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Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated the PlayStation 4 version of Red Dead Redemption 2 in Video Games
Oct 30, 2018 (Updated Nov 20, 2018)
Slow West
I have decided to do something totally different for my Red Dead 2 review; instead of just reviewing it as a whole once I am finished with it, I am going to start my review just now and then continually add to it the further through it I progress. There are a few reasons for this, firstly because this game is huge and is probably too vast to sum up in just a few paragraphs once I have completed the story. Secondly, because we would all be waiting weeks for me to review it; I am not going to be done with this thing anytime soon. Third is because it's something new, a break from my traditional structure of writing reviews. Finally, because I feel that my opinion on this game is going to change based on the different things that I experience during my playthrough, along with my score of the game. There will also most likely be spoilers as we move on through the game, so maybe just read up to where you have also played to. Once I have completed the game, I may write a summary of my thoughts at the bottom of this review, or I might just scrap this and write a whole new review from scratch, we shall see.
So far, I think I have played between 3 - 4 hours of the game and already I have been through a range of emotions. The game opened in a very cinematic fashion and I was on-board right away. The shots used and atmosphere that was present was very reminiscent of The Hateful 8. Then you get to a small group of shacks and are forced to play through the first few story missions consecutively, which act as tutorials for a lot of the games systems. This part is pretty laborious, but thankfully just as I was starting to get bored, you progress to Chapter 2 and the game opens up.
I must admit, I didn't enjoy the first few hours I spent wandering through the game's world. Arthur moves so damn slowly and every task takes an age to complete, in fact every part of the game seems slow. Horse riding to a location takes forever, the few moments of gunplay are sparse and the aiming controls are anything but smooth. Other than that, the time is spent chopping wood or doing other chores. The word CHORE, is actually adequate to describe the gameplay up to this point.
To break up this slow pace, I decided to go exploring and do some outlaw activities. The problem is that this game's witness/bounty system is ridiculous. You can't so much as lift a finger in the Valentine town centre without the lawmen hunting you and your bounty climbing higher and higher. I'm talking anything from accidently bumping someone with your horse to walking beside another citizen for too long - it is ridiculously harsh and Rockstar seem to favour 'realism,' over fun with this mechanic. So, because I am getting so much grief from the lawmen in Valentine and racking up a bounty way higher than I can afford at this early stage, I decide to go off the beaten path and look for loners to rob. The problem here is, even if you meticulously look around the area to make sure that the coast is clear and then rob your victim, someone out of the blue will appear, halfway across the map and run toward the nearest town to report you. So, naturally you hunt down that witness and kill them, then another witness sees this occur and start running to report you and the cycle continues until someone inevitably reports or shoots you. It's as if Rockstar don't want you to have fun and play the outlaw in their game about playing as an outlaw.
Reading back on what I've read so far, I feel like I have bashed this game pretty hard. As an aspiring game developer myself, I have an idea of what goes into a project like this and what Rockstar have achieved in that sense is truly astonishing and inspiring. The lighting work along with the cinematic camera and near photo-realistic graphics make this game a visual beauty. The world also feels genuinely alive, the voice acting is brilliant and the small touches and intricate level of detail present is insane. Presentation wise, this game is flawless.
Okay, at this point I am about 5 or 6 hours into the game. I am still on chapter 2 and have only done a couple more story missions, but I have done a good bit of exploring too. So far, I have experienced 2 bugs. One was when a story mission required me to get on a horse to take and sell at the Valentine stable and the horse was invisible during the cutscene and non-existent when it switched to gameplay. A quick restart solved this, but still the bug was present during a main story mission.
The other happened during a random stranger encounter. I was riding through an open area full of lumberjacks cutting down trees and one of the trees fell on a guy's leg. I got off my horse and ran over to help, but while doing so, I saw a bunch of bounty hunter symbols appear on the mini map. I ignored them and pressed the button prompt to help lift the tree, but while doing so, the bounty hunters appeared and fired their guns in the air. The rest of the men fled and I was left standing beside the guy that was trapped under the tree, unable to move or do anything. As I stood and spammed every button trying to make Arthur move, the bounty hunters just surrounded me and pointed their guns towards me, but none of them shot. We were left in this awkward standoff for a few minutes before I eventually gave up and had to restart. This second bug is probably the more egregious of the two I've had so far, as I now have no way of knowing if I am going to be able to get that random encounter again.
This is annoying as the random encounters are by far the best part of this game so far. I don't want to spoil too many of them here, but they range from exciting to terrifying to just plain sad and all of them are brilliant.
As I settle into Arthur as a character, I realise more and more how much I prefer and miss playing as John. John was cool where Arthur is goofy. John was smooth where Arthur is wooden. Don't get me wrong, Arthur is well written and acted, but I really think he would play better as a side character rather than a protagonist. Plus the way I play him totally contradicts his whole attitude. I'm playing him as a ruthless killer who shoots entire groups of people on sight and he is still a lovable, goofy rogue in cutscenes.
I have played a few more hours over the last few nights, I must be around 10 hours in now, (although there doesn't seem to be any way of checking that for sure.) I am still on Chapter 2 in terms of the story, but I have been doing a lot of exploring and have found/bought a decent amount of better gear and weapons for Arthur. It also turns out that there is some fast travel in this game, if you upgrade Dutch's tent via the camp ledger and then upgrade your own, (costs about $500 all in,) you can fast travel from the camp to any major location that you have previously visited. Unfortunately while I was fast travelling last night to a location, I experience the first occurrence of pop-in that I have seen so far in the game. I understand that this game is extremely vast and there is a great deal to load in, but when every other aspect of the game is so polished in terms of presentation, it stuck out like a sore thumb.
In terms of exploration, I have probably spent less than half of my 10 hours in the game so far doing story missions and instead spent the majority of my time just riding/walking around and taking in the sights, or speaking to strangers, or violently robbing and killing them at gunpoint whenever the notion takes me. Strawberry is a cool little town, it is quite similar to Valentine in terms of the size and the available shops etc. St Denis is another story. Located at the south-east corner of the map, it is a huge, bustling city with an overwhelming amount to take in. Without spoiling too much, it will also open up a few more opportunities for Arthur once you get there.
I have played a lot more of the game since I last updated this, I'd guess I am closer to 20 hours playtime than 10 at this point. I have finally progressed to Chapter 3, the gang has moved camp to near another small town called Rhodes, which has lots to see and do considering it's small size. That is one thing that Rockstar have undoubtedly nailed in this game, making these towns truly feel alive and like they continue to exist even when you are not riding through them. I'd go as far as to say that this open world feels more alive than any other one that I have spent time in.
The story missions up until this point are touch and go. Some are really fun and exciting and some are monotonous and boring and feel more like busywork than progress. I much prefer the side missions up to this point. The debt collecting missions and the bounty missions are satisfying and feel worthwhile. The robbery side missions that you do with certain gang members are also a nice, more engaging change from the slower pace of the story.
In terms of the game's characters, I am just as much of as a fan of John Marston as I was in the last game and I must admit that spending more time with Arthur has made him grow on me slightly. As for the rest of the gang though, it's a mixed bag. I like Sean, Charles, Javier and Lenny, but the rest are just annoying and a chore to be around. One major disappointment regarding the characters for me, is that I thought that this game was going to make me sympathise with Dutch and see things from his perspective, the way that MGS 3 did for Big Boss, but no. Apparently he was always an unlikable dick.
So far, I think I have played between 3 - 4 hours of the game and already I have been through a range of emotions. The game opened in a very cinematic fashion and I was on-board right away. The shots used and atmosphere that was present was very reminiscent of The Hateful 8. Then you get to a small group of shacks and are forced to play through the first few story missions consecutively, which act as tutorials for a lot of the games systems. This part is pretty laborious, but thankfully just as I was starting to get bored, you progress to Chapter 2 and the game opens up.
I must admit, I didn't enjoy the first few hours I spent wandering through the game's world. Arthur moves so damn slowly and every task takes an age to complete, in fact every part of the game seems slow. Horse riding to a location takes forever, the few moments of gunplay are sparse and the aiming controls are anything but smooth. Other than that, the time is spent chopping wood or doing other chores. The word CHORE, is actually adequate to describe the gameplay up to this point.
To break up this slow pace, I decided to go exploring and do some outlaw activities. The problem is that this game's witness/bounty system is ridiculous. You can't so much as lift a finger in the Valentine town centre without the lawmen hunting you and your bounty climbing higher and higher. I'm talking anything from accidently bumping someone with your horse to walking beside another citizen for too long - it is ridiculously harsh and Rockstar seem to favour 'realism,' over fun with this mechanic. So, because I am getting so much grief from the lawmen in Valentine and racking up a bounty way higher than I can afford at this early stage, I decide to go off the beaten path and look for loners to rob. The problem here is, even if you meticulously look around the area to make sure that the coast is clear and then rob your victim, someone out of the blue will appear, halfway across the map and run toward the nearest town to report you. So, naturally you hunt down that witness and kill them, then another witness sees this occur and start running to report you and the cycle continues until someone inevitably reports or shoots you. It's as if Rockstar don't want you to have fun and play the outlaw in their game about playing as an outlaw.
Reading back on what I've read so far, I feel like I have bashed this game pretty hard. As an aspiring game developer myself, I have an idea of what goes into a project like this and what Rockstar have achieved in that sense is truly astonishing and inspiring. The lighting work along with the cinematic camera and near photo-realistic graphics make this game a visual beauty. The world also feels genuinely alive, the voice acting is brilliant and the small touches and intricate level of detail present is insane. Presentation wise, this game is flawless.
Okay, at this point I am about 5 or 6 hours into the game. I am still on chapter 2 and have only done a couple more story missions, but I have done a good bit of exploring too. So far, I have experienced 2 bugs. One was when a story mission required me to get on a horse to take and sell at the Valentine stable and the horse was invisible during the cutscene and non-existent when it switched to gameplay. A quick restart solved this, but still the bug was present during a main story mission.
The other happened during a random stranger encounter. I was riding through an open area full of lumberjacks cutting down trees and one of the trees fell on a guy's leg. I got off my horse and ran over to help, but while doing so, I saw a bunch of bounty hunter symbols appear on the mini map. I ignored them and pressed the button prompt to help lift the tree, but while doing so, the bounty hunters appeared and fired their guns in the air. The rest of the men fled and I was left standing beside the guy that was trapped under the tree, unable to move or do anything. As I stood and spammed every button trying to make Arthur move, the bounty hunters just surrounded me and pointed their guns towards me, but none of them shot. We were left in this awkward standoff for a few minutes before I eventually gave up and had to restart. This second bug is probably the more egregious of the two I've had so far, as I now have no way of knowing if I am going to be able to get that random encounter again.
This is annoying as the random encounters are by far the best part of this game so far. I don't want to spoil too many of them here, but they range from exciting to terrifying to just plain sad and all of them are brilliant.
As I settle into Arthur as a character, I realise more and more how much I prefer and miss playing as John. John was cool where Arthur is goofy. John was smooth where Arthur is wooden. Don't get me wrong, Arthur is well written and acted, but I really think he would play better as a side character rather than a protagonist. Plus the way I play him totally contradicts his whole attitude. I'm playing him as a ruthless killer who shoots entire groups of people on sight and he is still a lovable, goofy rogue in cutscenes.
I have played a few more hours over the last few nights, I must be around 10 hours in now, (although there doesn't seem to be any way of checking that for sure.) I am still on Chapter 2 in terms of the story, but I have been doing a lot of exploring and have found/bought a decent amount of better gear and weapons for Arthur. It also turns out that there is some fast travel in this game, if you upgrade Dutch's tent via the camp ledger and then upgrade your own, (costs about $500 all in,) you can fast travel from the camp to any major location that you have previously visited. Unfortunately while I was fast travelling last night to a location, I experience the first occurrence of pop-in that I have seen so far in the game. I understand that this game is extremely vast and there is a great deal to load in, but when every other aspect of the game is so polished in terms of presentation, it stuck out like a sore thumb.
In terms of exploration, I have probably spent less than half of my 10 hours in the game so far doing story missions and instead spent the majority of my time just riding/walking around and taking in the sights, or speaking to strangers, or violently robbing and killing them at gunpoint whenever the notion takes me. Strawberry is a cool little town, it is quite similar to Valentine in terms of the size and the available shops etc. St Denis is another story. Located at the south-east corner of the map, it is a huge, bustling city with an overwhelming amount to take in. Without spoiling too much, it will also open up a few more opportunities for Arthur once you get there.
I have played a lot more of the game since I last updated this, I'd guess I am closer to 20 hours playtime than 10 at this point. I have finally progressed to Chapter 3, the gang has moved camp to near another small town called Rhodes, which has lots to see and do considering it's small size. That is one thing that Rockstar have undoubtedly nailed in this game, making these towns truly feel alive and like they continue to exist even when you are not riding through them. I'd go as far as to say that this open world feels more alive than any other one that I have spent time in.
The story missions up until this point are touch and go. Some are really fun and exciting and some are monotonous and boring and feel more like busywork than progress. I much prefer the side missions up to this point. The debt collecting missions and the bounty missions are satisfying and feel worthwhile. The robbery side missions that you do with certain gang members are also a nice, more engaging change from the slower pace of the story.
In terms of the game's characters, I am just as much of as a fan of John Marston as I was in the last game and I must admit that spending more time with Arthur has made him grow on me slightly. As for the rest of the gang though, it's a mixed bag. I like Sean, Charles, Javier and Lenny, but the rest are just annoying and a chore to be around. One major disappointment regarding the characters for me, is that I thought that this game was going to make me sympathise with Dutch and see things from his perspective, the way that MGS 3 did for Big Boss, but no. Apparently he was always an unlikable dick.
Versusyours (757 KP) rated Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019) in Movies
Dec 30, 2019 (Updated Dec 30, 2019)
Another film ruined by Endgame's splendour
Contains spoilers, click to show
The Rise of Skywalker
Some endings are welcomed whilst others are heart-breaking and sudden, then there is this movie that closes a curtain that’s older than my very bones. In the time from 1977 there has been highs, lows and Jar Jar Binks a plenty and lots and lots of toys, lunchboxes and soap sets in all shapes of droids. The film itself opens and quickly reintroduces all the main characters and sets up the plot lines for each person and they embark on a path that is destined for them all to meet later. Kylo Ren is on a solo Gooniesesque mission to retrieve something darker than One Eyed Willies rich stuff with the aid of a Toblerone shaped virtual map. Helmetless and emotionless he encounters the Emperor you in fact is not dead but just chilling out with many engineers, Sith corpses and a big evil throne that he may use to do dark side Sudoku. Kylo Ren must kill Rey and then he and Palpatine might both crack a smile and take turns on the evil throne as all powerful rulers.
Is it a bird? Is it plane? Well its half bird in name alone it’s the Millennium Falcon doing what it does best and being chased and escaping for the numerous time but this time they are light speed jumping even though they are told not to, naughty naughty. Po and Finn get some gossip and head to the planet the Rebels are all hiding on to share their news. Enter the heroine its Rey in a new outfit and floating up high but failing to entice the Jedi spirits to appear but why would they this early on in a film. The hero’s all use the gossip from the Empire spy and Rey, Finn, Poe, Chewbacca, BB-8, and C-3PO depart in the Millennium Falcon. Space trip!!!
They head for a Space desert that is like Mardi Gras with sand, it’s so lucky that these sandy terrains are common in space like they are common on Earth as Star Wars loves these arid landscapes. They get into a scrape as they always seem to do but with Stormtroopers being inept and despite being airborne, they now fail on both land and air to do anything other than being a source for explosions. C3-PO finally gets the chance to be of actual use but in his golden and splendid way he is unable to translate a Sith message orally and it remains unheard and unseen in his memory banks. Kylo Ren mentally Skype calls Rey and she forgets to turn off her location settings and he turns up. In the ensuing melee Rey turns up the bad ass levels and destroys an Empire ship containing the Wookie we all fell in love with Chewbacca. In a big fiery furball of fire he is gone, Rey is beside herself with regret and they all escape on board Not the Millennium Falcon. Another planet another mission to add to the collection sees the group hoping to find a brain surgeon to extract the Sith message from C3-PO. On planet Jim Henson we see a large collection of weird and wonderful puppets and cosplay experts. The downside of the brain surgery is it will format C3-PO to the factory settings so he can learn to be annoying to everyone all over again. A little shaved Mogwai turns out to be the master surgeon and he completes the job easily enough and they retrieve the message, but the worst fears are realised as C3-PO remembers no one.
From the furry flames Chewbacca, we find out is not dead but merely being pampered in the Empires many hair and nail bars. Sensing this fashion disaster waiting to happen Rey organises a rescue mission and they break into the Star Destroyer with relative ease until Poe, Finn are caught and assigned to death. Rey is on her own mission and breaks into Kylo Ren’s bachelor pad and has a look around and gets the Sith dagger and another Skype call from Kylo Ren is taken where he tells her some missing parts of her childhood and about her true lineage as a pesky Palpatine. The age-old Star Wars family is not who you think it is trope is wheeled out once more. Learning from her previous failures of her location services she refuses to tell Kylo but when the melted helmet of the original absent father Darth Vader falls at Kylo’s feet he knows she is in his room. Enraged in case he left any interspace porn lying around his room he quickly makes a run for his awesome ship.
With certain execution facing Poe, Finn and the now unlucky Chewie and the blasters set to wipe them out General Hux turns Rouge One and saves the heroes at the last second. With his turncoat and spy status ensured he shows his true childish colours and he wants Kylo Ren to lose because he has longer and hair on the darker side of black (maybe). Before allowing them to escape he asked for a blaster wound to give his story of them overpowering the guards some weight, surely a fool proof plan with your boss being able to mind read. He takes a blaster to the knee before hobbling to explain himself before being shot as the traitorous Rebel scum he is. If only he had lived long enough, he may have seen his wish come true. They well-travelled hero’s travel to space Astoria for another Goonies part of the quest where they see the remnants of the second Death Star and use the dagger doubloon to perfectly line up where the way finder is located. A big source of luck as the waves that engulf the planet and are crashing all around the wreck of the Deathstar have avoided any damage over the years. It’s deemed impossible to traverse the giant waves until morning but when Rey sees her opportunity she sails over the waves with relative ease while the rest of the heroes are chatting to a local about zero hour Strom trooper contracts and a lack of a good sickness benefit policy. As Rey makes it to the wreckage, she is met with Kylo Ren and they have a lightsaber battle after he smashes the way finder and asks her to join him in getting rid of Papa Palpatine and being the Sith power couple. Kylo seems to be building up the anger in Rey and trying to temp her to give in to her rage. Some great action shots and some force leaps make this a memorable fight scene until Leia ‘force times’ Kylo distracting him enough for Rey to become the victor. This is the last stand for Leia as she gives up the ghost and therefore becomes one of those ghost Jedi figures. With a sudden change of heart and with the wound barely open Rey uses her force healing abilities to fill Kylo’s hole right up before stealing his ship and leaving him stranded on Goonieland. With all this free time Kylo throws away his lightsaber and becomes Ben Solo once more and squeezes in a catch up with his old dad Han in dreamworld or memoryland.
Rey is now on a mission to destroy the Sith and the Emperor on the hidden planet now she has the map but only after setting Kylo’s sweet spaceship on fire and then realising her error. This impulsive nature may be leading to the dark side!! She heads to Exegol the Sith planet just as Palpatine is setting his sights on getting on with ending the Rebellion once and for all. If a job is worth doing its worth doing it yourself and orders the destruction of planet by a weapon that’s on each Star Destroyer. When Rey catches up with the Emperor, he is happy to see her and he invites her to strike him down, probably to become more powerful than we can imagine. Rey leaves a trail of cosmic breadcrumbs and she is followed by the resistance and they have a plan to take on the Final Order by destroying a central communication tower, so again a rather simple way to stop some heavy duty weaponry; the old classics are the best!!! It becomes a bit Star Wars of the Rings with space horses appearing and galloping to the rescue, not since the ill-fated days of the Phantom Menace has wildlife shocked me in such a manner. Back to the will she, won’t she, Rey and the Emperor are still wanting different things and Palpatine has invited the ghosts of Sith past to witness his greatest triumph. Rey has a choice of lightsaber’s due to Leia giving her an extra, maybe there was a reason for this!! Oh, wait Ben Solo has arrived lightsaberless what a stroke of luck!! Palpatine has had enough and he decides to drain both the Jedi’s of their life force and levels ups and gets back to rage mode and gets his lightning on. He dispatches Ben and then takes out the full resistance fleet with an impressive lightning show. Rey in her weakened state finally perfects the connection with the Jedi spirits that she failed at early in the film. Armed with the x-factor of crossed lightsabers she pushes the Emperor back and turns his own electricity and his face is melted off Raiders of the Lost Ark style. Ben then comes back into the mix and repays the force healing from earlier and gives Rey the gift of life followed by a kiss. This is a kiss of death literally and he fades away into nothingness. In scenes not seen since the Avengers help arrives when all hope is gone, and the fight is won by the good guys again.
I felt that this film was too fast paced and had too many storylines that were quickly explored and this was at a detriment to what could have been. Maybe on repeat viewing there will be the chance to slow down and explore the potential of the film. Some scenes were for the older generation and some were for the newbies to the galaxy far, far away and this again was at a cost to the whole experience. This all being said the watch was enjoyable and had its genuine emotional moments and humour was used to break the tension at times with C3-PO having a few choice lines for once.
Some endings are welcomed whilst others are heart-breaking and sudden, then there is this movie that closes a curtain that’s older than my very bones. In the time from 1977 there has been highs, lows and Jar Jar Binks a plenty and lots and lots of toys, lunchboxes and soap sets in all shapes of droids. The film itself opens and quickly reintroduces all the main characters and sets up the plot lines for each person and they embark on a path that is destined for them all to meet later. Kylo Ren is on a solo Gooniesesque mission to retrieve something darker than One Eyed Willies rich stuff with the aid of a Toblerone shaped virtual map. Helmetless and emotionless he encounters the Emperor you in fact is not dead but just chilling out with many engineers, Sith corpses and a big evil throne that he may use to do dark side Sudoku. Kylo Ren must kill Rey and then he and Palpatine might both crack a smile and take turns on the evil throne as all powerful rulers.
Is it a bird? Is it plane? Well its half bird in name alone it’s the Millennium Falcon doing what it does best and being chased and escaping for the numerous time but this time they are light speed jumping even though they are told not to, naughty naughty. Po and Finn get some gossip and head to the planet the Rebels are all hiding on to share their news. Enter the heroine its Rey in a new outfit and floating up high but failing to entice the Jedi spirits to appear but why would they this early on in a film. The hero’s all use the gossip from the Empire spy and Rey, Finn, Poe, Chewbacca, BB-8, and C-3PO depart in the Millennium Falcon. Space trip!!!
They head for a Space desert that is like Mardi Gras with sand, it’s so lucky that these sandy terrains are common in space like they are common on Earth as Star Wars loves these arid landscapes. They get into a scrape as they always seem to do but with Stormtroopers being inept and despite being airborne, they now fail on both land and air to do anything other than being a source for explosions. C3-PO finally gets the chance to be of actual use but in his golden and splendid way he is unable to translate a Sith message orally and it remains unheard and unseen in his memory banks. Kylo Ren mentally Skype calls Rey and she forgets to turn off her location settings and he turns up. In the ensuing melee Rey turns up the bad ass levels and destroys an Empire ship containing the Wookie we all fell in love with Chewbacca. In a big fiery furball of fire he is gone, Rey is beside herself with regret and they all escape on board Not the Millennium Falcon. Another planet another mission to add to the collection sees the group hoping to find a brain surgeon to extract the Sith message from C3-PO. On planet Jim Henson we see a large collection of weird and wonderful puppets and cosplay experts. The downside of the brain surgery is it will format C3-PO to the factory settings so he can learn to be annoying to everyone all over again. A little shaved Mogwai turns out to be the master surgeon and he completes the job easily enough and they retrieve the message, but the worst fears are realised as C3-PO remembers no one.
From the furry flames Chewbacca, we find out is not dead but merely being pampered in the Empires many hair and nail bars. Sensing this fashion disaster waiting to happen Rey organises a rescue mission and they break into the Star Destroyer with relative ease until Poe, Finn are caught and assigned to death. Rey is on her own mission and breaks into Kylo Ren’s bachelor pad and has a look around and gets the Sith dagger and another Skype call from Kylo Ren is taken where he tells her some missing parts of her childhood and about her true lineage as a pesky Palpatine. The age-old Star Wars family is not who you think it is trope is wheeled out once more. Learning from her previous failures of her location services she refuses to tell Kylo but when the melted helmet of the original absent father Darth Vader falls at Kylo’s feet he knows she is in his room. Enraged in case he left any interspace porn lying around his room he quickly makes a run for his awesome ship.
With certain execution facing Poe, Finn and the now unlucky Chewie and the blasters set to wipe them out General Hux turns Rouge One and saves the heroes at the last second. With his turncoat and spy status ensured he shows his true childish colours and he wants Kylo Ren to lose because he has longer and hair on the darker side of black (maybe). Before allowing them to escape he asked for a blaster wound to give his story of them overpowering the guards some weight, surely a fool proof plan with your boss being able to mind read. He takes a blaster to the knee before hobbling to explain himself before being shot as the traitorous Rebel scum he is. If only he had lived long enough, he may have seen his wish come true. They well-travelled hero’s travel to space Astoria for another Goonies part of the quest where they see the remnants of the second Death Star and use the dagger doubloon to perfectly line up where the way finder is located. A big source of luck as the waves that engulf the planet and are crashing all around the wreck of the Deathstar have avoided any damage over the years. It’s deemed impossible to traverse the giant waves until morning but when Rey sees her opportunity she sails over the waves with relative ease while the rest of the heroes are chatting to a local about zero hour Strom trooper contracts and a lack of a good sickness benefit policy. As Rey makes it to the wreckage, she is met with Kylo Ren and they have a lightsaber battle after he smashes the way finder and asks her to join him in getting rid of Papa Palpatine and being the Sith power couple. Kylo seems to be building up the anger in Rey and trying to temp her to give in to her rage. Some great action shots and some force leaps make this a memorable fight scene until Leia ‘force times’ Kylo distracting him enough for Rey to become the victor. This is the last stand for Leia as she gives up the ghost and therefore becomes one of those ghost Jedi figures. With a sudden change of heart and with the wound barely open Rey uses her force healing abilities to fill Kylo’s hole right up before stealing his ship and leaving him stranded on Goonieland. With all this free time Kylo throws away his lightsaber and becomes Ben Solo once more and squeezes in a catch up with his old dad Han in dreamworld or memoryland.
Rey is now on a mission to destroy the Sith and the Emperor on the hidden planet now she has the map but only after setting Kylo’s sweet spaceship on fire and then realising her error. This impulsive nature may be leading to the dark side!! She heads to Exegol the Sith planet just as Palpatine is setting his sights on getting on with ending the Rebellion once and for all. If a job is worth doing its worth doing it yourself and orders the destruction of planet by a weapon that’s on each Star Destroyer. When Rey catches up with the Emperor, he is happy to see her and he invites her to strike him down, probably to become more powerful than we can imagine. Rey leaves a trail of cosmic breadcrumbs and she is followed by the resistance and they have a plan to take on the Final Order by destroying a central communication tower, so again a rather simple way to stop some heavy duty weaponry; the old classics are the best!!! It becomes a bit Star Wars of the Rings with space horses appearing and galloping to the rescue, not since the ill-fated days of the Phantom Menace has wildlife shocked me in such a manner. Back to the will she, won’t she, Rey and the Emperor are still wanting different things and Palpatine has invited the ghosts of Sith past to witness his greatest triumph. Rey has a choice of lightsaber’s due to Leia giving her an extra, maybe there was a reason for this!! Oh, wait Ben Solo has arrived lightsaberless what a stroke of luck!! Palpatine has had enough and he decides to drain both the Jedi’s of their life force and levels ups and gets back to rage mode and gets his lightning on. He dispatches Ben and then takes out the full resistance fleet with an impressive lightning show. Rey in her weakened state finally perfects the connection with the Jedi spirits that she failed at early in the film. Armed with the x-factor of crossed lightsabers she pushes the Emperor back and turns his own electricity and his face is melted off Raiders of the Lost Ark style. Ben then comes back into the mix and repays the force healing from earlier and gives Rey the gift of life followed by a kiss. This is a kiss of death literally and he fades away into nothingness. In scenes not seen since the Avengers help arrives when all hope is gone, and the fight is won by the good guys again.
I felt that this film was too fast paced and had too many storylines that were quickly explored and this was at a detriment to what could have been. Maybe on repeat viewing there will be the chance to slow down and explore the potential of the film. Some scenes were for the older generation and some were for the newbies to the galaxy far, far away and this again was at a cost to the whole experience. This all being said the watch was enjoyable and had its genuine emotional moments and humour was used to break the tension at times with C3-PO having a few choice lines for once.
Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) rated the PlayStation 4 version of Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order in Video Games
Mar 1, 2020 (Updated Mar 1, 2020)
Wasted Potential
So I just finished Jedi: Fallen Order and it's left me feeling confused. Not because of some complex twist or story revelation, but because on paper I should have loved every minute of this game. You take the parkour movement and sense of adventure from a game like Uncharted and you give it to a Jedi, who we follow during some of the darkest days in the Star Wars lore and what do you get?
Apparently you get something that doesn't feel like Star Wars.
I have a fair number of problems with this game, so I'm going to go ahead and list them and explain why they bothered me so much during my experience playing through Fallen Order.
First of all, when this game dropped and did pretty well commercially and critically, EA were commended in the games media for having the guts to release a single-player, story based Star Wars game with no online play. When the reviews dropped just before the game's release, this news got me really hyped as I have never been much for online gaming and much prefer story based games over anything else. Now whilst EA did give us a single-player, offline Star Wars story, they did so in such a sloppy, janky, half-finished fashion.
I lost count of the amount of times that I had to restart my game because of loading errors or game breaking bugs. Almost every time I would enter a new area the characters would initially appear in a T-pose position and remain that way for a good few seconds until I approached them. Onscreen prompts would often fail to appear making the game's already confusing exploration methods even more unclear. I have not seen this much pop-in in a videogame since the first version of No Man's Sky. Almost every area was covered in murky textures upon initially entering them, with some entire structures and areas failing to render. During a few boss fights, the AI character would fail to attack me and just stand still and no matter how many blows I would land on them, their health bar would not budge until I fully reloaded the level. This sort of thing was present during every one of my play sessions and at a few points the game became almost unplayable due to it's glaring technical glitches. Also, I got this game as a Christmas gift, so it has been out for a decent amount of time. A game of this calibre, that has been out for months at this point, from a major studio like Respawn and a publisher like EA, not to mention being from a major franchise like Star Wars, - the fact that it is in the current broken state that it's in is frankly unacceptable.
The next issue I had was the story and characters in the game. The game's protagonist Cal, is an unsympathetic, whiny bitch of a character that got on my nerves every time he opened his mouth. The rest of the crew were also pretty bland, unendearing and lacking in much personality. I grew up loving the Star Wars universe, yet I found myself trying in vain to skip almost every cutscene and really not giving a crap what happens to any one of the characters. The villains were unengaging and the other side characters like Cal's master and the old dude that left holograms for Cal to find got increasingly annoying every time they appeared. The only character I found engaging throughout the whole game was Sister Merrin.
I always thought Jedi Knights were supposed to be extremely capable, powerful warriors, yet at no point in this game do you ever feel powerful in any significant way. The whole time, you feel on par with the non descript enemies that you are fighting. While I agree that the last major AAA single-player Star Wars game, The Force Unleashed was too easy, at least you felt powerful while playing as that character. The combat never feels as satisfying as it should due to the lack of dismemberment. The decision not to allow the player to chop off limbs makes it feels more like you are hitting enemy shaped piñatas with a big stick, rather than welding a laser sword of pure, raw energy. I also felt that there was a lack of variation in the combos and moves-set and found myself watching the same animations over and again no matter what combination of buttons I was mashing. Every fight in this game is hard and not in a fun,challenging way, but instead in a grinding, irritating way. The ridiculously long loading times also made dying even more frustrating. If you are going to design a game where the player is going to die frequently, you HAVE TO have a snappy respawn system in place à la Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami. (Especially when your fucking studio is called RESPAWN, but I digress.) They were clearly going for a more defensive, methodical approach to the combat system, which is fine, but they should have given you a choice between that and a more aggressive, offensive skill tree, meaning that more play styles could be catered to. Another majorly annoying thing was the way that the game justified unlocking new skills for Cal, with him having out-of-the-blue flashbacks at seemingly random points in the story where he would suddenly remember that he could wall-run or double-jump. I hate when games do this, it feels extremely lazy and unjustified within the context of the story that is being presented. Another thing that bothered me gameplay-wise was the checkpoint system. The whole refilling your health = respawning the enemies thing felt really arcady and often broke immersion.
Something else that I hate in games is when the game tries to pretend that it is an open world game rather than a linear experience, which this game does. I don't understand why you would want to masquerade as an open world game when that mechanic has been so oversaturated for this entire generation. After you play through the game's intro and get access to the ship, you are given the impression that you can choose what order to visit each planet and progress though the game. However this is not the case. When I was first given the choice to pick a planet, I chose Dathomir as I am a big Darth Maul fan and thought it would be cool to explore his home turf. I got there and was making my way through the clear-as-mud holomap when I got to a section where I could not progress. There was a jump that I just could not make no matter how many times I tried. After eventually getting fed up I had to look up a walkthrough to find out how to progress whereupon I learned that you actually need to go to the other planet first and gain an ability to make this jump. Now even if I did design my game so poorly that I let the player go to the wrong planet on their first travel, I would have at least had the decency to put in a prompt at the un-passable jump to let the player know that they don't have the skills to progress here yet and to go to the other planet and return here later. It could have been a voiceover from a crew member or even an immersion-breaking piece of text, but something would have been nice to prevent me having to look up a walkthrough to learn this fact. Witnessing this ineptitude in game design from such a major studio was shocking. So yeah, from that point on, - lesson learned, - I just followed the checkpoints to decide what my next planet would be to travel to, but then why even give players the illusion of choice in this? Why not just usher the player automatically to the next planet they need to visit after they return to the ship?
My final and biggest issue with this game is despite it being a Star Wars game, it never really felt like Star Wars. I noticed this during the first third of the game in the some of the character designs. Some of the side characters looked more akin to something from Ratchet & Clank than from the Star Wars universe. Then as I was playing through Kashyyyk and fighting spiders and giant slugs, I'm thinking to myself, I don't ever remember Luke Skywalker doing this and that dude lived and trained in a swamp for like a year. Then the shark was well and truly jumped. Upon revisiting Dathomir and finally being able to make some progress, a character literally raises bodies from the ground for you to fight. That's right, they put zombies in a Star Wars game. I thought since Disney had taken control of Star Wars, that they were way stricter than Lucas ever was about what does and doesn't get into the Star Wars universe, so whoever greenlit this zombie shit over at Disney should really get the boot. I can't quite believe that I'm saying this, but if you want a more authentic and higher quality Star Wars videogame experience, go play Battlefront 2. Sure it may have had an extremely messy launch and been marred with controversy ever since, but at least it feels like Star Wars.
There were a sparse few things that I did enjoy. As I mentioned above, Merrin was a fairly engaging and well acted character. The Lightsaber customisation was also pretty neat. I also enjoyed the music and (SPOILERS,) the brief appearance that Darth Vader makes. However the music is only great because it's the Star Wars score and whilst Vader's appearance as an unstoppable force was cool here, I personally feel like it was done better in Rogue One.
So yeah, I kind of feel like I played a different game to everyone else. I really wanted to fall in love with this game and I kept waiting for it to win me over, but unfortunately it never did. I think that there is potential here for something better, mostly owed to the interesting time period the game is set in on the Star Wars timeline, so I really hope that they take the few good elements that were present in Fallen Order and improve upon everything else for the sequel.
Apparently you get something that doesn't feel like Star Wars.
I have a fair number of problems with this game, so I'm going to go ahead and list them and explain why they bothered me so much during my experience playing through Fallen Order.
First of all, when this game dropped and did pretty well commercially and critically, EA were commended in the games media for having the guts to release a single-player, story based Star Wars game with no online play. When the reviews dropped just before the game's release, this news got me really hyped as I have never been much for online gaming and much prefer story based games over anything else. Now whilst EA did give us a single-player, offline Star Wars story, they did so in such a sloppy, janky, half-finished fashion.
I lost count of the amount of times that I had to restart my game because of loading errors or game breaking bugs. Almost every time I would enter a new area the characters would initially appear in a T-pose position and remain that way for a good few seconds until I approached them. Onscreen prompts would often fail to appear making the game's already confusing exploration methods even more unclear. I have not seen this much pop-in in a videogame since the first version of No Man's Sky. Almost every area was covered in murky textures upon initially entering them, with some entire structures and areas failing to render. During a few boss fights, the AI character would fail to attack me and just stand still and no matter how many blows I would land on them, their health bar would not budge until I fully reloaded the level. This sort of thing was present during every one of my play sessions and at a few points the game became almost unplayable due to it's glaring technical glitches. Also, I got this game as a Christmas gift, so it has been out for a decent amount of time. A game of this calibre, that has been out for months at this point, from a major studio like Respawn and a publisher like EA, not to mention being from a major franchise like Star Wars, - the fact that it is in the current broken state that it's in is frankly unacceptable.
The next issue I had was the story and characters in the game. The game's protagonist Cal, is an unsympathetic, whiny bitch of a character that got on my nerves every time he opened his mouth. The rest of the crew were also pretty bland, unendearing and lacking in much personality. I grew up loving the Star Wars universe, yet I found myself trying in vain to skip almost every cutscene and really not giving a crap what happens to any one of the characters. The villains were unengaging and the other side characters like Cal's master and the old dude that left holograms for Cal to find got increasingly annoying every time they appeared. The only character I found engaging throughout the whole game was Sister Merrin.
I always thought Jedi Knights were supposed to be extremely capable, powerful warriors, yet at no point in this game do you ever feel powerful in any significant way. The whole time, you feel on par with the non descript enemies that you are fighting. While I agree that the last major AAA single-player Star Wars game, The Force Unleashed was too easy, at least you felt powerful while playing as that character. The combat never feels as satisfying as it should due to the lack of dismemberment. The decision not to allow the player to chop off limbs makes it feels more like you are hitting enemy shaped piñatas with a big stick, rather than welding a laser sword of pure, raw energy. I also felt that there was a lack of variation in the combos and moves-set and found myself watching the same animations over and again no matter what combination of buttons I was mashing. Every fight in this game is hard and not in a fun,challenging way, but instead in a grinding, irritating way. The ridiculously long loading times also made dying even more frustrating. If you are going to design a game where the player is going to die frequently, you HAVE TO have a snappy respawn system in place à la Super Meat Boy or Hotline Miami. (Especially when your fucking studio is called RESPAWN, but I digress.) They were clearly going for a more defensive, methodical approach to the combat system, which is fine, but they should have given you a choice between that and a more aggressive, offensive skill tree, meaning that more play styles could be catered to. Another majorly annoying thing was the way that the game justified unlocking new skills for Cal, with him having out-of-the-blue flashbacks at seemingly random points in the story where he would suddenly remember that he could wall-run or double-jump. I hate when games do this, it feels extremely lazy and unjustified within the context of the story that is being presented. Another thing that bothered me gameplay-wise was the checkpoint system. The whole refilling your health = respawning the enemies thing felt really arcady and often broke immersion.
Something else that I hate in games is when the game tries to pretend that it is an open world game rather than a linear experience, which this game does. I don't understand why you would want to masquerade as an open world game when that mechanic has been so oversaturated for this entire generation. After you play through the game's intro and get access to the ship, you are given the impression that you can choose what order to visit each planet and progress though the game. However this is not the case. When I was first given the choice to pick a planet, I chose Dathomir as I am a big Darth Maul fan and thought it would be cool to explore his home turf. I got there and was making my way through the clear-as-mud holomap when I got to a section where I could not progress. There was a jump that I just could not make no matter how many times I tried. After eventually getting fed up I had to look up a walkthrough to find out how to progress whereupon I learned that you actually need to go to the other planet first and gain an ability to make this jump. Now even if I did design my game so poorly that I let the player go to the wrong planet on their first travel, I would have at least had the decency to put in a prompt at the un-passable jump to let the player know that they don't have the skills to progress here yet and to go to the other planet and return here later. It could have been a voiceover from a crew member or even an immersion-breaking piece of text, but something would have been nice to prevent me having to look up a walkthrough to learn this fact. Witnessing this ineptitude in game design from such a major studio was shocking. So yeah, from that point on, - lesson learned, - I just followed the checkpoints to decide what my next planet would be to travel to, but then why even give players the illusion of choice in this? Why not just usher the player automatically to the next planet they need to visit after they return to the ship?
My final and biggest issue with this game is despite it being a Star Wars game, it never really felt like Star Wars. I noticed this during the first third of the game in the some of the character designs. Some of the side characters looked more akin to something from Ratchet & Clank than from the Star Wars universe. Then as I was playing through Kashyyyk and fighting spiders and giant slugs, I'm thinking to myself, I don't ever remember Luke Skywalker doing this and that dude lived and trained in a swamp for like a year. Then the shark was well and truly jumped. Upon revisiting Dathomir and finally being able to make some progress, a character literally raises bodies from the ground for you to fight. That's right, they put zombies in a Star Wars game. I thought since Disney had taken control of Star Wars, that they were way stricter than Lucas ever was about what does and doesn't get into the Star Wars universe, so whoever greenlit this zombie shit over at Disney should really get the boot. I can't quite believe that I'm saying this, but if you want a more authentic and higher quality Star Wars videogame experience, go play Battlefront 2. Sure it may have had an extremely messy launch and been marred with controversy ever since, but at least it feels like Star Wars.
There were a sparse few things that I did enjoy. As I mentioned above, Merrin was a fairly engaging and well acted character. The Lightsaber customisation was also pretty neat. I also enjoyed the music and (SPOILERS,) the brief appearance that Darth Vader makes. However the music is only great because it's the Star Wars score and whilst Vader's appearance as an unstoppable force was cool here, I personally feel like it was done better in Rogue One.
So yeah, I kind of feel like I played a different game to everyone else. I really wanted to fall in love with this game and I kept waiting for it to win me over, but unfortunately it never did. I think that there is potential here for something better, mostly owed to the interesting time period the game is set in on the Star Wars timeline, so I really hope that they take the few good elements that were present in Fallen Order and improve upon everything else for the sequel.
Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated Tiny Epic Western in Tabletop Games
Dec 30, 2021
It’s no secret that we at Purple Phoenix Games are fans of the Tiny Epic series. But one that had evaded our reviews until this point was Tiny Epic Western. Admittedly, this one has been sitting on my shelf of shame for quite some time, so I finally decided it was time to take it off the shelf and bring it to the table! After squaring up with TEW, how does it compare to the rest in the series? Is this the rootinest tootinest of the bunch, or should it be bucked off my shelf?
Disclaimer: I do not intend to rehash the entire rulebook in this review, as there are just too many details, but will instead provide a more general overview of the rules and gameplay. -L
Tiny Epic Western is a game of worker placement and set collection in which players are trying to amass the most end-game victory points. Played over a series of rounds, players will be placing their Posse (Meeples), collecting Influence and taking actions, dueling opponents (if necessary), playing a bit of poker, and buying buildings in an effort to become the most powerful boss in this wild west town. To setup for a game, place the Location Mats as described in the rules, dealing a Building Card where appropriate. Each player receives a Boss card, 3 Posse tokens (Meeples), and one of each of the Influence trackers (Money, Law, and Force), placed on the 1 space of their card. Shuffle the decks of Building Cards and Poker Cards separately, choose a starting player (who receives the Dealer token), place the Wanted card/Gunslinger dice in the center of the play area, and the game is ready to begin! Pictured below is the starting setup for a 3-player game.
The game is played over 6 total rounds, each of which is broken into 4 phases: Shuffle and Deal, Posse Placement, Resolution, and Buy. To start a round, the Dealer shuffles the deck of Poker cards, and then deals 1 card face-up to the 6 empty spaces between the Location Mats. One Poker card is dealt face-down to the Rival Space (under the Town Hall Location Mat), and 2 Poker cards are dealt face-down to each player. Players look at both of their cards and pick 1 to keep, discarding the other. The round then moves to phase 2: Posse Placement. Starting with the Dealer, players will take turns placing Posse tokens onto the placement spots on any of the Location mats. All placement spots grant unique benefits (collecting different Influence or performing Building card actions) that are performed either immediately or during later phases of the round. What happens if an opponent took a placement spot that you wanted? Then it’s time for an old-fashioned duel! The dueling players each roll a Gunslinger die, modify it if they so choose, and determine a winner. Players continue taking turns placing Posse tokens until all available Posse tokens have been placed.
When all Posse tokens have been placed, the round moves to phase 3: Resolution. The first step of this phase is to reveal Poker cards – all players reveal their cards, and the card in the Rival Space is also revealed. Moving clockwise from the Town Hall, each Location will be resolved by ‘playing’ three-card poker. Each Location has 2 Poker cards directly adjacent to it (placed between the Locations in phase 1), and those 2 cards plus the one in your hand will form your Poker hand. Any players with Posse tokens on the Location will compare their Poker hands to determine a winner. If you win the hand, you collect the Winner’s Pot (extra benefits) and are able to collect any delayed benefits from placement spots in the Posse Placement phase. Losing the hand earns you nothing *womp womp*. If you are the only Posse on a Location (with no opponents) you will compare your hand to that of the Rival. The Rival’s hand uses the cards adjacent to the Town Hall, plus the revealed card in the Rival Space. If you have a better hand, you win the benefits on your Location. If the Rival wins, though, you do not collect these benefits. All Locations are resolved in this fashion before the last phase of the round, Buy, begins.
To start this phase, all players will compare their three-card Poker hands using the 2 Poker cards adjacent to the Town Hall. The player with the best hand will act first in this phase, followed by the next best hand, and so on. The first player may now choose to buy a Building card from any Location on which they have a Posse token. Pay the requisite amount of Influence to purchase a Building, and add it to the Porch Slot on your color-corresponding Location Mat. The power granted by this Building card is now available for use in future rounds. Once all players have had the option to purchase a Building, the player with the best hand will advance one of the Industry Tokens at Town Hall. The placements of Industry Tokens will affect end-game scoring, so keep that in mind as the game progresses. When all steps of the Buy phase are performed, the round now ends. Players collect all their Posse tokens back to their boss cards, all Poker cards are collected and re-shuffled, new Building cards are dealt to Locations from which they were purchased this round, and the Dealer token is passed to the next clockwise player. If a player did not buy a Building at all during the round, they have gained the Third Posse Benefit for the coming round – granting them an additional Posse token to place during phase 2. Otherwise, all players will only ever have 2 Posse tokens to place.
After a total of 6 complete rounds, the game ends and points are tallied. Victory Points are earned from Building cards bought throughout the game. Building cards have a specified VP amount, and also have a collection of Industry Icons on them. Using the final placement of the Industry Tokens on the board, players will earn points for Industry Icon sets they have collected. And finally, whomever holds the Wanted card (won the last duel) gains an additional 2 VP. Points are all counted, and the player with the highest score is the winner.
That all probably sounds pretty complicated. But I do have to say that verbally explaining/teaching the game (and being able to use components for examples) is waaaaay easier than doing so through a text review. So please do not let the seemingly complex gameplay turn you off from this game. Once you get a basic understanding of the phases of each round, the game moves along pretty seamlessly. Honestly, the biggest learning curve for me to conquer was playing three-card poker. As someone who has never played any form of poker before, this was probably what had me most hesitant about learning TEW. After having played it now, three-card poker really isn’t too complicated, and there are some nice player reference cards to help you figure it out.
Aside from the poker element, this game really comes down to worker placement and strategy. Each Location card only has a finite number of placement spots, and the resources required to buy Buildings are not exactly in abundance. This affects your strategy, as you must decide which resources to collect at what times, as well as deciding whether you need to duel someone for a coveted resource. Another element to your strategy? You may only buy Building cards from Locations on which you have a Posse token. Maybe none of those placement spots really appeal to you this round, but you reaaaaally want that specific Building card. Are you willing to ‘burn’ a Posse token for the chance to buy it? Or is there a different Location that offers a useful resources and a desirable Building card? Also, keep in mind how your poker hand will come into play. Since poker cards are dealt to each Location at the start of a round, you are able to see what your hand will be for each Location. Maybe you have a pretty strong hand at the Bank Location, but at the Courthouse the cards end up being a bust. Are you willing to risk a placement in hopes that you have the best hand of the bunch? Because remember – if you don’t have the best hand at a Location, you get no resources/rewards! There are so many elements to a successful strategy with this game, and it really keeps all players engaged at all times. Be warned though – the variety of strategic options could be difficult for some AP-prone players.
Let me touch on components for a minute. As with all Tiny Epic games, the production quality of TEW is pretty stellar. The cards are nice and sturdy, and the iconography is clear. The Posse tokens are cute Meeples with cowboy hats, and they are nice and chunky. The only thing I don’t really like about this game are the Gunslinger dice. In theory, they are super cool, but in actual execution, they leave much to be desired. The numbers aren’t really clearly define, so they’re a bit tricky to read. Aside from that, a pretty high quality game here.
So all in all, how does Tiny Epic Western stand up in the series? It is definitely one of the heavier games of the bunch, and there is so much more going on than initially meets the eye. It feels daunting for the first few plays, but once you get the phases under your belt, it really flows pretty well. I can’t say that it is my favorite Tiny Epic game, as I just personally feel like there are too many elements going on at the same time. You’re strategizing your worker placement, but also need to consider buying Buildings for VP and to collect sets of Industry Icons and for their specific abilities, as well as figuring out your poker hand for 5 different Locations, and dealing with duels. Some people might really be into that amount of strategic forethought, but it feels a bit cumbersome to me. That being said, Purple Phoenix Games gives this three-card poker game a 3/6. The gameplay is decent, just not really my kind of game.
Disclaimer: I do not intend to rehash the entire rulebook in this review, as there are just too many details, but will instead provide a more general overview of the rules and gameplay. -L
Tiny Epic Western is a game of worker placement and set collection in which players are trying to amass the most end-game victory points. Played over a series of rounds, players will be placing their Posse (Meeples), collecting Influence and taking actions, dueling opponents (if necessary), playing a bit of poker, and buying buildings in an effort to become the most powerful boss in this wild west town. To setup for a game, place the Location Mats as described in the rules, dealing a Building Card where appropriate. Each player receives a Boss card, 3 Posse tokens (Meeples), and one of each of the Influence trackers (Money, Law, and Force), placed on the 1 space of their card. Shuffle the decks of Building Cards and Poker Cards separately, choose a starting player (who receives the Dealer token), place the Wanted card/Gunslinger dice in the center of the play area, and the game is ready to begin! Pictured below is the starting setup for a 3-player game.
The game is played over 6 total rounds, each of which is broken into 4 phases: Shuffle and Deal, Posse Placement, Resolution, and Buy. To start a round, the Dealer shuffles the deck of Poker cards, and then deals 1 card face-up to the 6 empty spaces between the Location Mats. One Poker card is dealt face-down to the Rival Space (under the Town Hall Location Mat), and 2 Poker cards are dealt face-down to each player. Players look at both of their cards and pick 1 to keep, discarding the other. The round then moves to phase 2: Posse Placement. Starting with the Dealer, players will take turns placing Posse tokens onto the placement spots on any of the Location mats. All placement spots grant unique benefits (collecting different Influence or performing Building card actions) that are performed either immediately or during later phases of the round. What happens if an opponent took a placement spot that you wanted? Then it’s time for an old-fashioned duel! The dueling players each roll a Gunslinger die, modify it if they so choose, and determine a winner. Players continue taking turns placing Posse tokens until all available Posse tokens have been placed.
When all Posse tokens have been placed, the round moves to phase 3: Resolution. The first step of this phase is to reveal Poker cards – all players reveal their cards, and the card in the Rival Space is also revealed. Moving clockwise from the Town Hall, each Location will be resolved by ‘playing’ three-card poker. Each Location has 2 Poker cards directly adjacent to it (placed between the Locations in phase 1), and those 2 cards plus the one in your hand will form your Poker hand. Any players with Posse tokens on the Location will compare their Poker hands to determine a winner. If you win the hand, you collect the Winner’s Pot (extra benefits) and are able to collect any delayed benefits from placement spots in the Posse Placement phase. Losing the hand earns you nothing *womp womp*. If you are the only Posse on a Location (with no opponents) you will compare your hand to that of the Rival. The Rival’s hand uses the cards adjacent to the Town Hall, plus the revealed card in the Rival Space. If you have a better hand, you win the benefits on your Location. If the Rival wins, though, you do not collect these benefits. All Locations are resolved in this fashion before the last phase of the round, Buy, begins.
To start this phase, all players will compare their three-card Poker hands using the 2 Poker cards adjacent to the Town Hall. The player with the best hand will act first in this phase, followed by the next best hand, and so on. The first player may now choose to buy a Building card from any Location on which they have a Posse token. Pay the requisite amount of Influence to purchase a Building, and add it to the Porch Slot on your color-corresponding Location Mat. The power granted by this Building card is now available for use in future rounds. Once all players have had the option to purchase a Building, the player with the best hand will advance one of the Industry Tokens at Town Hall. The placements of Industry Tokens will affect end-game scoring, so keep that in mind as the game progresses. When all steps of the Buy phase are performed, the round now ends. Players collect all their Posse tokens back to their boss cards, all Poker cards are collected and re-shuffled, new Building cards are dealt to Locations from which they were purchased this round, and the Dealer token is passed to the next clockwise player. If a player did not buy a Building at all during the round, they have gained the Third Posse Benefit for the coming round – granting them an additional Posse token to place during phase 2. Otherwise, all players will only ever have 2 Posse tokens to place.
After a total of 6 complete rounds, the game ends and points are tallied. Victory Points are earned from Building cards bought throughout the game. Building cards have a specified VP amount, and also have a collection of Industry Icons on them. Using the final placement of the Industry Tokens on the board, players will earn points for Industry Icon sets they have collected. And finally, whomever holds the Wanted card (won the last duel) gains an additional 2 VP. Points are all counted, and the player with the highest score is the winner.
That all probably sounds pretty complicated. But I do have to say that verbally explaining/teaching the game (and being able to use components for examples) is waaaaay easier than doing so through a text review. So please do not let the seemingly complex gameplay turn you off from this game. Once you get a basic understanding of the phases of each round, the game moves along pretty seamlessly. Honestly, the biggest learning curve for me to conquer was playing three-card poker. As someone who has never played any form of poker before, this was probably what had me most hesitant about learning TEW. After having played it now, three-card poker really isn’t too complicated, and there are some nice player reference cards to help you figure it out.
Aside from the poker element, this game really comes down to worker placement and strategy. Each Location card only has a finite number of placement spots, and the resources required to buy Buildings are not exactly in abundance. This affects your strategy, as you must decide which resources to collect at what times, as well as deciding whether you need to duel someone for a coveted resource. Another element to your strategy? You may only buy Building cards from Locations on which you have a Posse token. Maybe none of those placement spots really appeal to you this round, but you reaaaaally want that specific Building card. Are you willing to ‘burn’ a Posse token for the chance to buy it? Or is there a different Location that offers a useful resources and a desirable Building card? Also, keep in mind how your poker hand will come into play. Since poker cards are dealt to each Location at the start of a round, you are able to see what your hand will be for each Location. Maybe you have a pretty strong hand at the Bank Location, but at the Courthouse the cards end up being a bust. Are you willing to risk a placement in hopes that you have the best hand of the bunch? Because remember – if you don’t have the best hand at a Location, you get no resources/rewards! There are so many elements to a successful strategy with this game, and it really keeps all players engaged at all times. Be warned though – the variety of strategic options could be difficult for some AP-prone players.
Let me touch on components for a minute. As with all Tiny Epic games, the production quality of TEW is pretty stellar. The cards are nice and sturdy, and the iconography is clear. The Posse tokens are cute Meeples with cowboy hats, and they are nice and chunky. The only thing I don’t really like about this game are the Gunslinger dice. In theory, they are super cool, but in actual execution, they leave much to be desired. The numbers aren’t really clearly define, so they’re a bit tricky to read. Aside from that, a pretty high quality game here.
So all in all, how does Tiny Epic Western stand up in the series? It is definitely one of the heavier games of the bunch, and there is so much more going on than initially meets the eye. It feels daunting for the first few plays, but once you get the phases under your belt, it really flows pretty well. I can’t say that it is my favorite Tiny Epic game, as I just personally feel like there are too many elements going on at the same time. You’re strategizing your worker placement, but also need to consider buying Buildings for VP and to collect sets of Industry Icons and for their specific abilities, as well as figuring out your poker hand for 5 different Locations, and dealing with duels. Some people might really be into that amount of strategic forethought, but it feels a bit cumbersome to me. That being said, Purple Phoenix Games gives this three-card poker game a 3/6. The gameplay is decent, just not really my kind of game.
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Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated TEN in Tabletop Games
Nov 28, 2021
When it comes to game mechanics, set collection is my JAM. Auction/bidding and push your luck, not so much….. So when Alderac Entertainment Group brought TEN into my life, I was a bit wary at first. A game of collecting sequences/sets of numbers? Awesome!! Add in bidding for Wildcards or pushing your luck to not Bust each turn? A bit too risky, at least for my gaming tastes. After having had the opportunity to play TEN, were my initial feelings misplaced? Spoiler: Yes. For me, TEN was a prime example of “Don’t judge a game by its mechanics.” Keep reading to find out why.
Disclaimer: We were provided with a copy of TEN for the purposes of this review. This is a final production copy, so what you see pictured is what you would receive in a retail copy of the game. -L
TEN is a push-your-luck game of set collection and auction/bidding in which players are trying to amass the most points by the end of the game. Points are earned by collecting sets of numeric sequences in the 4 colors of the game: Blue, Green, Pink, and Orange. Played over a series of turns, players will be drawing/collecting cards from the tableau, buying cards from the Market, or Busting if they push their luck a bit too far. To setup for a game, assemble the deck of cards as dictated by the player count and set it in the play area. Each player gets 5 Currency tokens with which to start the game, and are all dealt a random reference card. The player who was dealt the reference card with the Starting Player symbol will begin the game. Before getting into the actual gameplay, I want to mention the different card types, as to provide a better understanding when reading this review. In each of the 4 colors, there are card values numbered 1-9, with more copies of the lower numbers and fewer of the higher numbers. There are also Wildcards that can be used to represent any #/color, depending on the card. Some cards in the deck are Currency cards and show a value of 1-5 Currency. Should you choose to take these from the tableau, you collect that amount of Currency to be used for auctions or buying cards in later turns.
On your turn, you will perform a series of actions, the first of which is Draw a Card. You will draw a card from the top of the deck and place it in the tableau. If the card is a # card or a Currency card, you will then decide if you wish to continue drawing cards. If you do, draw the next card, and so on, until either you decide to stop or you Bust (more on this in a bit). As long as you do not Bust, you can decide when to stop drawing cards to the tableau. You may then take one of the following rewards: take all the # cards to your play area, or take Currency tokens (equal to the amount shown on the Currency cards in the tableau). When you take the # cards, they go into your play area and all other players will collect Currency tokens. You then have the opportunity to Buy a card from the Market (by paying the numeric value of the card) and add it to your play area. If you instead choose to collect Currency, you will take Currency equal to the total value of Currency in the tableau, and all other players receive nothing from your turn. All # cards are moved to the Market, and your turn ends. In the picture below, if I choose to take the # cards, I would take the Orange 2 and Blue 6 to my play area, and all other players would collect 7 Currency. Conversely, I could choose to take 7 Currency, and the # cards are added to the Market (on the right-hand side of the picture).
So how does Busting work? The tableau may never have a value of more than 10. Every # card you draw adds to your total value, and any Currency card drawn subtracts from the total. If you were to draw a # card that would give you a total value of more than 10, you Bust! OR if you ever have Currency cards that total more than 10, you Bust as well. So there’s a bit of math involved, with addition and subtraction, but you have to make sure you never get more than 10! For example, in the picture below, the net total value of the tableau is 1. (8 from # cards, -7 from Currency cards) If I were to draw a Currency card of 4-5, I would Bust, because that totals more than 10. In this pictured instance, any # card I draw would not make me Bust, as the highest total would only be a 10, given the current cards in play. If you ever push your luck too far and end up Busting, all # cards in the tableau are moved to the Market, and you gain a Bust token (worth 3 Currency). If you Busted with # cards, then all other players will collect Currency tokens, but if you Bust with Currency cards, nobody receives anything. After resolving a Bust, your turn ends and the game continues to the next player.
If, on your turn, you ever draw a Wildcard, your turn pauses and the Wildcard is auctioned. Each player will have one chance to either bid (increasing the bid from the previous) or pass. Whomever wins the auction must pay their bid, and they collect the Wildcard to their play area. Once the auction has been resolved, your turn continues as normal. It is possible to have multiple auctions on your turn – it all depends on the cards. The game continues in this fashion, players taking turns drawing cards, collecting cards/Currency, buying from the Market, bidding in auctions, etc., until the draw deck has been depleted. The active player finishes their turn as normal, but may not draw any more cards. Points are then tallied. All players will arrange their cards to create consecutive sequences of numbers in the 4 different colors. You receive 1 point per card in your longest sequence of each color. If you have a complete set of numbers 1-9 in a color, you get a bonus point. Players count up all their points, and the player with the highest value is the winner!
That kind of seems like a lot, but I promise it’s actually pretty intuitive when you get playing. Also, huge shoutout to AEG for providing such a well-done reference card – it includes a little flowchart to help you with how the turns flow. The gameplay itself is essentially pretty straightforward. You draw a card, and then react based on what it is. Bust? Collect a Bust token and your turn ends. No Bust? Decide if you want to keep drawing. Done pushing your luck? Collect either the # cards or Currency. Try to make sequential runs of numbers in the different colors – the more cards you get in sequence, the more points you’ll get at the end of the game. The thing that elevates TEN beyond a simple push-your-luck game to me is that it requires more strategy than just luck. You can see what cards are available in the Market – is there something you need to buy? You can see everyone else’s playing area – do they need any of the numbers you just revealed? You know how much Currency every player has – do you bid high on this Wildcard because your neighbor can’t outbid you? There is so much more than just luck in this game, and that is what takes it to the next level for me. I know that Travis has reviewed No, Thanks! in the past, and I would say that this gives me similar vibes, but way better in my opinion.
When it comes to playing games, I am generally not a huge risk-taker. I like making logical choices based on known information and end-game strategy. But something about this game just gets me. I think one element that makes me love this game is the different types of cards – # cards and Currency cards. When you’re pushing your luck and drawing cards, there’s an added element of excitement, because the two different types of cards affect the net total differently. It doesn’t all positively add to the net total, which makes me more likely to keep drawing in hopes that things will cancel out and I can maximize the turn. If everything all added together, and you just couldn’t get more than 10, I would probably only ever draw 2 cards per turn, max., just to make sure I didn’t Bust. But the fact that Currency cards subtract from the net total encourages players to keep pushing their luck, and either earning a big payoff or a big Bust. This game is exciting, engaging, and entertaining to play, and that makes it fun!
To touch on components, AEG always hits it out of the park – and TEN is no exception. The game is mostly just a bunch of cards, and some white/black Currency tokens. The tokens themselves are nice plastic, and are smooth and chunky in hand. The cards are thick and sturdy, and hold up to shuffling pretty well. The colors of the game are bright and vibrant, and they are very clear to differentiate between. It’s a nice pop of color on the table, and that adds to the overall enjoyment of the game. Each of the 4 colors, and the Wildcards for that matter, have a unique background design – which can help our colorblind friends who may not necessarily be able to differentiate between the colors. Just an added plus to help the gamers tell what cards belong to what colors! The game box is equally as colorful, and is eye-catching on the shelf. All in all, I’d say AEG gets a 10 for their production quality here. (Get it?)
I spoke earlier about judging a game by its mechanics, and how TEN really challenged me on that. I was expecting a game that I would like, but would be kind of just ok overall for me. What I got is a game that is highly strategic, yet also unpredictable at times. I am definitely a planner when it comes to strategy, but the unpredictability of this game is light, fun, and engaging for all players at all times. It just is fun to play. This is a game that I see staying in my collection for a long time, and hopefully getting to the table quite often when I need a quick filler that isn’t so light that it’s mindless, but not heavy enough that it’s a brain-burner. If you’re in the market for a fun little game that challenges all players, I would definitely recommend checking out TEN. Purple Phoenix Games rates our games on a scale of 1-6 (not 10 unfortunately in this case), and we give this one a solid 5 / 6.
Disclaimer: We were provided with a copy of TEN for the purposes of this review. This is a final production copy, so what you see pictured is what you would receive in a retail copy of the game. -L
TEN is a push-your-luck game of set collection and auction/bidding in which players are trying to amass the most points by the end of the game. Points are earned by collecting sets of numeric sequences in the 4 colors of the game: Blue, Green, Pink, and Orange. Played over a series of turns, players will be drawing/collecting cards from the tableau, buying cards from the Market, or Busting if they push their luck a bit too far. To setup for a game, assemble the deck of cards as dictated by the player count and set it in the play area. Each player gets 5 Currency tokens with which to start the game, and are all dealt a random reference card. The player who was dealt the reference card with the Starting Player symbol will begin the game. Before getting into the actual gameplay, I want to mention the different card types, as to provide a better understanding when reading this review. In each of the 4 colors, there are card values numbered 1-9, with more copies of the lower numbers and fewer of the higher numbers. There are also Wildcards that can be used to represent any #/color, depending on the card. Some cards in the deck are Currency cards and show a value of 1-5 Currency. Should you choose to take these from the tableau, you collect that amount of Currency to be used for auctions or buying cards in later turns.
On your turn, you will perform a series of actions, the first of which is Draw a Card. You will draw a card from the top of the deck and place it in the tableau. If the card is a # card or a Currency card, you will then decide if you wish to continue drawing cards. If you do, draw the next card, and so on, until either you decide to stop or you Bust (more on this in a bit). As long as you do not Bust, you can decide when to stop drawing cards to the tableau. You may then take one of the following rewards: take all the # cards to your play area, or take Currency tokens (equal to the amount shown on the Currency cards in the tableau). When you take the # cards, they go into your play area and all other players will collect Currency tokens. You then have the opportunity to Buy a card from the Market (by paying the numeric value of the card) and add it to your play area. If you instead choose to collect Currency, you will take Currency equal to the total value of Currency in the tableau, and all other players receive nothing from your turn. All # cards are moved to the Market, and your turn ends. In the picture below, if I choose to take the # cards, I would take the Orange 2 and Blue 6 to my play area, and all other players would collect 7 Currency. Conversely, I could choose to take 7 Currency, and the # cards are added to the Market (on the right-hand side of the picture).
So how does Busting work? The tableau may never have a value of more than 10. Every # card you draw adds to your total value, and any Currency card drawn subtracts from the total. If you were to draw a # card that would give you a total value of more than 10, you Bust! OR if you ever have Currency cards that total more than 10, you Bust as well. So there’s a bit of math involved, with addition and subtraction, but you have to make sure you never get more than 10! For example, in the picture below, the net total value of the tableau is 1. (8 from # cards, -7 from Currency cards) If I were to draw a Currency card of 4-5, I would Bust, because that totals more than 10. In this pictured instance, any # card I draw would not make me Bust, as the highest total would only be a 10, given the current cards in play. If you ever push your luck too far and end up Busting, all # cards in the tableau are moved to the Market, and you gain a Bust token (worth 3 Currency). If you Busted with # cards, then all other players will collect Currency tokens, but if you Bust with Currency cards, nobody receives anything. After resolving a Bust, your turn ends and the game continues to the next player.
If, on your turn, you ever draw a Wildcard, your turn pauses and the Wildcard is auctioned. Each player will have one chance to either bid (increasing the bid from the previous) or pass. Whomever wins the auction must pay their bid, and they collect the Wildcard to their play area. Once the auction has been resolved, your turn continues as normal. It is possible to have multiple auctions on your turn – it all depends on the cards. The game continues in this fashion, players taking turns drawing cards, collecting cards/Currency, buying from the Market, bidding in auctions, etc., until the draw deck has been depleted. The active player finishes their turn as normal, but may not draw any more cards. Points are then tallied. All players will arrange their cards to create consecutive sequences of numbers in the 4 different colors. You receive 1 point per card in your longest sequence of each color. If you have a complete set of numbers 1-9 in a color, you get a bonus point. Players count up all their points, and the player with the highest value is the winner!
That kind of seems like a lot, but I promise it’s actually pretty intuitive when you get playing. Also, huge shoutout to AEG for providing such a well-done reference card – it includes a little flowchart to help you with how the turns flow. The gameplay itself is essentially pretty straightforward. You draw a card, and then react based on what it is. Bust? Collect a Bust token and your turn ends. No Bust? Decide if you want to keep drawing. Done pushing your luck? Collect either the # cards or Currency. Try to make sequential runs of numbers in the different colors – the more cards you get in sequence, the more points you’ll get at the end of the game. The thing that elevates TEN beyond a simple push-your-luck game to me is that it requires more strategy than just luck. You can see what cards are available in the Market – is there something you need to buy? You can see everyone else’s playing area – do they need any of the numbers you just revealed? You know how much Currency every player has – do you bid high on this Wildcard because your neighbor can’t outbid you? There is so much more than just luck in this game, and that is what takes it to the next level for me. I know that Travis has reviewed No, Thanks! in the past, and I would say that this gives me similar vibes, but way better in my opinion.
When it comes to playing games, I am generally not a huge risk-taker. I like making logical choices based on known information and end-game strategy. But something about this game just gets me. I think one element that makes me love this game is the different types of cards – # cards and Currency cards. When you’re pushing your luck and drawing cards, there’s an added element of excitement, because the two different types of cards affect the net total differently. It doesn’t all positively add to the net total, which makes me more likely to keep drawing in hopes that things will cancel out and I can maximize the turn. If everything all added together, and you just couldn’t get more than 10, I would probably only ever draw 2 cards per turn, max., just to make sure I didn’t Bust. But the fact that Currency cards subtract from the net total encourages players to keep pushing their luck, and either earning a big payoff or a big Bust. This game is exciting, engaging, and entertaining to play, and that makes it fun!
To touch on components, AEG always hits it out of the park – and TEN is no exception. The game is mostly just a bunch of cards, and some white/black Currency tokens. The tokens themselves are nice plastic, and are smooth and chunky in hand. The cards are thick and sturdy, and hold up to shuffling pretty well. The colors of the game are bright and vibrant, and they are very clear to differentiate between. It’s a nice pop of color on the table, and that adds to the overall enjoyment of the game. Each of the 4 colors, and the Wildcards for that matter, have a unique background design – which can help our colorblind friends who may not necessarily be able to differentiate between the colors. Just an added plus to help the gamers tell what cards belong to what colors! The game box is equally as colorful, and is eye-catching on the shelf. All in all, I’d say AEG gets a 10 for their production quality here. (Get it?)
I spoke earlier about judging a game by its mechanics, and how TEN really challenged me on that. I was expecting a game that I would like, but would be kind of just ok overall for me. What I got is a game that is highly strategic, yet also unpredictable at times. I am definitely a planner when it comes to strategy, but the unpredictability of this game is light, fun, and engaging for all players at all times. It just is fun to play. This is a game that I see staying in my collection for a long time, and hopefully getting to the table quite often when I need a quick filler that isn’t so light that it’s mindless, but not heavy enough that it’s a brain-burner. If you’re in the market for a fun little game that challenges all players, I would definitely recommend checking out TEN. Purple Phoenix Games rates our games on a scale of 1-6 (not 10 unfortunately in this case), and we give this one a solid 5 / 6.
Purple Phoenix Games (2266 KP) rated Deep Blue in Tabletop Games
Mar 17, 2022
A couple of months ago, Travis was in town, so he and I went over to Josh’s place to get a day of gaming in. It was an awesome time to play together, and to get to experience some new games for each of us. While we were there, we got to talking about some of the games in Josh’s collection, and he pulled out Deep Blue. He’d had it for a while, but had since gotten another game that he felt did the same things but better. So he asked if either of us wanted to take it off his hands. I said sure, as I’d never played the game before. Now that it’s a part of my collection, is it going to stay there? Or will my feelings mirror Josh’s with regards to the gameplay?
Deep Blue is a nautical game for 2-5 players of deck building, hand management, and a bit of push your luck. In it, players take on the roles ship Captains who are racing to collect treasures from undersea wrecks. Players will be hiring Crew members, sailing across the sea, and sending divers down to wrecks to salvage any valuables. The race is on, though, because you are not the only Captain on this treasure hunt… Throughout the game, players will stumble across 4 Wrecks that make up a Sunken City. Once all 4 areas of the Sunken City have been discovered and searched, the game ends. The player who earns the most VP from their collected treasures by the end of the game is declared the winner!
To setup for a game, follow the instructions in the rulebook – there are simply too many to detail here. The basic gist of setup is to create a market of Crew cards, shuffle and randomly distribute Wreck tiles across the board, and create a Gem pool. Each player will receive a player mat and starting cards in their chosen color, as well as 2 ships to be placed on the starting space of the board. Players will also get a treasure chest, in which they will keep their VP throughout the game. Set the Dive Site board, Gem bag, and VP tokens off to the side. Select a starting player, deal out starting tokens accordingly, and the game is ready to begin! Pictured below is the setup for a 3-player game.
On your turn, you will take one of four possible actions: Recruit a Crew Member, Sail, Rest, or Dive. Throughout the game you will be building your personal deck by Recruiting Crew Members. These new Crew offer unique abilities and scoring powers to be used during Dives. In order to recruit a Crew Member, you must pay the corresponding cost listed by its location in the market. To do so, you will play cards from your hand with $ symbols that equal the required cost. Once you play a card from your hand, it goes facedown onto the Rest area of your player mat. Take the Crew Member you just hired directly into your hand, and move the Market cards down to fill in the empty space, drawing a new card for the final slot. If you choose to Sail, you will play a number of cards from your hand with the Propeller icon. The number of icons dictates how many spaces you may sail. You can use all of your movement on one of your ships, or you can break movement across both ships. If you end a move on a face-up Wreck tile, you will ‘anchor’ your boat to one of the open scouting spots. These scouting spots offer special scoring benefits during the Dive on this tile. If you end movement on a face-down Wreck tile, first you will flip it face-up, and then anchor your boat. When landing on a buoy or an empty dive site, nothing happens.
On any turn, you may instead choose to Rest. To perform this action, you will shuffle all cards that reside on the Rest area of your player mat, and then draw only the 3 topmost cards into your hand. This is the action that allows you to refresh your hand, as you play more cards and your hand starts to dwindle. The final action choice is to Dive. This action is the crux of the game. When you have a boat on a Wreck tile, you may choose to start a Dive. The first step is to declare your Dive – decide which Wreck to Dive if your boats are on different Wreck tiles. Before the Dive begins, any opponents who have boats on adjacent Wreck tiles may move their boats to your Wreck in hopes of also profiting from the Dive. When all eligible boats have been moved to the Wreck, you will then officially begin the Dive. Take the Gem bag and Dive Site board. You will then draw Gems out of the bag, one-by-one, resolving them as necessary. Red, Gold, Silver, Green, and Purple gems are treasures, and can earn you VP. Blue and Black gems are Hazards that must be defended against in order to continue the Dive.
After a Gem is drawn and placed on the Dive Site board, players may choose to play a Crew Member to increase their VP earned. For example, one card allows you to earn 8 VP for a Green gem, instead of 0. To defend against hazards, players may play Crew from their hands who have the ability to negate the hazard, or may use the special ability of their scouting spot on the Wreck tile. If you are unable to defend against a hazard, you are forced to resurface and leave the Dive. The Dive continues in this fashion, until either the active player decides to end the Dive, or when they no longer have the ability to defend against hazards. Any players who still have boats at the Dive Site will collect VP from Crew cards they played, as well as a base amount of VP for the different Gems that were drawn. Once a Dive has been performed at a Wreck, that tile is removed from the game, leaving an empty dive site behind. If players have performed a Dive at one of the 4 Sunken City tiles, it is removed from the board, but placed on its corresponding space in the corner of the board. After all 4 Sunken City tiles have been moved to the corner of the board, the game immediately ends. Players will count up all the VP collected throughout the game, and the player with the highest score is declared the winner!
So how do I feel about Deep Blue overall? I would have to say that it’s fine. Just fine. There are some elements that I really enjoy, but others that kind of frustrate me. What I enjoy – the bits of strategy involved, and the awesome components. What I don’t enjoy – the pacing of the game and the imbalance of actions. To touch on the pros first, this game does require some strategy. You have to decide where to Sail, which Crew to recruit, which Crew to play and when to play them, etc. VP are earned by participating in Dives, so you want to make sure you can be at as many Dives as possible. That means keeping ships close to opponents to profit from any dives they may choose to initiate. Another interesting strategic element is the Rest action. You shuffle your discard pile, but then only draw the 3 topmost cards into your hand. You might not always draw what you were wanting, but you are always allowed to take a Rest action, regardless of how many cards are in your discard. There is no hand limit in this game, so do you rest every other turn to ensure you have almost all cards in your hand? Or do you dwindle your hand down in order to perform other actions instead? It’s all about your strategy, and you never quite know what your opponents are trying to do.
Now for the cons. The pacing of the gameplay feels really slow to me. You are only allowed to perform 1 action per turn, so it seems like the game takes a while to really get going. At first, everyone is going to be wanting to Sail, as all players start in the same starting area of the board. You want to get your ships out there ASAP. But then you run out of cards, so you have to take a turn to Rest and get those cards back. You’re taking a bunch of little turns to accomplish any one bigger thing, and that bogs down the gameplay for me. If you were able to perform 2 actions per turn, that would probably alleviate some of this frustration, as it would allow you to progress more quickly than by taking only a single action. Another aspect I mentioned is the imbalance of actions. The Recruit, Sail, and Rest actions all feel to me like they are on the same level, but the Dive action is different. Which in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But the process of the Dive action is vastly different than any of the other actions, to the point that it kind of feels like a different game to me. For half of the game, you’re playing this game of strategy, deck building, and optimizing placement across the board. But for the other half, it turns into a push-your-luck frenzy that seems disjointed from the rest of the game to me. No matter how strategic and careful you are with your actions, it ultimately comes down to the luck of the draw.
To touch on components for a minute – the production quality of this game is awesome. The board, Dive Site board, and VP tokens are nice chunky cardboard. The cards are colorful, have cool artwork, and are sturdy. And the treasure chests are awesome little plastic chests that definitely are holding up well. The Wreck tiles are big and thick, the Gems are cute, and the ships are fun to play with. So overall, this game is made very well.
You can probably tell by now that I have mixed feelings about Deep Blue. There are aspects that I like, but other aspects that negate some of those positive attributes. I was psyched for a cool nautical deck builder where I could really flex my strategy, but got more push-your-luck than I was anticipating. Deep Blue will probably stick around in my collection for the time being. But, like Josh, I will probably find something that gives me the same vibes but done better. It’s a game that I’ll pull out from time to time, but definitely not one that’s going to break into my Top 10. With that said, Purple Phoenix Games gives it a sunken 4 / 6.
Deep Blue is a nautical game for 2-5 players of deck building, hand management, and a bit of push your luck. In it, players take on the roles ship Captains who are racing to collect treasures from undersea wrecks. Players will be hiring Crew members, sailing across the sea, and sending divers down to wrecks to salvage any valuables. The race is on, though, because you are not the only Captain on this treasure hunt… Throughout the game, players will stumble across 4 Wrecks that make up a Sunken City. Once all 4 areas of the Sunken City have been discovered and searched, the game ends. The player who earns the most VP from their collected treasures by the end of the game is declared the winner!
To setup for a game, follow the instructions in the rulebook – there are simply too many to detail here. The basic gist of setup is to create a market of Crew cards, shuffle and randomly distribute Wreck tiles across the board, and create a Gem pool. Each player will receive a player mat and starting cards in their chosen color, as well as 2 ships to be placed on the starting space of the board. Players will also get a treasure chest, in which they will keep their VP throughout the game. Set the Dive Site board, Gem bag, and VP tokens off to the side. Select a starting player, deal out starting tokens accordingly, and the game is ready to begin! Pictured below is the setup for a 3-player game.
On your turn, you will take one of four possible actions: Recruit a Crew Member, Sail, Rest, or Dive. Throughout the game you will be building your personal deck by Recruiting Crew Members. These new Crew offer unique abilities and scoring powers to be used during Dives. In order to recruit a Crew Member, you must pay the corresponding cost listed by its location in the market. To do so, you will play cards from your hand with $ symbols that equal the required cost. Once you play a card from your hand, it goes facedown onto the Rest area of your player mat. Take the Crew Member you just hired directly into your hand, and move the Market cards down to fill in the empty space, drawing a new card for the final slot. If you choose to Sail, you will play a number of cards from your hand with the Propeller icon. The number of icons dictates how many spaces you may sail. You can use all of your movement on one of your ships, or you can break movement across both ships. If you end a move on a face-up Wreck tile, you will ‘anchor’ your boat to one of the open scouting spots. These scouting spots offer special scoring benefits during the Dive on this tile. If you end movement on a face-down Wreck tile, first you will flip it face-up, and then anchor your boat. When landing on a buoy or an empty dive site, nothing happens.
On any turn, you may instead choose to Rest. To perform this action, you will shuffle all cards that reside on the Rest area of your player mat, and then draw only the 3 topmost cards into your hand. This is the action that allows you to refresh your hand, as you play more cards and your hand starts to dwindle. The final action choice is to Dive. This action is the crux of the game. When you have a boat on a Wreck tile, you may choose to start a Dive. The first step is to declare your Dive – decide which Wreck to Dive if your boats are on different Wreck tiles. Before the Dive begins, any opponents who have boats on adjacent Wreck tiles may move their boats to your Wreck in hopes of also profiting from the Dive. When all eligible boats have been moved to the Wreck, you will then officially begin the Dive. Take the Gem bag and Dive Site board. You will then draw Gems out of the bag, one-by-one, resolving them as necessary. Red, Gold, Silver, Green, and Purple gems are treasures, and can earn you VP. Blue and Black gems are Hazards that must be defended against in order to continue the Dive.
After a Gem is drawn and placed on the Dive Site board, players may choose to play a Crew Member to increase their VP earned. For example, one card allows you to earn 8 VP for a Green gem, instead of 0. To defend against hazards, players may play Crew from their hands who have the ability to negate the hazard, or may use the special ability of their scouting spot on the Wreck tile. If you are unable to defend against a hazard, you are forced to resurface and leave the Dive. The Dive continues in this fashion, until either the active player decides to end the Dive, or when they no longer have the ability to defend against hazards. Any players who still have boats at the Dive Site will collect VP from Crew cards they played, as well as a base amount of VP for the different Gems that were drawn. Once a Dive has been performed at a Wreck, that tile is removed from the game, leaving an empty dive site behind. If players have performed a Dive at one of the 4 Sunken City tiles, it is removed from the board, but placed on its corresponding space in the corner of the board. After all 4 Sunken City tiles have been moved to the corner of the board, the game immediately ends. Players will count up all the VP collected throughout the game, and the player with the highest score is declared the winner!
So how do I feel about Deep Blue overall? I would have to say that it’s fine. Just fine. There are some elements that I really enjoy, but others that kind of frustrate me. What I enjoy – the bits of strategy involved, and the awesome components. What I don’t enjoy – the pacing of the game and the imbalance of actions. To touch on the pros first, this game does require some strategy. You have to decide where to Sail, which Crew to recruit, which Crew to play and when to play them, etc. VP are earned by participating in Dives, so you want to make sure you can be at as many Dives as possible. That means keeping ships close to opponents to profit from any dives they may choose to initiate. Another interesting strategic element is the Rest action. You shuffle your discard pile, but then only draw the 3 topmost cards into your hand. You might not always draw what you were wanting, but you are always allowed to take a Rest action, regardless of how many cards are in your discard. There is no hand limit in this game, so do you rest every other turn to ensure you have almost all cards in your hand? Or do you dwindle your hand down in order to perform other actions instead? It’s all about your strategy, and you never quite know what your opponents are trying to do.
Now for the cons. The pacing of the gameplay feels really slow to me. You are only allowed to perform 1 action per turn, so it seems like the game takes a while to really get going. At first, everyone is going to be wanting to Sail, as all players start in the same starting area of the board. You want to get your ships out there ASAP. But then you run out of cards, so you have to take a turn to Rest and get those cards back. You’re taking a bunch of little turns to accomplish any one bigger thing, and that bogs down the gameplay for me. If you were able to perform 2 actions per turn, that would probably alleviate some of this frustration, as it would allow you to progress more quickly than by taking only a single action. Another aspect I mentioned is the imbalance of actions. The Recruit, Sail, and Rest actions all feel to me like they are on the same level, but the Dive action is different. Which in and of itself isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But the process of the Dive action is vastly different than any of the other actions, to the point that it kind of feels like a different game to me. For half of the game, you’re playing this game of strategy, deck building, and optimizing placement across the board. But for the other half, it turns into a push-your-luck frenzy that seems disjointed from the rest of the game to me. No matter how strategic and careful you are with your actions, it ultimately comes down to the luck of the draw.
To touch on components for a minute – the production quality of this game is awesome. The board, Dive Site board, and VP tokens are nice chunky cardboard. The cards are colorful, have cool artwork, and are sturdy. And the treasure chests are awesome little plastic chests that definitely are holding up well. The Wreck tiles are big and thick, the Gems are cute, and the ships are fun to play with. So overall, this game is made very well.
You can probably tell by now that I have mixed feelings about Deep Blue. There are aspects that I like, but other aspects that negate some of those positive attributes. I was psyched for a cool nautical deck builder where I could really flex my strategy, but got more push-your-luck than I was anticipating. Deep Blue will probably stick around in my collection for the time being. But, like Josh, I will probably find something that gives me the same vibes but done better. It’s a game that I’ll pull out from time to time, but definitely not one that’s going to break into my Top 10. With that said, Purple Phoenix Games gives it a sunken 4 / 6.
Andy K (10821 KP) Oct 30, 2018
Daniel Boyd (1066 KP) Oct 31, 2018