by Krazyguy75
Section 3: The Scenarios and Puzzles:In general, these scenarios are much closer fights than the base game, and I grew to appreciate that. It's a lot of fun to win on the last few rounds. However, what I didn't appreciate it the overcomplicated nature of these scenarios. There are maps twice the size of those in the base game, and maps with 20+ special rules. There are maps which change. There are maps with puzzles and riddles and alternate win conditions. It's all cool conceptually, but it detracts from the best part of gloomhaven: Using your cards to fight monsters. I liked the combat best of anything in the base game, and when that isn't the focus, Forgotten Circles just stops being fun to me. Overall, the expansion's earlier scenarios seem to be really rough quality, though it gets better later on.
Also personally I'm even opposed to the concept of hiding rooms in the base game as it takes away from the sense of turns as a puzzle by adding unnecessary hidden information, but I understand others wishing it for immersion's sake (my group still plays with concealed rooms), but the degree to which FC hides information is literally the opposite of immersive. Instead of being surprised by what's in a new room, we have to set up a new room from scratch with things we haven't pulled out of the box, and when deciding turns we have to go "wait can I see the scenario book, what was the special rule for this pressure plate again?" It just took away a lot of the immersion rather than adding to it; we had to use an app eventually it got so bad. And sometimes rules will completely change how a scenario plays. We lost a scenario due to a last minute rule change.
One more bit of opinion: The fact that the puzzles affect a "good" or "bad" ending wouldn't be as much of a problem, if it weren't literally strictly better to get the "good" ending. I'd be down with "either get a good reward now or be forced to play an extra scenario to get it later", but "get an extra reward now or never get it" turns the puzzles from "truly optional" to "only technically optional", because to get a full completion they are literally mandatory. In the future, I think that if puzzles are going be "optional", they need to have an alternate path that is the "long way" to get to that same reward. But honestly, I'd rather just not have optional puzzles in mandatory missions, and instead just have mandatory puzzles feature in optional missions.
From now on, I'm going to address scenarios below. There will be no plot or puzzle solution spoilers, but I may discuss specific rooms, special rules, elements of puzzles, or enemies within the scenarios. I'll try to keep it as light on spoilers as possible, but if you are a diehard spoiler purist it might be better to just skip this section.
Scenario 96
This scenario was poor but not terrible. It was hard but not too hard, so that wasn't the problem. The problem is that the first mission should be the introduction to the Diviner and Forgotten Circles. The "try all your fun stuff and learn to play with your team" mission. Instead, the Diviner is given a specific task to accomplish which basically only she can do efficiently, so instead of having fun, the literal face of the expansion starts off feeling like she is unable to explore her options, while her party gets to feel like she's the DM's pet. But hey, I guess you start off as you mean to go on...
Scenario 97
The first scenario was a poor showing for the Diviner. But this... this is a nightmare of design. And that's coming from the me that is trying to be polite; I could use some much worse descriptors for it. It stripped all the joy out of the new character by forcing her to spend almost every single turn teleporting back and forth to do a task. And this time, instead of "basically" only her being able to do it... "literally" only she can do it, because it requires teleportation. I was shortresting two turns into my 4 turn life because I could only contribute by teleporting. And while this was literally the worst possible introduction to the Diviner, it came with an even worse thing...
There is a chest that only the Diviner can get to, that takes at least three turns to get to and one more to get back from, that requires a loot action, of which the Diviner has one across all levels, which she only has on the bottom, and after all that, the entire game has to stop for around 30 minutes to decode a secret message from runes and use that message to solve a riddle. But wait! It gets worse! They don't tell you how to submit your solution, which turns out to be "turn to the numerical section of the numbers you guess", and that isn't even implied anywhere. And the riddle isn't one with a particularly cut and dry solution, either; you have to guess what Marcel was thinking.
"But wait", you might ask. "Isn't the sections how they keep information hidden? Couldn't a person accidentally stumble on the conclusion of the final boss fight while looking for a chest in the second mission?" You're damn right, hypothetical person. And if you get your experience ruined by this bit of terrible design, the game then sees fit to add additional punishment on top, and you have to wait until next turn to try again. Wait a second... I recall just mentioning that the Diviner only has a single loot card! That's right! It's not just 1 turn! It's an entire deck cycle of waiting!
This was the worst puzzle in the game. I'd honestly call it the worst done element in all of Gloomhaven as a whole. This was terrible. You know it's abhorrently bad when an optional chest almost makes your group stop playing the game altogether.
Frankly, me calling this scenario a "nightmare of design" is being polite. This should never have been in the expansion, let alone the second mission. As I said, it almost drove us away completely. One of our group stormed out of the house and went home afterwards without even cleaning up the game because he was so upset with this mission as a whole, and he wasn't even playing the Diviner. This was really really bad.
Scenario 98
Well now that the world has opened up, you get options. This is the first one. It's... not the best, but not the worst. This is the one which hidden information ruined our attempt; we entered a room and suddenly a new rule popped up that lost us any chance of winning. On our second try we did a beeline for the objective, rather than dealing with earlier rooms, and that worked out alright. But... it's not fun to just skip rooms. Part of the joy of the base game was clearing rooms with clever combos. To make the objective "run to point A" makes this game just a lot less fun. But don't fret, this scenario is better than the previous two, and it will get better...
Scenario 99
...just not on this scenario. This is the hardest scenario in the game, and your win or loss is entirely dependent on RNG. We had to drop to difficulty -2 just to beat this. Only scenario we've ever dropped difficulty for ever in the entirety of both expansions. The problem occurs with a single rule: Cultists summon 2 black imps instead of one living bones. Two 0.5 point enemies instead of a 1 point one... seems fair. Until you realize that living bones are amongst the weakest of the 1 point enemies, and Black Imps are the strongest of the 0.5, and Black Imps scale insanely well with numbers due to range and poison whereas Living Bones, being melee, don't. Oh and Black Imps will heal their allies, like the Cultists who paid life to summon them. And on top of that, this is an escort mission for allies who start behind enemy lines, so you can't pull back out of their range.
And it's not like there are 1-2 points worth of cultists. Nope, there are 2 points per player! That's 2 normals and 3 elites for a 4 player game, meaning they summon the entire game's worth of black imps in a single turn. Oh, and the next room has another set of >5 cultists! This scenario is terribly balanced; the Diviner can't deal enough damage to keep up even in 4 player without some class like a level 9 Spellweaver. I can't imagine trying this in 2P. Honestly, this scenario isn't as upsetting as some of the other ones, though, because while it is terribly balanced, it still remains true to the fun elements of Gloomhaven. So it's an all but guaranteed loss, but it's fun until you lose.
Scenario 100
...oh and it's not at this scenario either that it improved either. This one is still bad. This is the first "puzzle scenario". And it's one of the worst. It relies on figuring out a riddle on your first guess, and playing the entire scenario again if you guessed wrong. And to make it worse, it gives you that message after your first attempt, meaning you have to guess whether the first step counted towards it or not. And to make it worse, even without that issue it's really hard to figure out what the solution is supposed to mean.
And the loss condition isn't stamina related or damage related, but just a strict "you lose if X happens". And that makes sense, since the actual scenario part of this scenario is sickeningly easy; no one came anywhere near exhausting. This is one of the scenarios in which Gloomhaven isn't the gameplay; it's a riddle-based puzzle with Gloomhaven awkwardly jammed into it haphazardly. And for all Marcel's claims of "only optional puzzles", in this case your only alternative is to luck into the puzzle solution by trial and error, so it's not really that optional at all. This was another bad scenario.
Honestly though, I feel like I would have enjoyed this, had it not featured the riddle, the puzzle, and the arbitrary loss, but just been a kill mission focused around the unique moving room mechanic. It would have been a novel idea. This is one of the things I think we see a lot in the expansion: A good core concept buried underneath too many other lesser mechanics to the point where the joy of discovery and innovation is lost.
Scenario 101
"Well surely they can't all be bad," you say. "You mentioned they get better earlier!" Yep; this is the turning point. This scenario is honestly not the most memorable, but it let the Diviner have fun and explore her options, wasn't brutally hard, wasn't a puzzle with the Gloomhaven branding, and didn't have any "gotcha" mechanics. It had some optional mechanics that were a bit silly, but none of them were really required reading, instead they were flavorful and unobtrusive additions to a fairly core gameplay experience. Overall, this was a fairly decent mission with some interesting new ideas, and it kept itself simple enough that it wasn't a pain to deal with. Good mission.
Scenario 102
...and now we're back to controvercial ones. I personally enjoyed this game, whatever it was. That said, it isn't really Gloomhaven. It replaces all your actions with different effects, has no enemies, and has completely new mechanics. It's also completely unrelated to the card clock normal missions work on. Honestly, it's a bit too easy, but it was a quick mission, and a break from the norm. At the very least, I wouldn't classify this as one of the worse missions. It's just one of the weirdest ones. I wouldn't mind seeing things like this on occasion, but I think 1 in 20 is the correct ratio for them.
Scenario 103
This is pretty similar to scenario 101; it's a fairly normal scenario; maybe a little harder than the base game. It comes with some new ideas, but is generally unintrusive. I'd rank this one as better than 101, which places it amongst the better scenarios of this expansion. The scenario does lend itself to randomness, but not in a particularly bad way. Overall it was a decent and fairly novel scenario. I dislike the plot though, because it's a dangerous element to add to any universe that can really ruin the stakes at hand.
Scenario 104
Double escort mission! Not really, though, that was just our joke because the Diviner, with her "cannot exhaust or the scenario is lost" clause often felt like an Escortee, so when we got another one, it was a "double escort mission". This is fairly similar to base game escort missions. I wouldn't call this the pinnacle of Gloomhaven, but it was better than the most flawed of escort missions from the base game. Overall, a fairly decent albeit forgettable mission.
Scenario 105
This was a cool mission, and one of the closest we've ever had. It has some really cool mechanics for unique enemies, and was hard without being crazy. Of all the scenarios in the expansion, this is probably my third most favorite. It was vanilla gloomhaven with a twist, but the twist kept things close to what GH does best, and made for a memorable time. This is what I wanted from the expansion.
Scenario 106
This is a puzzle scenario, but one that is well done, unlike #100. The fact the puzzle's riddle is in runes is a bit of an unnecessary dick move to do to the players, but if you can get past that, the puzzle's solution is fairly easy to understand, and while the punishments are harsh, they aren't game-endingly so. And on top of all that, you can still win the scenario without solving the puzzle. I enjoyed this puzzle; people that don't enjoy puzzles may not. Overall, this is the best of the puzzle scenarios...
Scenario 107
...and this is one of the worst. This scenario has tokens 1-11 (yeah, there aren't even that many number tokens to use, so you have to find substitutes) as well as the non-existant tokens a1-a6. It has 8 rooms, 7 of which are hidden and thus require later setup. It uses 14 different sections; each on their own different page of the rulebook. It uses special rules spread across 12 different sections (read: 12 pages), most of which are relevant to the puzzle and need to be kept track of. Those special rules each contain at least 3-4 elements to keep track of. Honestly, this scenario wasn't too hard. It was tedious and boring, with a ton of bookkeeping. That's honestly worse in my opinion. If a game is too hard, that's one thing, but for a game to be boring means it completely missed its mark altogether.
Also, this isn't an optional puzzle. Sure, solving the entire thing is optional, but the entire scenario is the puzzle, so just to win you need to solve around 75% of the puzzle and do things like take notes. This is the worst scenario in the entire game from a design standpoint, even though it is fairly balanced.
Scenario 108
I think this is probably my second favorite scenario in the expansion. That said, I don't think it is good design. It has 3 difficulty modes, but it might as well be saying "do you want a good reward or a shitty one?". I can't imagine anyone picking any difficulty other than the hardest, especially when the rewards are blatantly contingent on it. But having played on the hardest difficulty, I think it is hard but fair, and it's a lot of fun to figure out how to properly play. It's core gloomhaven but with an interesting twist. Good scenario.
Scenario 109
This is not a fun scenario. If I were to ask you what the most fun thing in Gloomhaven is, your answer would probably be "the core gameplay loop", ie killing things, looting money, and pulling off combos. But in this scenario, your goal is specifically not to kill anything or let anything kill itself, which basically means "stand and tank damage for X turns". It's tedious and boring and removes all the fun bits of the core gameplay loop. Whatever game this is, it isn't Gloomhaven, nor is it anywhere near as fun as Gloomhaven.
Scenario 110
I really enjoyed this one. I have to rate this one as my favorite scenarios from the expansion. It's a (2-4)v4 of named enemies with unique powers and abilities and some party synergy; it was a lot of fun. It kept the core dynamics of gloomhaven but with a massive twist and made for some weird gameplay unlike any we'd seen before without rendering any classes particularly underpowered. It's just really interesting and winning feels a little like winning a PvP match. This is the kinda stuff I wanted from the expansion.
Scenario 111
This was decent; I don't really want to talk about it for reasons, but I will say it is a lot better than it at first seemed.
Scenario 112
I wasn't in love with this scenario; it was a puzzle scenario. That said, it wasn't a particularly bad one; the puzzle was easy and the enemies weren't a ton of a threat. That said, there is an arbitrary time limit, and I just feel like that is kinda lame from a gameplay standpoint. I do feel like this one likely scales terribly for 2 player parties; I can't even imagine solving the puzzle there. That said, this is another "optional" (read: strictly worse reward if you don't complete) puzzle, so you can avoid it. But as far as the scenarios go, this one was in the middle.
Scenario 113
This one was also okay. The mechanic was unique and fun to figure out. That said, it's really terribly balanced; if you open one door early you pretty much guarantee losing. We lost on our first try and retried it with that knowledge and it was far easier; I think that shows a major flaw in the game balance. In fact, those kind of things are why I dislike hidden information; if a single bit of knowledge massively changes the balance of the game, then it lacks replay value. But other than that issue it was fairly cool; I do feel like one of the special rules felt really arbitrary, especially since FC loves flavor text. It has a limitation on doing more of X until you do Y, but after doing Y it doesn't give you any information on why you can do X again, which just felt arbitrary. But overall, decent scenario.
Scenario 114
This scenario is really poorly designed but in a fairly amusing waw. There is a significant chance that you'll lose the scenario within initiative 11 or lower in the first round, and an extremely high chance of losing if you don't act by init 30. We lost our first three tries due to bad luck at initiatives faster than anything I brought, losing us about 10 minutes of time total. After we finished the first round, the rest of the scenario is easy. I honestly don't know how this made it through testing. This mission didn't upset or challenge us. It was just so laughably ridiculous we couldn't take it seriously. This was just... really really poorly designed and balanced altogether. This scenario is probably the most flawed in the expansion, but honestly it isn't that upsetting. It feels like encountering a gamebreaking bug that occurs from a totally normal but entirely optional thing. Sure, we could have bought items or faster cards on our second try, but why bother? At worst it just costs us a little time to reset the turn. It was just silly in ways you'd rarely see in official released content.
Scenario 115
I think this scenario deserved its role as a final boss fight. The boss mechanic was spectacular, unlike every other boss in GH; I wish all of them used this mechanic. The layout was fairly boring, but not a problem; boss arenas usually are. Only complaint... why do you have to make the Diviner's last scenario in this expansion so unpleasant for her? It's basically 7 rounds in which the Diviner gets to watch other people having actual fun while she does setup, before a few rounds of watching other people do DPS to something that is immune to almost everything she does. The immunities that bosses have to statuses still goes down as one of my biggest problems with GH, and it really rears its ugly head for the Diviner here.
Challenge Scenario:
I don't know if we played it wrong or something, but this scenario was incredibly easy. It was so easy the name almost feels ironic. When we basically finished the scenario (1 enemy left at next to no health), none of us had lost more than 2 cards, both from resting, and not a single one of us lost a card to prevent damage. It was one of the only times in the expansion where we spent like 3 rounds keeping the last enemy alive to grind XP by playing loss cards. I suppose it's not terrible to make a scenario you can only attempt once easy, but this felt overly easy.
Diviner Solo:
This was decent and fairly well balanced, with an interesting idea. I kinda broke it with my level 7 card and stamina potion abuse though, so my judgment may be a bit off. Better than many solos from the base game.