Is Forgotten Circles Worth It? EVERYTHING You need to know

hey everybody it's james here from neural net games and today we're talking about the first expansion for gloomhaven forgotten circles and whether or not it's worth it for you and this is not very straightforward this is a very divisive expansion a lot of people don't like it and i think it all comes down to expectation but we'll get to that it has a much lower rating on board game geek than original gloomhaven but first let's talk about what forgotten circles is so it's an expansion that has one new class it has 21 new scenarios one of which is a solo scenario for the diviner it has one new condition regenerate it has a new ability teleport it has 20 items it has two sealed envelopes it has 31 road city and rift events rifts are one of the diviners main abilities and so there's events related to that so why is this expansion so controversial well it comes down to people's expectations it's so much different than gloomhaven it's a completely different experience there were a lot of experimental things done and so let's get started let's talk through you know what makes the expansion great what makes it terrible and i'm going to help you make a great decision as to whether or not this expansion is for you or it's not for you okay let's get to it okay let's talk about the difficulty first this expansion was created with the intent of it being end game type of content for anyone who plays video games you know about the end game and grindy kind of games where you work really hard to get good gear and then you go and use that gear to tackle really hard stuff the problem is a lot of people didn't understand that they thought it was more of a continuation of original gloomhaven so you're a gloomhaven star you're like oh i got this plus two difficulty all the time etc etc and you go into forgotten circles and you get smackdown because it's very hard there's a ton of different reasons why but essentially the difficulty is greatly inflated versus regular gloom haven i'm going to talk about all the different factors that kind of influence you know the difficulty throughout the rest of this video but just know this if you are not optimized properly if you're not really paying attention to your party compositions if you're not looking at your cards your hands of cards before every scenario going what is going on in this scenario and how am i going to play my class most effectively then you're going to have trouble and that goes double for whoever's playing the diviner so one person they are playing the diviner and they've really got to be dialed in as to how the diviner works and what cards they're going to play in what scenarios so easy this is not the scenarios in forgotten circles differ drastically from original gloomhaven in a couple ways first is the intro the flavor text etc and i'll talk more about the story later but there's a lot more text and there are drastically more special rules conditions things to keep track of compared to original gloomhaven original gloom had some of that stuff but forgotten circles just takes that to a completely new level it rockets right through the stratosphere out into space yeah there's a lot more to keep track of and the second part of that is that you know there is more mystery in forgotten circles compared to original gloomhaven so what they did was they tried something new and forgotten circles the scenarios that have hidden information so in original gloomhaven you just load up you know the entire scenario three four rooms whatever it is all in one shot so that was more setup time in the beginning for forgotten circles you only load up the first room and then once you go through a door you have to flip to another page to actually load up that room so it's great i like it personally for me it's good because i like the mystery i'm willing to accept a little bit more fiddliness uh for that mystery but it is far more fiddly because you've got to stop every room and go to another page and also when all these special conditions are on the first page and they're very you know complex etc and you're on another page you've got to be you're flipping back and forth a lot so what i would recommend is that each person who's playing read the special rules so you can catch each other's mistakes because i guarantee if just one person reads it they're gonna forget a bunch of you know the special conditions or rules or whatever and you know things are going to happen because of that so yeah i have everybody read it so that you don't have to flip forth back and forth quite as much before we get to talking about the diviner i just want to let you know i've got a patreon i need your support i'm a small channel so if you're liking the content and that's interesting to you i'm going to put a link down in the pin comment uh some of the patreon benefits are you know play games to me on tabletop simulator exclusive access to live raw footage of me playing games campaign games see my strategies my tips stuff like that raw and unedited minimal swearing most the time and then also you know exclusive access to videos early access stuff like that yeah link down in the pin comment also i'll have a link in the description to forgotten circles the second edition on amazon so if you want to support the channel you can click on that link first before you buy it and i'll get paid a small commission okay let's talk about the diviner so forgotten circles differs a bit in that it's a story focused around a certain class and that class is the diviner and so you've got to take the diviner into every scenario and the diviner is a bit of a polarizing class she's actually really quite powerful especially since she got changed from first to second edition she got a lot better but she's pretty polarizing because she's got a really high skill floor and so a lot of people are like the diviner sucks the diviner does not suck she's she's ranked quite highly i've got a tier list going into the video description and you can see uh a link to my actual like rankings of every single class but she's pretty powerful but you got to know how to use her and you know even if you're in a two-player party you're gonna have to take her with you so really focus on understanding how she works and all the different scrying stuff and the rift stuff and if you do that you're gonna be fine the story in forgotten circles in my opinion is a huge improvement over the disjointed story in gloomhaven however there's a lot of it it's like a novel there's a lot to read so if you're in one of those impatient groups if you're one of those people in a game like fallout where you're just hitting the a button as fast as you can to get through all the dialogue screens this is probably not going to be up your alley yeah you can skip it but there's a lot to skip so just bear that in mind for those of us who like a good narrative though this is a step up i mean i enjoyed the story it's much more cohesive and more focused and feels a little bit more real because you know you've got the diviner right in there and the story is tied to the diviner so i liked it but maybe not for everyone so the bottom line is forgotten circles worth it i mean if you're the kind of person that likes difficult content uh enjoys a really deep narrative story and is always looking to push hard you know theorycraft builds and is willing to spend the time to optimize your party and talk it out with your friends as to you know how are we going to approach this what strategy are we going to use etc if you're just a casual group of guys and you're chugging back some beers and stuff like that and you don't strategize a lot you're probably gonna be really frustrated by this and i would not recommend you buy it this is definitely end game content it's drastically harder than original gloomhaven and you're gonna have to have your game face on to get through it without you know being really upset and wanting to you know punch a wall or something because you keep dying and just you know getting annihilated because it's so hard so bear that in mind i like it i think it's worth it i like to play games on hard um if you don't that's totally cool i get it i'm an adult i have a life sometimes playing on art is actually really annoying so just you know factor all that in right now i think it's like 40 or 50 bucks it's actually more expensive than it used to be but i still think it's worth it you know as long as you're prepared for it and that's one of the reasons why there was so much outcry or there were so many you know dissenting opinions on forgotten circles is that people just didn't expect it to smack him in the face like it did marcelo cortecha he worked hard on it i appreciate that hard work but it's not for everyone it is definitely not for everyone it isn't a i don't want to say it's an acquired taste but it's just one of those things where it's for some people and it is definitely not for other people so just because you loved gloomhaven does not mean you will automatically love forgotten circles so hopefully that helped you if it did please consider dropping me a like and i just want to say thanks for watching the video and a special thank you to all my subscribers and a double special thank you to all of my patrons you

Channel: Neural Net Games

Views: 4,085

Keywords: board games, table top games, FORGOTTEN CIRCLES, GLOOMHAVEN BOARD GAME, FROSTHAVEN, GLOOMHAVEN EXPANSIONS, IS FORGOTTEN CIRCLES, IS FORGOTTEN CIRCLES WORTH IT, should i buy forgotten circles, where to buy forgotten circles, gloomhaven diviner, gloomhaven diviner guide, gloomhaven classes, gloomhaven best class, gloomhaven tier list, gloomhaven common rules mistakes, gloomhaven tips, gloomhaven advice, gloomhaven rules, gloomhaven help, is gloomhaven good

Id: DBkSLlYAI_A

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021