Before diving deep into my first experience with my recently acquired Dark Souls Board Game, I feel it may be important to talk about my own experience with table top games. I have next to none. The most complicated board game I have played prior to DSBG would probably be Monopoly or Life. I used to play Magic The Gathering and I feel like that certainly helped a bit, but beyond that I consider myself a complete novice. Now that we've established my complete lack of experience we can begin our journey through what was a 7 hour affair that ultimately ended with the death of Ornstein and Smough!
The first thing you see when you open the box is "You Died"
When I backed the Kickstarter for the DSBG last year it was mostly done out of love for a video game franchise, not for the love of table top games. When the package showed up a couple of weeks back I was fairly ecstatic. My semester just ended on Monday and with my pathetically short break between Spring and Summer classes I knew I had to get in a session with my new table top game. Me and a few friends went up to my local comic shop around 2 p.m. on Wednesday. I got there a bit before so I could get the unboxing/setup accomplished ahead of time. The process was a bit more grueling than anticipated as it took me 45 minutes just to punch all of the pieces out of their cardboard cutouts. Eventually everything was ready for setup and by that time my buddies had showed up.
I attempted to read through the instruction manual to figure out how exactly to begin, but this process proved to be less useful than I thought. My friends had viewed a "how to" video online and they basically took all the guess work out of the setup so things moved faster than I think they would have normally, but even so it took us probably 30 minutes to get things started. Much like playing the Dark Souls video game, the board game becomes much easier when you have more people. Dividing up the enemies and playing to each characters strengths is as important as you would imagine. The only real difference is if just one person is killed the entire party is sent back to the bonfire and all enemies reset. So I guess you can think of it like each person is considered a Host of Embers.
Look at all the amazing pieces! Absolutely perfect. I hope I can get them painted for a reasonable price.
Combat is really fun. Things can get pretty complicated depending on how many enemies appear on the encounter card, but the setup is simple enough. Basically each encounter takes place on one tile. That tile is set up with numerous "nodes" each of which is color coded so you know what to put where. There are two enemy spawn nodes, two environment nodes, and the rest are just regular nodes. The regular nodes do serve two possible purposes depending on the encounter card. If the encounter card says to set traps, then you place trap tokens face down on each regular node and when you move onto them you reveal if there is a trap that deals damage or if you are safe. If the encounter card does not say to place trap tokens then the nodes just serve as a normal place to move to. Turns are set up simply enough. Enemies go first, then a player, then the enemies, then the next player moving clockwise, and so on.
Attacking depends greatly on your loadout. Many weapons have 0 range, meaning you can only attack enemies if you both stand on the same node. Spears, bows, and magic have greater range and are able to attack anywhere from one to infinite nodes away. Once you clear a tile of all enemies you earn souls which can then be spent at the bonfire tile to level up, buy new items, and swap things with your inventory. You are able to spend one soul to purchase a new item. It may not seem like a steep price, but you only get to pull one item at random from a deck of 60 cards so you have a low chance of getting something useful for your specific character. That's why the game is better with multiple people because someone is bound to be able to use whatever you pull.
Four characters in the core set to choose from.
Once you clear all tiles of basic enemies you find yourself at a fog door leading to your first mini boss. Mini bosses and regular bosses are really cool. Each one has their own special encounter cards and you must learn their patterns just like in the video game. Once you have their patterns down you can make strategic attacks based on what you learn and you should be able to defeat them if you are patient enough. Should you defeat a mini boss or boss they also drop their own loot which is usually pretty good stuff. Once the mini boss is defeated you basically reset the game by choosing a new main boss and new, more difficult, encounters for each tile. You keep all your gear and inventory but the new encounters are much more challenging so you will make good use of your upgrades.
After a long, LONG, journey me and my two comrades finally made it to Ornstein and Smough. We had devised a great strategy leading up to the fight so we thought we were well prepared. We took on phase one of the fight relatively easily, but unfortunately for me by the end of phase one my character was nearly dead and I had already used my flask. My defense just wasn't quite high enough so I took too much damage far too quickly. Luckily my friends were able to pick up my slack without much difficulty and eventually the infamous duo was put down.
As I stated from the beginning, this game took 7 hours. Now the next time I believe we could cut this time in half, but it was a far more complicated process than I could have imagined. Luckily the fun GREATLY outweighed the grind. One of the coolest factors with games that have this kind of depth is the freedom it gives you with how you play. We may not have followed things to the letter, but we certainly had our fair share of struggles and considering it was our first go at it I can only see the game becoming more entertaining the more we play.
I hope you enjoyed this recap. I would certainly recommend this game whether you're a fan of the source material or just table top games in general. Thanks for reading.