to know the story of the book i need to like suffer through a few pages just to get on board if that is poorly written have a bad um what do you call it grammar yes or when you translate something it's a bad translation i will not read that book it was almost that i laid the book of either fields down and didn't read no more i i agree but i'm happy that we continue yes because there's many good things to say as well the negative things aside with the rule book the artwork of the game is really great you're in this dream world and it feels like that from the artwork it's great at getting the three theme across there's this weird things happening and there's always like it feels like a weird world it feels like you're dreaming and it's just like looking at those cards that you look at i'm excited to see what comes next i really i'm so glad that we got the miniatures for this game because the cardboard tokens are really bland and boring so if you have the chance to get the miniatures i think you should absolutely and i i feel like the the artwork is very important because it's a thematic yes it's a game dripping with team and like it's strange because we love dry euros and storing games with theme that's like kind of worked too very differently but that's kind of like the jaclyn hyde over a board gaming hobby but i feel like the the artwork here is also very fun because since there's dreams you can do whatever you want yes and they can do so many different themes and that is very fun because when you play a dungeon crawler you're gonna be like for example i love gloom haven but it's mostly a dungeon yes there's not like oh how's this dungeon gonna be oh it's gonna happen it's gonna have a it's gonna have a boulder in the middle that's not interesting but here it it's the the artwork is so important drag you into the game yes so let's talk a bit about the player count and the play time and this is kind of like a never-ending game like you can save it and you can box it up or you can just let it play stay out and play it whenever you want to so we have played these two entry players usually we we have always said like we always want to play this with two we have played some sessions with three players because it just happened to work out that way because we had a friend over and we really wanted to play either bills um and there's two different things of the game as i said it's the overworld the dream world map and then there's the dreams and both of them has taken about like 45 to 90 minutes with a shorter being like that's kind of like the the the average there has been times where we were on the dreamscape map like 10 minutes and one time we were 90 minutes that really depends we're going to talk more about that later but it doesn't because it's not like a never-ending game it doesn't feel like it's outstanding it's welcome because there's so many different things happening so much stuff going on i don't feel that and also like let's talk do you like it better at two or three players i think both player counts actually works pretty well i feel like it's very balanced because some of the cost of the actions has um like some resources times the players that you're playing with so in some cases that can feel very hard on your three player and the cost triples instead of doubles but in most cases i feel like they've balanced that pretty neatly i feel like it's both fun with three and two yeah and it's one of those games that it's not like some co-op games just adds more time with more players because you're just gonna discuss and talk and here it's nice because it's it's not a game like you can end up i think like in all co-op games with a alpha player saying what cards do you have what do you want to do you should go there you should do this but here it's more like you're exploring and of course you're saying like oh no no don't do that you should do this and this and we talk about that uh but it's it has you have your personal deck you have your course and all that really works well i think it works well at three players i wouldn't like to play it with more than three i think then you're ending up in a category where it's more just more time and more people and harder to do things and more cooperation needed which might be fun but yeah yeah i think that because the the core gameplay is very simple you have some cards on your hand and those have some resource values different resource values and you also have some abilities as well and you have to then choose if you want to use the ability or the resource and you go to place spend the amount of resources and something happens it might be something interesting might be something not interesting might be something that yeah is horrible or something that drives the story onwards and that makes makes it go like there is multiple tasks to do uh you have some cards that fits this task you go there so i think like the story element and the world in this case is very important when you have that simple gameplay let's talk about the thing that will make most people not like the game and this is basically the difference between i i i feel like there's a difference between lacking this game and not liking this game and that is the gameplay cycle which is dreamscape or already the slumber tiles moving around meeting the small entities and then the big dreams so the dreams most people like them they're fun they're small adventures those kind of like the dungeon crawling part of any game so let's talk about those a bit later but let's now talk about the the slumber deck where you will move around this dreamscape map you will then meet different or you will move from space to space and do the different effects and most of them are negative effects like drawing some fade cards and then most of the time also you draw a slumber card and some of those are positive and most of them have an entity on them in the beginning that deck is very very little so you will go through it fast and then later in the game you'll have more of them and it will be like less and less so this feels kind of like in for example pokemon where you move around and you hear the sound and a wild super derives for the 15 000 time and this is how i know many people feel about this face is that you move around and you meet this an entity again and again and it's the same one and and i understand that i understand like like like and i i might feel off if you play this 30 more times i might feel that as well but as it is now i enjoy that it doesn't feel repetitive for for a couple of reasons just to be completely honest i like the dreams more yeah the dreams are more fun that's the main thing of the game for me is yes i don't want to spend 90 minutes on average in the dreamscape and sometimes when i play i love it sometimes i'm like okay let's get to the dream but it's not to the point where i feel it's not a good element of the game because it's a part where you you can you meet different entities and those will change up we're not going to talk about any yeah because there's some things here we can't spoil but yeah for us it doesn't feel repetitive as it is now there's different things to explore basically in these endless some of them are just the same puzzle again but then you try to do it as fast as possible and then there's different loot cards you're trying to get the loot car that you want maybe you turn over a turn card not a round card a turn card and you see like oh we want this bonus so we need to finish this now so we get that loot so there's this is kind of like a small puzzles that you can do in different ways and in more interesting ways later and i really enjoy that what do you feel about those numbers i feel they are nice i don't feel like they're repetitive but i i agree i like the dreams more i i feel like all the entities are so different you have to solve like uh your own kind of puzzle for that solve your own kind of puzzles and also the slumbers and all the dream world map you are also having some character progression and i think that also is nice i like like evolving my character and also have some ability to save your game and do an awakening and also the timing do we want to do now now then we're losing all the positive things but we you're really close to dying we need to do this now should we take the chance i think that is really interesting yeah so basically when you do an awakening you do a soft reset of everything so it's instead of dying like when you try not to die because dying is bad but but yeah so the these slumbers i feel like and it's even like if you if you hear about this game now and if you're like oh those numbers are going to be horrible they are working on a continuous dream mode so if you only want to hear or if you only want to enjoy this story you can you can play that and i feel like that is kind of like an easy mode in some video games you can just if you just want to enjoy the story playlist and but the dreams let's talk a bit about them because they are very fun and i am you you you briefly talked about it earlier like you're excited every time you start a new dream like what is this dream going to be about and i love those small stories of the dreams yes there's so many creative freedoms they have taken themselves because there are dreams you can do whatever you want and you can see the creative team really shining through with creating these interesting worlds and doing these things that you would normally don't see in a dungeon crawler yes i'm really excited for seeing what awaits us in the new dream and most of the time or that is wrong sometimes you don't know actually what to achieve in that dream you don't know what you're achieving and how you do it and just figuring out why you are here and what you're trying to do is part of the fun and the puzzle itself and it's but it's also like it might be also a negative because sometimes it feels frustrating sometimes you do something and you're like are you lost now cool there's a couple of times that'll happen and that is horrible yeah like you spend time getting into the dream and then you just you oh i'm gonna look at this thing and it says the dream ends i'm like so yeah that's kind of a spoiler that can happen but you don't want to do that thing so don't do that thing it's bad but that is one thing i just don't understand like what does that add to the game at all it feels kind of random sometimes when you uh you're spending resources to do one thing and you're not exactly sure what happens when you do that but it's like that in seven continents as well you can look under this bush and you can find berries but it's actually a bear bear berries it's very similar beer berries it's almost killing you so you thought you were just getting a snack it kinda is like that as well you're trying to deduce but you can't always figure it out for me that is part of the fun though yeah but i agree i think that's fun it's it's a part of every kind of true strong adventure style game but i don't like the part where it's super punishing yes and it just boots you from the dream like for example i'm not gonna spoil anything but there's one dream i saw something and i was like oh might that be that thing because like it's very might that be that thing from that thing that i saw in that thingy the thingy and i checked it's like the dream i was like okay so for exploring and trying to see if that might have done any had anything to do with that i was it's like hey here have a carrot oh it's actually a stick i'm gonna hit you in the face it's like that your life ends yeah oh it's a it's a carrot yeah you you can't eat carrots you die so yeah it's kind of sometimes there are there i don't understand why those are they could have made that a choice i don't know if that would have made sense um but like you can choose to end the dream yeah but why would you choose that like but maybe but i agree yeah i agree if there was like a way to to escape from the dream but now it's just like random and that is no fun it doesn't add to the coin it sounds like it happened very often no it doesn't but it's some of those things that like sometimes randomly happen which is not but it's very much even though it's a simple dream no simple game it's very rinse and repeat what you're doing on your turn the world social difference the entities that you meet are so different you're eager to learn what the deal is with this stream and where the story takes us this is really a a very great storytelling game for for my view you think it's a great storytelling game yeah you really do no okay um i have to elaborate that so it doesn't go on wrong because the story overarching story-wise is we haven't learned that much of the story yet no but being in this mind of someone is really entertaining and trying to figure it out and for me that is historian as well that that is why i use this the story word yeah because i feel like the the independent stories or the dreams have been funny and i talked about that earlier it's fun it's great it's it's those are great and then you have the overrushing thing which you said like it's kind of like a big hair and there and and it's convoluted and it's kind of way i enjoy that and and it's more like a it's a more of a world than it's a story right it's more of an experience maybe yeah because what we played of tainted grail had a more like story oh yeah i enjoyed the story there more but the gameplay here is also very fun and i enjoy the world and setting i want to learn more so it's more like it's more like a dripping of a story it's like it's not a narrative that's a good thing it's not like a narrative it's not like saying oh you're walking here and you're doing that and then you meet this thing it's more of a world that you are in and you get some dripping so what might happen while you're there and all of that it's all a mystery basically yeah and that is great and um that's very fun also it's like you're dreaming i think they've been very yeah but i think they've nailed it i think like when you hear the story sometimes it doesn't make sense yeah it doesn't in dreams and you're like oh wait what what just happened well oh okay we're dreaming ah and i just i think they've hit the nail on the head there absolutely yeah so is there anything you want to add or should we do some final thoughts i think we should do some finals no you can start i'm to begin okay so yeah i will start so there has been negative things said but beside also it's hard to get into this game and it was with tainted grail as well i think it's worse here but the awakened realms has some very unique projects and what have made their games harder to get into for many people has been the rulebook has been some of the gameplay and so i like their games i i've enjoyed 10 to grade i want to play we have 16 billion hours for that to play and i enjoy easter fields and i want to play that and we have 16 billion hours of that to play will it happen probably not but i i like etherfield so let's go past the the star when you get into the game and you remember the rules and you just had to check a rule here and there or maybe the errata is a great website where you can just go into the specific dream and probably somebody have already also you click that and you see that that's not too bad and people they can't like they cannot understand they cannot know every single thing people will also that's why there's always effect using their writers but there's too much it should have been better in that part but the gameplay is fun this theme is good the world is fun i really enjoy my time here i'm always excited to get into the new dream to see what's going on it was in my top 10 of the year from 2020 go and check that video if you haven't seen that already i'm gonna give it an eight it's a very good game i enjoy it that is either feels go ahead your turn yeah this is i this is growing on me as the reason you mentioned i want to dock at some points for the horrible rule book it's a four yeah no not that many points because as you said the world here and the game in itself is great and i i'm actually surprised that i like it that much that i do because i i feel like it's it it just drags me into it like a video game i get addicted to this game it's it's up on a table now we haven't tucked it away and i just want to play it and it was like a time before christmas that the only thing that i wanted to do was play this game so it's a great game i i'm going to dock it a little bit for the all the mess around it so for me it's a 7.5 but still a very solid game and i just really enjoy it that's awesome and that is another review we hope you enjoyed it if you're still here please subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already do you like the game are you getting it in the second wave of shipping or do you just hate awaken realms and never want to play their games let us know in the comments that is the end of another video thank you so much for watching i'm joanna and you've been watching board gaming ramblings and bye

Channel: Board Gaming Ramblings

Views: 2,777

Rating: 4.8888888 out of 5

Keywords: January 2021, Desember 2020

Id: DCyOmuA7_eM

Length: 23min 58sec (1438 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 18 2021