Should You Back God of War: The Board Game?

hey I'm Alex back from board Gameco and today we're doing a should you back it on seon's God of War I'll be going through a bunch of things today I'll be going across the campaign what it's covering my thoughts on the game itself I'm having played it a few times not a full review but just initial thoughts I'll be going into the pledge levels the expansions uh common complaints that I've seen on the campaign campaign page and my own thoughts on those and of course these should you back it now before we dive into all of that and of course links and time stamps to everything down below before we dive into all of that a few disclaimers to get out of the way disclaimer number one is I am CMO of found please take that into account as we go to this video any potential biases that that brings to the table just take that into account I do think that my coverage of this is going to be fairly consistent to well all my coverage of seon campaigns in general but of course take that into account disclaimer number two and just as importantly if not more importantly is that in general when working with seon sometimes they do engage in paid content around various campaigns I cover in this particular campaign they actually have not there's no paid coverage around this game but of course there is that muddied Waters of in general I assume they will reach out for more for more more sponsored content in the future and of course that means I do want to keep that relationship healthy and active so just take that into account and then disclaimer number three is from the very start of my channel before I ever took a scent from seon before I was CMO of gamefound I have been I have been a fan of seon games of their campaigns I do not think that they as a company do everything correctly I have called out their stuff when I thought it was not something great I've also defended them many times when other people called them out for things that I didn't have as much of a problem with so I have I definitely am overall a fan of their games and I'm overall a fan of their company while I've not been been shy around calling things out that I disliked or whether it's games or practices but all of those things and at the end of the day if any of these factors muddy the waters for you or make this a video you don't get value from I completely and totally respect that but with that let's go ahead and start this off and dive into the campaign God of War the board game from seon games not to be confused with God of War the card game which is a previous game they've made using the God of War IP but this say they have the God of War the board game which currently has 3600 backers $657,000 raise one day left to go in the campaign and they did actually drop the Allin so in Theory it probably there's not going to be more stuff historically speaking Sean tends to drop more stuff after I put out my dedicated videos we'll see what happens in this one this is a one to four player game it's going to be a 60-minute play time which take that with a grain of salt uh from the games I've seen so far 60 Minutes is what happens when you either are playing the tutorial scenario or when you lose uh but uh the one game I've seen that actually had the second scenario that won uh that was a 4H hour long game although I do not think it would actually be 4 hours my guess is this is probably in the 90-minute range in general 60 Minutes being a fast game 120 Minutes being a slow game and 90 minutes probably your sweet spot for this game as far as the player count it is a 1 to two player game by default with a 3 to four player expansion meaning strictly speaking this game is meant to be played as a solo player controlling both characters as a single unit that moves around the board with their own unique Board of how they operate or controlling two characters who are operating in Synergy in terms of the way they take out the game or take out the enemies in the game and there's a three to four player expansion which we will talk about a bit more soon but introduces new characters to have a degree of helping out the troop in general engaging in some combat but a little less so than the rest as far as the type of game this is going to be a little similar to cthulu death may die very different in many ways but it's going to have similarities to C death may die you're controlling characters you're running around a board you are taking on a combination of a scenario and a boss meaning you're playing against a scenario then you have a specific boss or not specific boss you have a variable number of bosses you can Loop into that scenario so the game is going to be different every time you play it and then you have different enemies you're fighting against in the scenario as well so the combination of bosses enemies and scenario is going to define the uh the the the the game you're playing on the table today the base game if I recall correctly comes with eight scenarios one of the main core expansion comes with six scenarios I think there have been I don't know if there have been more scenarios added as stretch goals I don't know if there have I know there' been many bosses and many enemies added stretch goals I don't know if I've seen more scenarios but as far as that that's the kind of core idea of the game you're basically taking out a scenario the scenario is going to have a a point in the scenario where you bring the boss into play and that's either going to happen as time ticks off in which ticks up in which case the boss is going to enter the game empowered and stronger or you can accomplish the scenario goal which will bring the boss into play and then when the when that when that time eventually hit that line the boss will power up if you haven't killed them your goal is to power yourself up you you know at tros and um oh my gosh Kratos AA did I say at tratos uh Kratos and atraeus atraeus I can't atraeus I think it's atraeus but Kratos and atraeus you're going to be powering them up as a team in order to be able to take down the boss when he enters the board because the boss is strong and so you're trying to constantly work together and working together is a big part of the game whether you're playing it Solo or whether you're playing with more players one of the things you're doing is you're constantly trying to make sure that you have multiple characters dealing damage to enemies because when an enemy dies and they have damage tokens from different players on the board from different people playing then you're going to go ahead and roll the Synergy di which is going to be how you power up so you could just kill an enemy but if you do it in Tangent with the other players and again this is true even you're playing it solo that you're trying to make sure that you spread that damage out and you work together you you had Synergy and that's how you power up you're giving yourself the ability to draw more cards which eff more actions every round giving you the abilities to go ahead and add to your own little you unique little Tech tree that you have in the game and just generally try getting stronger across the course of the game which is how you take out the boss that's the kind of General overview I'd say the last thing I didn't really cover is the way actions work is going to be card driven so you're going to draw cards every turn those cards let you interact they let you move and they let you play them to specific attacks each player is going to have different colors of attacks each of them to operate differently and playing the cards two attacks is going to be a big part of the game trying to go ahead and also going be upgrading card upgrading yourself like I said already you be adding new cards to you that gives you more flexibility across the course of an experience you may add new Attack cards as well that's kind of everything that's happening in the game at least as much I can give you with a overview of what's going on as far as the game itself that's that's the games that's going to be uh you know the the what the game is we haven't really gone to the campaign heavily that's going to be the game as far as my thoughts on the game and these are definitely intro thoughts I'm specifically not reviewing this yet because I don't know I'm not yet comfortable with what I've seen to give it a full review my intro thoughts on the game and keep in mind I am coming in that into this as someone who is a huge fan of cthul death may die which is my number two game of all time as of last year and this definitely does have elements of similarity to be very clear I currently prefer cth death mayy but I think God of War does enough things differently that there's place for both in my collection at least as of right now but I do have hesitancies I like the game overall a lot I like different parts of the game to begin with you're powering up your characters something I enjoy it does have that sense of escalation you're getting stronger as you go through the game you're getting more powerful but then the boss enters the board and they are strong and powerful and are slowly powering up as well not to the same way in extent that they do in death may die which is something I don't like as much but they are strong you have to take them out and it's not the easiest game if you've watched some of the playthroughs out there there's a playthrough of the first scenario there's two playthrough of the first scenario there's two playthroughs of the second scenario and the second scenario in particular one of those playthroughs involved uh well winning and the other play through involved losing but it does seem to be a game that is definitely challenging while the first scenario has had moments I guess if you watch my first play through a lot of people commented that it seemed too easy but then someone else playing through it lost that one and again the second scenario is definitely harder as well so it does seem to be a game that is not the uh most easy which is something I enjoy overall the way the characters power up I like I like the variety of characters and enemies and bosses and everything else I like the combination of choosing a scenario and a boss and mixing those together all those things overall enjoy I really like the Synergy system it gives you a different puzzle that I'm not used to seeing in these types of games because one of the things I tend to look for when I when I enjoy a game it's just because I enjoy it is there space for it in my collection in my game time and to a large extent you have to be doing something different or better for that to be the case and in the case of God of War the main thing it does differently is that Synergy system it's not the most Innovative thing I've ever seen not by a long shot but it is an enjoyable little puzzle as far as the fact that you're trying to operate different characters and you have to try to make sure they're all dealing their own little points of damage as you go through it it's a slightly different way to approach these game systems and sometimes just make that tradeoff of maybe it's worth killing that thing without getting the Synergy boost because it's worth it right now we just need to take that threat out on the other hand if we get those Synergy boosts we're going to power up we're going to get more things so there is that little trade-off as you go through it which I generally appreciate uh as far as the my hesitancy so overall I enjoy it because it's doing things that seon has generally done well it has elements of similarity to cth may die which is a game I really enjoy and as things that make it different that make it compelling as well and the sh variety of bosses and characters and enemies not characters she variety of bosses and enemy units all makes it something that I think I'd appreciate going through it to an extent the areas where I have hesitancies are twofold and these are just areas where I just don't know yet I need to play more I need to see more of the game I've played the first scenario three times I've played the second scenario twice so I've already played this game a decent amount of time I've enjoyed going through this one I've had an opportunity to play it but I haven't had an opportunity to see well everything not by long or even close to it and so the areas where I have hesitancies are primarily twofold the first area where I have hesitancy is the uncertainty as far as the character variety one of the things I love about many seon games is a sheer variety of characters that give you reasons to re approach it cthul that may die having some of the best character variety and the enjoyment of powering up and leveling up characters in different ways that give you a drastically different experience every single time and in God of War at least from what we've seen so far there are two ways that characters level up the first is that they have a deck of unique Attack cards which you'll unlock them throughout the course of the scenario but not a lot of them you'll only unlock a few of them and those will give you different puzzles as far as oh you have this new Char new type of attack or ability that will force you to reexamine the game from a slightly different approach and you're drawing from a decently large deck you're only drawing one or two per round per game which means that you don't have a ton of opportunity to see them every game which gives you some degree of variety the second is that each character has different upgrade tracks as far as ways you can spend your upgrade points and those are variable as well now I don't know the full variety of those and I hope it's enough to keep me interested in long term but I do think that I really enjoy the character variety and differences that you see in cthul death may die and so I'm uncertain how how interesting the characters are going to stay across the course of playing through all the various scenarios of God of War the board game so it's a hesitancy it's an uncertainty I wish there were more I understand why there's not I mean the character is based around these the game is based around these characters Kratos and at trades but I do think I wish there was I I hope there's as much as possible as far as those upgrade trees or cards that keep interesting but it's certainly an area of hesitancy the other area of hesitancy I have is is this a game where I want to play through and beat each scenario or is it a game where I want to just play it now what I mean by that is when I play something like a campaign game I'm often trying to finish it and then in most cases I'm done with it in some cases I want to play through it again when I play through the may die or zombicide I just want to play the game I pick a scenario whether it's a new one or one I've played before but I'm just here to play play the game I don't yet know if God of War is a game that I want to win or play meaning that first scenario that I've already won which I played it three times the first two times I lost the third time I won after the third time winning it I have already less of an interest of playing it I don't think I have no interest but I definitely have less interest in playing that first scenario so the question is do I mentally view it as something to beat or something to play the second scenario which I've lost twice now I want to play that one again and really beat it but do I want to play it again after is it still as fun and as compelling is more but the sense of Discovery combined with the unique challenges or is it just fun to play I know that cluth may die that first scenario I've played that first scenario over 10 times I've won it many times I've lost it many times but I've played it so often so that's the other area area of hesitancy I have around the game where I for whatever reason instinctively it feels a bit more like I might want to beat the scenarios but I don't yet know whether I want to replay those scenarios so I don't yet know those are my two areas of heny the um the character depth and variety and and is this a game I'm going to replay or just a game I'm going to play through that's kind of my mini First Impressions review not a review but first impressions of the game which brings us to The Pledge levels let's go through the campaign itself The Pledge levels a lot of fun things to go through I'm not going to go through a ton of this if you want to see more you can check out my two back and not to backs I've covered this game twice now already there's a lot of stuff to go through a lot of things to go through as far as the pages the tons of Miniatures and monsters we're not going to do a ton of that in this video it's a dedicated chy backup but it's going to be it's going to have a lot of thoughts just uh in well whatever lots of stuff on the campaign page to go through uh past that as far as the pledge levels which we'll get to eventually over here the pledge levels monsters monsters Miniatures all those things pledge levels are going to be twofold over here if we can get to them we have number one pledge level number one is going to be uh the Mortal pledge for $70 for the game this is getting a $20 discount supposedly on the uh b game and then there's the demog good pledge this does not come with stretch goals to be clear the demog god pledge is going to include stretch goals for the game as well as the uh Brothers at Arms expansion whatever I don't know if it's called brother arms we'll see it shortly but it includes an expansion as well just off hand there's 21 people who have pledged for this Mortal pledge we'll get into a full show you backa later but this Mortal pledge you should be ignoring off hand it is not a good reason to get the game you can get this game cheaper at retail once you factoring shipping this is just a bad way to get your hands in the base game now it might be good for some people depending on your region or accessibility so it's possible this 21 people know exactly what they're doing and they're doing it right otherwise I'd say instinctively wait for retail on this it's probably cheaper wherever you are probably but maybe there's some places where it's not the other pled that we're going to look at we're not even going to look at the moral pledge we'll talk more about it a little later the common complaints but this Demag guard pledge for $90 and then there's the god Hood pledge for $240 which represents a $20 discount on buying things separately meaning over here they reference the $165 savings on this over here now to be fair when they update where they talk about it they do specifically say it's a $20 discount but that's kind of more hidden the number they're trying to show a lot more is that hey $165 savings that's off the retail valuation it's not based off what you pay so just and again just totally find either way just make sure you know what you're looking at over here this is a $20 savings from buying all the things individually if if you bought the uh the demigod pledge for $90 and the individual expansions it would all add up to $260 for the game which brings us to the actual expansions themselves so those those are the pledge levels we'll come back to the should you back later the expansions over here are going to be as follows we have the HRA Brothers coming to with the black Smith Brothers expansion this is the expansion that they added effectively they added it as a freebie now I don't know what their intent was I can't speak for it goes on behind the doors and I don't actually know like I again I work for game found but I don't know what went on behind the doors I don't know if this was originally going to be offered as an optional buy but whatever whether whether it was or wasn't what they said effectively is hey here's this thing that uh you guys have been complaining about the shipping a lot because shipping is expensive we'll come to that later but you guys have been complaining about the shipping so we're going to go ahead and throw in this game which would have this expansion which would have been a $35 cost this should offset most of the shipping cost for most of you so here's an extra thing that's being thrown into the pledge because shipping is so expensive this will offset that you're basically getting a free expansion in exchange for paying for shipping which again if their plans genuinely were to sell that that is a good deal so to speak obviously it's uh better for them to give you a $35 expansion than to give you $35 off in shipping but the representative savings here is pretty decent and it gives you a full four player game for those who want it but as far as the expansion itself what it does it do it makes the game a three to four player game it introduces the brothers so it adds new ministers to the game and those brothers are going to be operating a little differently than at trus and uh at traes atres and Kratos am I saying them right I don't know Kratos and I think at traes um atraeus atraeus not atres atraeus Kratos and atraeus but effectively they are focus on uh building things up I think there's a degree of bag building if I recall correctly but there's going to be a degree of helping build things up but also making the enemies more stronger as you go through the game as well so then That's essential to have that balance maintained and all that but it gives you two new characters to go through the game that's the main focus of this expansion so if you want to play this game three to four players now you have the ability to do so or you can play at two players and control multiple characters each if you want to have that experience as well so you have that flexibility the next expansion and we're going to be going through these in the order that they release them the next expansion is going to be the valkyri expansion the Valkyries expansion is basically giving you five New Gods that's all it's really doing it's giving you five new bosses to fight against five boss figures five boss dashboard a rules leaflet and 10 boss behaviors so there's no new content pass the new characters which new characters are new content but there's no new scenarios there's no new rule set it's just straight up here is five New Gods bosses to fight against with their representive material that you need and a specific theme around them enjoy it's going to be a crowdfunding exclusive expansion as most of them are and it's going to run you I think it was $25 to $35 what was it for it it was where is it over here God of War God of War nope nope where is the expansion price point is it somewhere here on this page I think there's $35 but we could always go with main page over here go to the main page over here you'll see the expansions are going to run you if we ignore the stretch goals over there and the stretch gos I'm not going to heavily go through these but this is a lot of maybe maybe I'll go through the stretch gos maybe I'll go through them but over here we have the expansions we have the um the sisters of Fate no the Valkyries for $35 the 60 for the ghost of the past 40 for the pantheon and sis fate for $35 so going back over here to the Valkyries expansion that's basically five bosses over there which brings us to the uh ghost of the past expansion the ghost of the past expansion is the only one that is going to be available in retail but if you back in on crowdfunding you will get this exclusive boss so there is a cting exclusive material here but the expansion will be available in retail at least seems like it will be and it is expansion it's not Standalone it's going to introduce you two new Miniatures we have the ghost of Sparta and we have Athena giving you a different look as far as a team up in the game another strong character another fast character it's going to introduce a bunch of new enemies to go through and a bunch of new bosses I believe it was was it four new bosses and six new enemies I believe there's four new bosses and six new enemies to go through and that's going to be a fifth boss if you're buying the additional boss as well as six scenarios to go through so you're also going to have six scenarios to go through the game so new way that there's some NPC NPCs in the scenario just different content for the game that's the expansion there it's going to run you $60 and again gives you that exclusive content if you the exclusive miniature exclusive boss if you want to go ahead and dive into that for $40 we have the gods of the pantheon expansion the gods of the pantheon is going to introduce five New Gods again five new bosses again I keep saying Gods but bosses it's going to be a crow exclusive it's going to be $40 introduces five new bosses all with a specific theme and this one actually introduces new content as well so in addition to the fact that you're getting five bosses just like the Valkyries you also getting the additional ability to kind of level up to take on a Synergy of three bosses in the game where you're going to go through a bit of an arc of going through those characters trying to make sure you defeat them one at a time and it's also going to give you a larger Synergy track as well so this gives you if you really want to get that feeling of powering up but at the cost of a longer game experience this is going to give you that option I haven't looked into whether you can mix and match other bosses into these but I don't know know entirely as far as that but it will give you the ability to have a three boss Arc in the game which is a fun little thing to go into if you've played games like Marvel United from seimon then you've then well depending how much you've played them you might know the difference between a single shot versus going through a little Arc of multiple bosses and I'm looking forward to that ability to power up well even more in the game and then of course going through the bosses which we're not going to do as well the last expansion is going to be the sisters of Faith this introduced The all-in Pledge and we have the sisters of Fate which on its own is $35 it also introduces the all-in for $240 and the sister of Fate over here introduces three new bosses as well as again a specific scenario Arc two of these bosses Al lanus and atopos over here are usable in regular content although they have specific content for the scenario that's going to produced here ver clo though is only available for this particular scenario so it's a unique scenario as far as the way to deal with these three in combination and then again two of them can be mixed and matched into other content in different ways and they have different cards for it there are specific cards for the specific scenario so giv you're a very specific tailor scenario based around the sister of Fate as a trio in general again I don't think you can mix in this particular incident I don't think you can mix in other bosses into mix it up but don't know 100% and that's basically what we have as far as the various content for the game the last thing that's available is there is an additional optional buy for the special bonus cards if you uh if you follow this campaign page before the campaign began then you will already get that for free otherwise it's a $5 to go ahead and get that and that's what we have for all of those I guess Loosely maybe I'll go through these stretch goals over here I don't know if I I mean there just more more characters if we go through these just more various monsters and Miniatures we can just go through them all quickly so you can see them all these are not these are called stretch goals they've been daily reveals so they've been revealing content every day which means there might be one more thing that you're missing out on as far as this video goes because there's one more day left in the campaign so we have a full 24 hours left for you to uh benefit from this video I guess there will be late pledges as well but I'm just going to click through this just monsters and it's bosses and um bosses and monsters to fight against that's all it is just lots more content this is all being added for that additional if that for that demog God pledge you're getting the expansion as well as all this content the $7 pledge like I said already you should basically be ignoring which kind of brings us to the shy backa but let's just I guess just click through this more quickly towards the end so you just get see those last things in case you want to get a sense of it we got our Griffin over here which is different than a hipogriff because I never really remember the difference between them we have our dark elf we have our armored minator day n we should have we have Day N the hell traveler we got more than Thanos over here another boss to go through we have a heavy hell Walker for your Miniatures to go through you have your siren boss I think no that's the Miniatures then we have Brena over here for another boss again my pronunciation of all these is horrible I've played God of War the video game but never finished it and also still don't know how to pronounce things we have our explosive Jer over here we have our nymph as a miniature I guess not a boss and we have jarn photo as another boss lots of those giant guys holding things we have Helios as a boss it looks like and then we have kattos with Valkyrie armor oo this is fun I didn't know what this is miniature plus skill upgrades good this this I mentioned earlier I want this kind of stuff I haven't even seen the most recent ones uh damos over here oh is that another character there's another character I this is I should have I should have looked at this stuff first we have a light elf over here what is this light elf is going to be a miniature do we have we got more stuff happening I like those last few anyways as far as that that's going to bring us to the should you back and should you not will hold this value all of that and to that end there's a few things to cover there's first of all holding its value generally if you look at seon campaigns while they don't do as well as they used to they're still doing just fine as holding their value if you look at uh you know pledges of cyber Punk or pledges of Dune those are both games and cyber Punk and I mentioned both those particularly because dune's being very well received cyberp Punk's getting more mixed reviews lots of people really enjoy it some people don't love it as much but both those games are getting very solid return on if you look at the second Market if you look at eBay if you look on BG Marketplace they are still holding the value people are still selling those for more than what people are paid for and those are IP based games as as God of War the board game I am fully confident that this will continue to hold its value again seon titles have shifted over the years as far as how good of a value they hold but if you're looking as to whether you can get your money back on this game if it's not for you if you spend $240 and you or if you spend $90 whatever it is you get and you want to see if this game is for you and if it's not for you you obviously have to go through the work of selling it but yes this will still hold its value so if you want to try it you know risk-free so to speak that's your option on the table you could try this risk-free with the work being put in to go ahead and sell it but again looking at the looking at previous seon titles even with the changes of how well they are received over the years they're still they're still doing just fine so yes it will hold its value as far as is it worth it is it not is this a glorified paper we if you're not selling it if you're just getting it for you is it worth the gameplay aspect a lot of that comes down to how much you enjoy their titles I generally am a fan of seon's games not all of them many of them have not worked for me I've abandoned meny homicides over the years in favor of the ones that I that I really like versus the ones that I'm only okay with uh bloodborne is a game that didn't work for me they've had a variety of games over the years that weren't for me that EI again either they've had better or just they weren't for me in general you know Song of Fire Song of Ice and Fire is a too big of an experience that I don't enjoy as much to get into so there are different games from them many of them I love many of them not for me this one very much does fall in the category of games I really enjoy so I think it is one that if you like their style of games if you like that miniature you know miniature heavy a merit trash kind of experience where you're really going at things and just smashing things down while upgrading your characters if you like that experience I think this is another good one in that vein as far as what you need to get all of it again kind of comes down to your own personal preference are you not personal preference personal experience are you someone who has historically gone through their games for me some of their titles I've really benefited from having all their contents games like zombicide like a my die I benefit from having all their content versus other games massive Darkness I've still barely gone into the reaches of what that game has and so some games I've managed to really benefit from having it all and some games less so for me because of the similarities to God of War I cthul may die this is one where I am I think that for me based on the way I go into these games this is one that I would enjoy having all the content and the plug-and playay is a big factor as well I'll link to it down below but I did two full videos of when going all in was worth it for me and one video was when it was worth going all in one video video where was where wasn't going all in and interestingly interestingly enough seon games were featured in both those in both those videos very heavily but there are certain reasons why games do and don't work for me as far as getting value gameplay value from my all-in pledge and for this one I think it's the kind where for me at least I would get that benefit but if you don't think you would stick with that $90 pledge save yourself that additional $150 of extra cool goodness that looks great but ultimately takes up shell space takes up mental space in your mind and isn't getting tabled so to a certain extent you do have to look at your own past backing patterns to know whether you're getting value from that or not and that's basically your should your back it for God of War the board game from seon games until next time I'm Alex R from board game Co hope you enjoy this video and as always I hope you have a good one

Channel: BoardGameCo

Views: 3,903

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Length: 24min 44sec (1484 seconds)

Published: Wed May 01 2024