#DESCENT LEGENDS OF THE DARK SKILLS UPGRADE#
#DESCENT LEGENDS OF THE DARK SKILLS PLUS#

What stands out is that each hero has choices that specifically help shape their character motivations. Together, they form a solid, if generic, fantasy epic of saving the land from a demonic incursion.

While traveling to and from your adventures, the app throws a variety of random and scripted events at you. You always seem to have more recipes than components, so choosing what to buy and equip is an interesting collaboration, although only one player at a time actually interacts with the app.

#DESCENT LEGENDS OF THE DARK SKILLS UPGRADE#

Your party is centered in a city, where you can spend collected resources to craft new potions and upgrade your gear. There’s an unfortunate lack of voice acting, meaning that if you’re playing in a group, someone’s got to do a lot of reading out loud. The app also weaves scenarios together into a campaign. It’s often a tough challenge to decide whether it’s worth flipping a good card that’s accrued a lot of bad effects. When a card is flipped, all tokens on it, good or bad, are lost. Cards can also acquire negative conditions like Infected or Terrified as well as positive ones like Focus which lets you re-roll a dice. Most special abilities require you place fatigue tokens on the card until it’s no longer usable. There’s more to it than chopping and changing, however. The “ready” action lets you flip a card, spending a valuable action in the hope of ensuring you’re better able to meet the challenges on the board. Each side has different special abilities. They can move again, attack, explore - which lets you interact with the map - or “ready.” This latter choice is key to the game’s strategy: all the cards, from weapons to skills, even the hero’s card itself, are double sided.

#DESCENT LEGENDS OF THE DARK SKILLS PLUS#

On each hero’s turn they can take up to three actions: movement, plus two others. Finding the right pieces for each new map section is a minor pain, but it’s far easier than previous editions of Descent with their dozens of tiles. Some dungeons are even multi-level, with pillars supporting floors of different heights and staircases in between.

The figures and terrain pop a living, breathing fantasy world into life on your table. And that would be unfortunate, because the maps that unfold are stunning. It doesn’t track figure movement, otherwise it would almost entirely be a video game. It also offers monster variants and interrupts, meaning you’ll encounter a bigger palette of foes than the figures in the box. It’s an able games master, removing a lot of heavy lifting while still offering the thrill of exploring into the unknown. It also handles combat damage and interactions with terrain. What the app does do is instruct you to place tiles, scenery and monsters, slowly revealing the map as you explore. It also doesn’t take you through important details of setup: there’s no avoiding a read through the rules booklet. However, the first quest does little more hand-holding than telling you where to check in the rulebook as the action unfolds. Since an app is necessary to play the game, you might expect it to include a tutorial mission to start things off. Most notable are the six hero cards, offering a pleasingly diverse - in every sense of the word - selection to choose from. But they’re slimmed down, thanks to that app, which does most of the admin for you. There are some, illustrated in a curious cartoon style that’s eye-catching while sometimes failing to capture the required fantasy flavor. Chunky yet detailed, they’re not quite up to the best on the wargame market, but you’ll not find better in a boxed board game.įans of the franchise will also be expecting multiple card decks and bags of cardboard counters. Even more impressive, however, are the trays of plastic miniatures. There’s also a lot of it, from tiny treasure chests to a huge dragon skeleton. It’s robust, imposing and is easy and fast to build. The bottom half, which starts empty, is then big enough to hold all the assembled pieces.Ĭardboard terrain has a bad history, but this stuff is great. The top portion contains a ton of cardboard terrain which you need to pop out and put together in three-dimensional glory. Box and What’s Insideĭescent: Legends of the Dark comes in a huge cubic box which is oddly top-heavy. It’s a bold design choice which publisher Fantasy Flight Games will be hoping puts the game back on top of the pile. To the dismay of some fans, a similar app is the only way you can run this new edition, Descent: Legends of the Dark ( see it on Amazon). Later, the second edition got an app that did away with the Overlord role and turned it into a fully cooperative game.

Descent legends of the dark skills