I’ve seen Isofarian Guard come up a few times on the facebook page when talking about other games, so I thought it might be interesting to have a proper discussion about it over here.
In particular I thought having a discussion here might be useful because most of what I’ve read about it is either from people who are only in Campaign 1, or on the developers forums so are going to trend to be quite positive.
Having reached the mid-point of Campaign 4, here are my musings on the game. Obviously I like it enough to get through a significant chunk of the content, but I have to admit there are some significant flaws that don’t seem to get much consideration.
The Story
Overall I’d say the story is above average. They manage to get enough differentiation into the character’s stories, and the relationship between each duo to make it interesting.
However, it’s a bit simplistic, in that the good people are very good, and the bad people very bad. There’s very little grey.
Also, there’s a lot of text / listening. I don’t mind it, but I’m sure some would.
The Gameplay
The core gameplay loop is pretty fun. Pulling the chips, managing your activations in the face of enemy abilities etc. is a decent mental challenge and the chip bag is a fun mechanism.
The grind is real, but it didn’t really bother me. It gives you interesting things to do apart from the main quest, and having frequent, short battles works well for me. Also, this is “helped” by some of my points below.
The different mechanisms for the guards is cute, and brings enough surface level differentiation to keep me going. There’s a lot of different abilities, and trying to figure out how to make them work is fun.
HOWEVER, having seen 4 sets of guards now, I’m starting to realise…
My Main Gripes
There’s a dominant strategy in this game (it’s not just in this game either, I’ve seen it in others too). And that dominant strategy is just all out attack, with a heavy dose of whatever armour reduction abilities you have. So while there are a ton of abilities, and levelling up should be fun, too often there’s no real choice. In every chapter, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m destroying the end of chapter bosses without them even getting to activate. This problem is exacerbated by…
The defensive or control type abilities that could be fun to play with are just slow and unreliable. Why bother setting up a shield ability that could stop me getting negative chips when the enemy is going to attack? Why bother getting more block when the enemy might do a special ability that doesn’t attack you? With only 6 slots for abilities, you may as well just put in things that can do damage and kill them before they kill you
The difficulty ramp is weird, and again, lends itself to a particular type of play. Basically, you don’t want to wait until the next chapter to get the gear that’s appropriate for that chapter, because the grind is too hard if you don’t already have the better equipment. But that also means that you are rewarded for “skipping” levels of equipment, and finding ways of getting the good equipment early (e.g. in Ch2 of campaign 4, there’s a way of getting a particular crafting material quite a bit ahead of when it would organically be available, which means you can go straight from your level 1 weapon to your level 4 weapon). So your choice is either to submit to the grind and experience the “normal” progression, or run around trying to “break” the game, to avoid the grind, which ends up making some stuff way too easy.
Anyway, despite those criticisms, I’m going to keep going until I finish, but it’s a definite one to sell when I’m done.
Thanks for your thoughts. I backed the game during the original campaign, played a bit and enjoyed it but stopped when they announced a reprint and upgrade pack. Waited a year or so for that to arrive and now it’s up next after I finish Oathsworn.
Are you playing solo or with someone else? It’s impossible for me to get any of my friends to commit to a campaign game so I’ll most likely be playing myself. It took my group about a year to get to chapter 5 of Oathsworn until I just pulled the plug and am finishing it by myself.
I am in the same boat, impossible to get anyone to commit to campaign games. Mostly moving away from them as I play mostly solo anyways these days. I prefer the quick dungeon romps now like Massive Darkness 2 or HeroQuest with AxianQuest decks. Excited for the Dungeons of Doria reprint as well.
Yep, I’ve been passing on all the campaign games. Arydia is the last game I have coming that I backed a while ago.
Oathsworn works very well solo. I like how the hero’s don’t really take turns. You can move one guy a couple spaces, move another person in for an attack, then attack with the first guy and move back. It’s a fun little puzzle to figure out and it really makes the fight more dynamic and alive. They’re all moving and dancing around at once.
Guess I’m getting a bit off-topic here but I’m just having fun with Oathsworn right now…haha.
I play most things solo as I don’t have a gaming group and even if I did, it’s hard to get a group together consistently.
I do tend to get all the big campaign games. I like a story and sense of progression. Playing 1-off games solo doesn’t satisfy that desire to have moved forward or accomplished something, which I need in solo endeavors. For group games, it’s a different dynamic and I don’t need campaign games.
I’m super interested in Isofarian Guard, it’s on my list to buy, especially since they addressed the grind to some extent in the updated reprint.
I think the game looks really interesting, but for me it was a pass just because of the long campaign, and it’s almost “too much” game for one game, if you know what I mean? I think maybe 10 years ago I would have been all over this thing. But now, I prefer to have more smaller bite sized experiences.
I paused mid Campaign 3 as well, waiting for the upgrade pack. I think it’s definitely an improvement. (Also been mid-Oathsworn for quite some time while I wait for my main playing partners to return from baby rearing and overseas postings…)
I’ve been playing solo, and to be honest I’m not sure there would be enough game in it for 2 people (for me anyway). Most of the choices on what to do next would be annoying to make with a partner, and the combat isn’t so in depth that I can’t keep track.
Sorry, replying on my phone so it’s hard to do a big post replying to everyone…
Daniel, I think you would actively dislike this game, based on your stated preferences. It’s a table hog, the non combat encounters are probably a bit too simple, and there’s very little emergent narrative.
I’m playing it right now with my wife. It’s got a fun system to it, but it relies on a lot of repetition even with the update pack. It heavily leans on the framework of their “open world” more than crafting unique fights and situations for you. Which could’ve been alright, but the open world is just a series of nodes with 3 potential fights attached to them, and very little sense of exploration. And the fights at each node stay the same for every campaign. You’ll end up fighting a single Brigand Marauder or Plains Strider enemy so many times that you may know all potential outcomes of that fight and just start skipping it and resolving the average outcome.
I think the game could’ve been elevated by some mechanical changes between campaigns and alternate enemy charts, or even new enemies for each campaign. Or just more of the scripted stuff. The story isn’t anything amazing, and it’s often hokey, but the high points of the game are when it’s driving you to a story goal and giving you unique fight setups while you’re multiple nodes away from anywhere to rest.
And if the difficulty curve is the same between all campaigns then it leans heavily towards a power fantasy by the end. The early parts are hard, but by chapter 4 of campaign 1 we were adding in extra enemies to fights and giving them extra health and combat stats. And we were still destroying everything. But we started doing this when we got what looked like a potentially interesting boss fight and then crushed it so fast that we never got a chance to experience its unique mechanics.
There’s a lot of praise for the game, but I don’t think many people moved past Campaign 1 because they were waiting on the update pack. I think that praise is going to come down some when people realize that campaigns 2-4 are repeating the exact same gear-up grind as campaign 1. But I’ve heard campaign 5 finally mixes things up. All-in-all, we were a bit deflated when we got it to the table and realized it was all a bit more shallow than we had expected.
Sounds like you are having the same experience I’m having really. One difference seems to be on playstyle… once I realised that the start of the campaign was too annoying with being underpowered, I found ways to bring the gear forward. Unfortunately that makes a trade off between frustration vs being too easy
Most of the praise of the game seems to come from people who have played just the first campaign. Shame they weren’t able to introduce more variety into the campaigns somehow.
My feeling is the designers createsd Baldur’s Gate II in board game form. But there are too many combats with too few enemies, not enough chances to draw an event card and no emergent story which is a problem because the story is not strong.
Resource gathering and crafting are better off handled by a computer if they are not streamlined to work in a board game. Here they occur in boring, real time.
I don’t see that at ALL! but after dumping $400+ into the KS I did not decide to spend another $80 plus $37 shipping to get the “fixed” box and rulebook.
I am finishing up on the first campaign at the moment. I find the game’s balance off. In the beginning fights are extremely hard so you spend time grinding to upgrade. Then the fighting starts to loose it’s challenge. Traversing the land becomes an annoyance, and you just want to get to the next story point. I think if I play any of the other campaigns I will house rule to skip a lot of the traveling and scale it better. I’d just want to get through the story because I have already had enough travel and random fights to last me.
