I know this is a result of the whole Kickstarter bloat thing, but its crazy to me that the big boss of this game isn't a Thunderjaw. It's like playing a Jurassic Park game where the final boss is a velociraptor instead of a T-rex.

Wait, there's a Horizon Zero Dawn board game? ...Oh.

Dramatic Chipmunk will FOREVER be fresh.

I think you guys have missed a couple core rules. When you're attacked you have to dodge roll away. So even though the machines will attack you, you do have the ability to dodge roll towards another hunter and leave them the machines target. Also, in all the games I've played I've never had a player throw away all of their cards in an attack unless they do it was going to get them glory and they would be able to continue on. Like you said with fine print, when you faint you lose all your glory. And glory is kind of the point. A player who is the only one to faint is almost certainly going to lose the round. Also you can't do actions twice. So you're incorrect when you said your character could melee twice. Also you can't trigger more than one ability card on a move. So you can't dump continual moves into an action. Also, I don't know why you guys think a video game board game requires ease of access. People who play video games are capable of critical thinking and understanding complicated rule books. there's a giant overlap between board gamers and video gamers. With the Oseram you also don't get glory for setting each thing on fire. You get glory if you set something on fire on your turn. So an AOE fire attack will not get you nine glory. It will get you one. The cards that make machines non-alert that people are talking about are in the expansions. They were future-proofing the game. with some of the rules. Which I realized means very little right now. It is confusing. Ultimately, I don't think the game is nearly as bad as you make it out to be, And that's probably because the rules you got wrong you really got wrong. But I do agree with a lot of your criticisms and find the game underwhelming. From scenario one to scenario five the feel is very similar. There's no real sense that your hunter is improving in a meaningful way. Or that the machines are getting stronger/smarter.

Having played Dark Souls the board game, I did not expect good things from this review. Hearing the words semi-cooperative added to the feeling that the game won't be good. Yea...

At this point, every time I see a kickstarter project full of miniatures, I immediately expect that it's going to be an underdeveloped mess. On top of that, these games end up flooding the market at the expense of the entire industry.

When you hear Elaine say “you know what’s even more fun?!” If NPI says a game is bad, I don’t touch it with a 6 foot pole

I laughed way way too hard at the wooden spoon at the end.... will say no more for fear of spoilers but that was a great touch...

Loving these videos at 50 fps! As always, great production on your reviews

This was so entertaining! Well done. I wanted to go all in on this game because the game is one of my favorites and the minis were so awesome looking. But the gameplay just felt lackluster and this just proves it. Thanks for helping me know I was right not to back it. And I so feel the ending! LOL Dice Tower spent most of their review of my game Fossilis talking about it's shortcomings only to score it 7 and 8's. Which was great, but it would have been nice for them to talk more about the positives as well if they ultimately enjoyed it.

Here's the thing, the appeal (at least to me, YMMV) of HZD is the story and Aloy's journey of discovery of her origin and the absolutely superbly done slow reveal of the history of the world. Killing machines is just one of the means to those ends so you have enough resources and XP to make it to the end. This board game reduces the gameplay to one, relatively insignificant aspect of the video game,

Thanks for the honest reviews. I went a bit crazy a few years ago and started backing a lot of board games on kickstarter. Lots of minis and a great IP's, how could they fail... this was yet another one I went fully in on. Ouch. I guess I'm gonna be making a lot of my own house rules to enjoy this one!

I'm really happy to see ye doing board game reviews again ye went off the deep end there for a while.

I know you're just joking but "the lower arts" kinda hurt a little

This review has saved me a lot of money. Thank you

I mainly got it for the minatures. Hopefully the community will come up house rules to make it better. Also, the expansions might give us some interesting battles. Good review! Great job with the spoon!

Random, unbalanced card draw, dice chucking, and poorly conceived semi-coop play - lazy design at its finest. I say lazy, but the sad part is that it looks like a ton of work went into making this game.

Thanks for your really enjoyable reviews as always 😊

omg that was so funny! TY guys, amazing review!

I feel like the main box's easy enemies are due to Steamforged wanting to charge £40 for each monster expansion.

I just love the look of this game, and I wanted the game badly! But I reminded myself that it could be that the box is nice with no other redeeming features... Your review helped me to feel that I did the right choice.

Thanks for the insightful review. Great as always and glad now that I didn't back it. Also makes it easier to not back Bardsung because I still haven't seen a great boardgame from SFG. I also think you forgot to link your patreon page in the Description (really glad to see you guys have already a great number of patreons! You deserve it).

I enjoyed painting the minis for Dark Souls greatly. I’m a huge fan of the IP so getting to see actual representations of things I like was cool. The game itself sucks balls though. I’ve played it once and probably will never play it again. I’m keeping it for the miniatures though. Could be used for a rpg campaign or something

Loved the review!

Finally, an actual review!

Guys, I just love your videos. This one is smart and honest. Thanks

What a wonderful way to close the review! I laughed so hard. This review is: excellent!!

"Sword & Sorcery" is absolutely great if you can live with the playtime and some GUI fiddliness. Although I must mention that I find "Rising Sun" to be really interesting.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="109">1:49</a> - Ahhh... SPIRE: The City Must Fall!!! Awesome RPG one of my favs! It needs more love and buzz, althou I gather it's not for everyone, but the world is amazing and the mechanics are just genius.

Thanks for the review. This is easily a game I could have been completely sold on reading rules and checking out. I just hate when I go in to that mode and get that hype game and it falls flat. Thumbs up.

Brutal honesty. love it!

Thank you for this review. The vidoe game was one of the greatest games I've ever played. I so wanted to walk out of the game store when I saw this massive box. Not that I have a ton of cash on hand but so wouldn't have cared about dropping 100 at that moment. Later yes but the want of good game from something I loved was strong. After watching this so glad I didn't waste all that cash.

The ending was the most devastating burn I've seen in the history of board game reviewer youtube crossover jokes.

After seeing more of these kickstarter games riddled with miniatures I see how lucky I am, as I bought a couple of these style of games on a whim because "minis good, dice good' and those were Death May Die and LOTR JiME, which are both fucking awesome

That mid-review smirk by Elaine during the setup was pure gold. Thanks, you two, for taking the time to film a negative review. I still find them useful and entertaining.

What a shocking twist at the end! Here I was, thinking that you didn’t like the game at all!

I've never felt unwelcome to a video, but I love it

I was sceptical about backing this when it was live in Kickstarter and thought it would be better to have more reviews when it would hit retail. I was not convinced from the gameplay they presented and I am now glad I didn’t. Pity as HZD is my favourite game of all times. Other than that, Awesome review! Really funny. Had a blast watching it.

Backed HZD and added on a couple of the expansions. I agree the core game really does feel like it's missing a big boss ending. You play these very short encounters to get you levelled up and ready, but as they say in the review the last encounter isn't really much different. I'm hoping with the Thunderjaw expansion it'll be a much better experience. Only played it solo so far, which I thought worked well enough. Was probably too easy but I enjoyed it at least....

best random video I've seen in a while. sounds like this game could really use some community rules and mods

Ok the doggy needs to be added in all reviews now cause it is addorable.

Great video!

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="482">8:02</a> the chipmunk meme was worth the price of admission by itself. The great game review was just a bonus. ; )

Thank you for the review! I backed the Kickstarter for minis to paint, with the idea that even if the game is bad I could use them for my own HZD homebrew. I've loved working with the minis so far. I'm sad to see the game didn't deliver what the designers intended. Hopefully the cooperative campaign they're delivering later will be better.

Great review. Very enjoyable to watch. I don’t agree with your final assessment. But totally respect your opinions and see where you are coming from. I just personally felt the excitement I felt from the rule book like you translated directly to the game as you do exactly what it says? Although I 100% agree on the issues around semi coop.

HZD was a favorite of mine. I waited a long time to play it because open world isn't normally my jam but this looked fun and friends told me it was well worth the play. Fun world, interesting characters, and a generally fun gameplay loop (I hated item management, especially in the beginning when I started tossing stuff I'd need later to make ammo lol). I really wanted to back this one, but held off when people mentioned SteamForged games weren't the hottest and it sounds like I made the right choice. I'll just look forward to Horizon Forbidden West

Absolutely terrible game, you only need to look at the SFG's track record to know it's going to be bad. They cannot make games and try to jump on the miniature train and hype of the IP to gain sales. They start numerous other Kickstarter campaigns to pay for the promises made on the ones before. Unfortunately I learnt my lesson with Dark Souls, a game that needs so many house rules to make it bearable, thankfully the amazing community on BGG have put together their own rule set, just need to some time and take a deep breath before trying again. Thank you for the entertaining review as always and keep up the great work.

That fire dude reminds me of the one tribe in Teotihuacan which gets an extra point every time they score one or more points. I won the game handily even when grouping points together whenever it made sense, then checked the FAQ after and it specifically shows not to do that and to get +1 every time. Love the other modules from the teo expansion but not the tribes.

Finally 4k quality, Elaine's colorful sweater makes better use of my TV than 90% of all TV shows 👍👍 great video as always, game looks cool (not as cool as the video game though)

I loved the Dice Tower reference. It made me laugh a lot. Thank you for that.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1065">17:45</a> ye. I had the same problem with waste land delivery express. In more than one situations, i spend a lot of turn to gain nothing just for bad luck, wile you see your opponents going closer to his/her objectives, reaching the end of the game... Yeah, Pretty fun

Man this is so sad. The publisher is also going to bring Monster Hunter boardgame to kickstarter in the first half of 2021, and because I love those games I am (was) quite hyped. I hope they take in all the feedback & reviews and learn from it. In any case this video was a lot of fun to watch! Thank you guys :D

It's really great to know that I'm not the only person out there that sees all the flaws in this game! Great review, thank you.

It just sounds like it needed more time to be developed? I was hoping for some forgiving kind of Kingdom Death multi monster gameplay but with a simple set up and play process maybe. I don't understand how they didn't play it themselves and fix the floors?

I knew this game would suck going into the review and I’m glad you confirmed my thoughts

You saved me $100 at my local game store tonight. This made me laugh super hard to boot. Thanks!

Very upsetting that SFG is making a Monster Hunter board game, with how everything went for HZD and Dark Souls.... :(

Did you two work in a track and trace analogy AND a basenji? Aw. I love you guys.

What is this amazing chipmunk meme? I must spread it around the internet!

I really might buy this just for the miniatures

Got it of KS and I must agree. So far I played it solo and the challenge dropped really fast even with one player. The tiger radar also confused me and the minis,... we complained about them already during the campaign.

I gave them the minimum to open the PM To me but never pledged due to a lack of information about the game in time for me to decide to go all-in. Instead I didn't go in at all. Thank you for going over this in detail.

It is absolutely legal to for more than one enemy to be in the same space at the same time. it's only the "huge machines" (Sawtooth and Shellwalker in base game) that can't share a space with another huge machine. The issue with being attacked four times in a row shouldn't be a fatal one. Remember you must "dodge" (move one space) after every enemy attack. This combined with the fact that machines target the most recently activated hunter makes it very easy move to a position where you won't be attacked. You are right that, it needs to make up its mind if it's co-op or competitive. There are a lot of mechanics that would work well for co-op, but co-op mode is trash. The rule book is also trash. I have no idea what you were talking about with this one. Slogging through it, I found myself having to flip back an forth referencing aspects of the same mechanic in totally different parts of the manual, or getting in depth descriptions of cards that I don't know how to play yet. (I don't blame you for missing a couple rules. I'd have missed much more if it weren't for the many BGG threads on the subject.) It may be the HZD fan-boy in me, but overall I enjoy the board game. Leveling up your gear, building a deck, and racing your opponent to kill the most machines I think is fun. The board game is nowhere near the caliber of the video game, and far from the best board game I've played, but far from the worst as well.

Sigh I hoped SFG might break their streak but sadly sounds like that's not the case. Shame because Horizon Zero Dawn deserves much better.

Hmm how about, if you just throw in more monsters? Ive played it solo, and found it way to easy (just one hero) Next time, im gonna play it with the 3-4 player settings (*2 monsters) Any1 tried to just double up the Machines (and jeg play it as a coop game)?

love the heroes of land air and sea burn.

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1080">18:00</a> It seems like it's 1 glory point per fire-generating event, not per enemy burned. So in the example of jumping in at 3 dinos and burning them twice, he'd get 2 glory. Still quite a lot but not as insane.

Hey Elaine, I don’t think the Oseram guy works that way. The card says “when an attack... applies 🔥 to one or more enemies...” It doesn’t give you 3 glory for one attack dealing fire to 3 people, just 1.

Are you going to review Etherfields? I really liked it and hoped you would compare it to Tainted grail which I have not played

My wife went all in on this game because she loves the video game. I haven't played the co-op variant yet. But just like I warned my wife, and the developers. It turns out semi-coop is still a blatant lie. I had a moment in a game where my wife was winning, and the smart thing would have been to let a machine kill her (therefore losing all glory points). In what world is that fun? Its for sure not in the spirit of the game. Even the missions you play as Aloy for the hunters lodge. The people you team up with WORK TOGETHER for glory over the other hunters. If you don't want a hunter to have glory, don't go fighting with them. Also the base box is just way too little content. After 4 scenarios, the boss does just feel kinda meh. Especially since one of the previous hard scenarios we played was more challenging. There are abilities that don't make sense, and the event deck sucks. That being said. We enjoyed the gameplay, and she is very excited to get all the expansions next year. But I'm really worried that the hundreds of dollars we spent are going to end up only giving us some cool minis. (Which were surprisingly small) Also the end bit/joke at Dice Tower is hilarious! But unfortunately I still enjoyed the game enough that I rated it a 7/10 on BGG and I have all these issues with it. So yeah.... You got me too.

One of my coworkers(who loves to pledge KS games only to sell them after he's disappointed) mentioned this game a few months back with such hype, hoping that I'll reinforce his enthusiasm, since I am a huge huge fan of the PS4 game. I had the feeling that this is going to be another miniature cashgrab, just because how difficult it is to translate an excellent game mechanic(stalking and hunting the machines in-game with traps and arrows) to a tabletop environment, where you lose all dynamic aspects of that combat. In order for this to be successful, they would have needed to recreate the same tension with dice and card interactions, which very difficult to do in a boardgame setting. Shame to see the IP squandered like this, but hey, Forbidden West is out June 2021.

I very nearly just bought this as it is cheep on Amazon, just over £60. So thank you for an excellent review and for saving me £60. I have seen your stuff before and enjoyed but for some reason never subscribed. I am now a subscriber and looking forward to going through your back catalogue. Great work guys, keep it up. 🤔 Now do I have a spare £60 to spend that you just saved me🤔

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1245">20:45</a> I was watching this thinking... 'Hey this seems to have some of the same problems as Dark Souls' and then... oh.

Loved it. Please do a review of Bardsung :-) It really looks like a very bland game, but everyone's been so kind to it in their "Kickstarter previews".

SOoooooo glad, I cancelled on last day, was all in, but after getting a question about gameplay answered in a shrug type of reply, my confidance dropped, and I was lucky to cancel the KS in time. Plus side, You can eat HZ and at least you get some value from it.

Super excited I did not back this game. I felt iffy about its game to board game translation. I'm glad to know I wasn't wrong.

I actually genuinely like this game quite a bit. It has issues, but it's still really fun. That said, the "semi-coop" really isn't a thing. It is competitive. Saying otherwise ignores the mechanisms and goal of the game. Playing full co-op is alright, but it requires some home-brew to make it even a bit challenging. The developer has said that the expansions coming next year will provide much higher difficulty, but it should have been an option in the base game.

Damn, I'm a board gamer and loved Horizon the video game so backed this. Being positive, I really hope the expansions balance this out to the point coop is exciting.

I would say that Horizons, the video game, strongest feature is its storyline. It’s a fascinating, and ultimately, deeply dramatic one. Not sure how much I would care about the universe without that story.

Whew. Thank goodness I watched this. My daughter loves Horizon, my daughter loves board games. I was thinking this would win me parent of the century, but there's no way she'd have the patience for this. For the price I might have cried lol

I didn’t realize this was a Steam Forged Games game, but upon hearing that it is, it all makes sense. I haven’t been too impressed with SFG's ability to balance game mechanics and produce compelling gameplay. Sure, I did buy into the Dark Souls board game, and I do enjoy the game, for the most part. However, that has been only after a significant effort to rewrite rules and some basic mechanisms in the game to reduce a lot of the tedium and rebalance some of the more nefarious aspect of the game; admittedly this effort was comprised of me going through the BGG forums and compiling together various variants of rules posed by the community, and I eventually landed upon the grindless-variant thread by DSSirus, for which I posted a PDF compilation of those rules with some minor alterations and additions of my own based on other discussion threads. But, the fundamental problem is that the game has required a massive community effort to FIX the game and actually make it fun and enjoyable, because the original rules just did not do it. I think one of the things SFG doesn’t seem to realize is that you shouldn’t be trying to replicate, exactly, the flow and mechanics of a video game into a board game. The things that work in a video game work well in that medium because of the inherent nature of the medium, the ability to save state, the ability of the world and setting to operate independent of the player (as opposed to players having to manipulate every part and piece), and the ability to have unambiguous enforcement of *every* rule even though the player's may not be familiar with or knowing of all the rules (whereas, in a board game, players must not only know and understand all the rules, but they must also correctly interpret the consequences of those rules else the game could become unbalanced or unfair). Instead of trying to make a literal translation of a video game into a board game, more what you want to do is only capture the spirit, essence, or flavoring of the video game while still conforming to the constraints imposed by the board game medium. While I love the HZD video game, myself, it sounds like the board game version is another game that will require some effort from the community to fix its broken parts, particularly the character balance issues and creating compelling, balanced interactions for competitive and cooperate gameplay that don’t devolve to trivial strategies.

Steamforged Games: "I DECLARE (this game) SEMI-COOPERATIVE"

Ha, I was thinking right up until the mid-review turnaround(TM) that you seemed to be rather enthusiastic about this game but nothing you'd said up to that point made the game look particularly compelling. I'm really not sure why you're hopes were particularly high going into it to begin with, especially given your reaction to other minis games.

High rating on your hard honest review.

I like that your component trays match Elaine's sweater.

OMG your broke the wall!! The fourth wall that is ;) Love you guys!!

We really enjoyed it, but... we played it on full co op mode as we could see just from reading the rules that semi co op wouldnt work.

Ah well, at least I got some interesting Starfinder minis out of it

Is this printing you have from the Kickstarter? The "first printing", if you will? I've heard mixed things about the company's miniature quality, but here they seem pretty good. Knowing if they got it right straight away or if they had to do a reprint first would be very helpful to me in evaluating their future work (quality wise). Thanks!

You should give Rising Sun another play. My group loves that game. It's actually quite easy to learn and play, but hard to master. My favorite part about the game is how many avenues there are for winning. It's not just all combat all the time. Anyway, good review, although a little on the long side for me.

Thanks for confirming this is another Steamforged turd based on a promising IP. Same cash grab as Dark Souls. The dark side of Kickstarter.

Very much in favour of the children's TV presenter aesthetic you've both got here.

We have just gotten confirmation that Tom has watched this review...

Crabs be dancing to a rave party

Oh the classic mid-review turnaround, it never gets old

My eldest and I LOVE HZD - thank you for saving us from wasting money

I would really love you guys to use patreon money and buy Kingdom death monster core box during black Friday. It sounds like every thing promising here would feel like success playing KDM

After playing HZD the video game, and loving it, I have little interest in a board game version of it. The video game set the bar incredibly high and I just didn't see a board game living up to that level.

Hello, I am looking for a new game - thank you for this review. Without it I would maybe buy this game :D But still I have an idea - when it is semi-cooperative game, is it possible to play on teams? 2vs2? In that case 2 players could cooperate and attack together. Since the game support competing between each other, we can still compete in teams. Of course we would have to set the higher stats of enemies. Would the game work more in this settup? Is there anything from expansions, which would help this game? Thank you for sharing ideas :)

Only one boss and its a big kitty? Oof. Hope someone didnt expect Thunderjaws without paying extra. Hah.