After playing the original 7th Continent, I felt that it was basically “curiosity killed the cat” in game form. The trouble is that “curiosity” was my primary motivation for playing the game, but it felt like it was usually punished. The perma-death mechanic made it so that by the time I had invested 15 hours into the game, I was basically unwilling to curiously explore anymore!

I am actually looking forward to playing it but really appreciated your take and enjoyed your video. You have a new subscriber

Nice take. I am trough the introduction scenario and am loving it. Playing on easy mode though (3 cards per life-point). I am also the explorer type and will continue to do what you warned against - explore everything. If I die too much, I will copy the "get me back to live"-rule from 7th Continent -- and just keep on going.

7th continent was one of the first modern board games i learned about. It sounded so alluring and i think at some point i will get that or 7th citadel and play them on easy mode as a gentle narrative experience. Great vid!

excellent explination! you seemed to put into words what i was *thinking* about this game. of course, i've not played it yet, but your points were ABSOLUTLY what i was feeling while watching play throughs of the 7th citadel. imma pass on this one. thanks!

hey man! my group is also on the drums of desolation threat. We're 4 and i got to say, I think regarding the checks it's got to be a lot easier with more players (bc every one of you is more specialized in specific skills through items and hand cards (which are in sum a lot more, than you could carry in single mode)), so we actually rarely fail a check. Although On a general basis, i think that should be a priority.. It's sensibel to read what the outcome would be to fail and decide to go for the minimum, if its not that bad and vice versa. If the outcome really does a number on you make sure you'll pass it! in the long run, you'll be far better off! We also had quite the learning curve in the beginning,using every "hope reborn" card to check smt of the progress tree, instead of using them along the way to regain health, which we actually liked. It was kind of a true learning expercience inside the game and it's rules. It's clear how they work, but not what the best way is to use them in a specific point in the scenario. I think it's quite a good decision from the developers to have these cards give you life points (so more cards to play) OR progress (buildings, world map, (reflex) skill cars, mystery numbers), because you want to all use them for progress, but u will have to use a few for life points! We also had that duell and met a "link of the chain" the previous session that casually mantioned this "honor rule" to kick the loser of a duell, so it felt so good, and rewarding having remembered that fact! On our first session we weren't able to obtain the goal and felt kind of bad for it, but we learned so much about the world and seemed to understand the world so much better then, that it didn't feel like a fail and that i found amazing! I'm looking forward to the rest of the story. Up to this point at every session we're all amazed and baffled about the new world content and mechanics we encounter. If you love the world, just play the explorer mode and house rule some things. I played 7th continent that way, because I loved the exploring but also found some parts of it to repetitive, but the actual exploring is worth it in my eyes

I really appreciate this take. I haven't played Citadel, but I had massive frustration with Continent for different reasons. Everything in that game causes you to reset the map and explore the same spots over and over and over, to the point that at some point I felt like I wasn't playing a game, but instead was just taking out and putting away cards. Even now I sarcastically refer to it as "Card Sorting The Game"

Great video and review, sorry to hear it didn't land for you but I totally get it. Every point was really well put. What are the games you really enjoy?

Nice video. The one comment I would make is that as a masochist 😈, the tutorial early chapters gated you (which you didn't like because you wanted to roam free) and then the shackles were taken off just a little and you got lost (and didn't like that). 😝 But yeah different games for different people. So your conclusion is totally valid that if people don't like any of the points you made, then they will probably bounce of the game themselves. But yeah the main emphasis that the game expects from the player is to pay attention to detail and clues.

I could feel your raw emotion as you vaguely described the scenarios. I am a fan of choose your own adventure style games as well, so I’m curious how my own experience will compare.

Well articulated video by the way. When I was about 3/4 the way through watching I honestly just thought here’s a guy who just wants everything handed to him and basically get an easy ride. Then you got to the scenario that broke you, if I am right does it involve a “a very tall building 😉”? I’ll be honest I house ruled (cheated, it’s my game I do what I want 😁)that one after a few attempts. That scenario is damn near impossible to pass logically and I did get some of the dialogue help legitimately. I have to say whilst that last element did/can leave a sour taste, I’d skip past and give it another shot. I’m a couple of scenarios past that now and still enjoying it much more than 7th continent.

One thing about that event card you're talking about, I experienced that event as well but it's kind of alluded to that part of the dueling tradition being expected. I also went to a tavern much later that had gossip around the topic and it informs you of the tradition. 7th Continent was extremely unfair. You could draw a card and have a 50% chance of getting a bad result and that's it. 7th Citadel seems much more layered and nuanced than that. All the information is there, you just have to come across it or dig deep enough. It also often uses what effects you have on you (focused, confused, etc) to determine outcomes along with Luck cards that seemed to skew towards the positive. Great video and I do hope you dive back into 7th Citadel! I find the game overall very fair and it deeply rewards knowledge.

This is the type of review I love! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I am looking forward to getting my copy and we’ll see how it goes. If you have played them, how do you feel about Dawn of the Zeds or Robinson Crusoe? I love them but understand why people bounce off of these games too.

So I don't know why you were dying so easily (were you taking a card back after each move?)... but if you are, I'd suggest playing on story mode. It may have been a lot easier for us because we had two people. We normally finished a scenario's objectives and then just had fun wandering and working on side quests. One thing that people don't seem to realize is just how carefully you have to read. We'd write down the number of key passages in the book and refer back to them for clues. And there were often a TON of clues. Many things that seem random are things you get clues about if you talk to the right people. And often there will be something that says 'so-and-so may know something about this' maybe from a map exploration or from an intro or something.. and if you go, then you know how to solve something, and if you don't, you don't know. Sometimes there's things that are tests that are really hard unless you have special knowledge - for example, you may discover information about a plant and it turns out the plant helps greatly with that test. Likewise, sometimes there's knowledge that can help you avoid the status effects of more dangerous areas or encounters.

good video, yeah I think you got the tone down! 7th continent did the same thing, exploring too much will kill you. its a big reason why many people bounced off of it. I havent got to this yet, but I have played the 7th citadel and loved it. not sure exactly how this will go, but in the 7th citadel, lots of time opened up once you got a good hunting loop, but even so you never had unlimited time. as for that last scenario, I cant be sure, but having played the 7th continent, there was probably a clue somewhere telling you what success number you actually needed.

So… did you find Ambrozus? Did you find anything in the 1st scenario of drums that even explained or gave you an option to build a building? Did you find anything referencing the 5 generic “objective” cards that you get at the start of the scenario? We didn’t find him, couldn’t find anything referencing how to build a building, and nothing referenced the objective cards. We were SO frustrated with this, that even after playing all of Continent, it left a bad taste in our mouth to never play this again. We triple checked that we were looking for the foot symbol on cards to be sure we were using the right cards, but nothing helped and we couldn’t find anything of value. Any suggestions of what we did wrong? I saw your “goal” images you used here and went back to that card. Nothing there helped us find him, or explained building or anything. I feel we made some massive mistake but we can’t figure it out. :(

the game gets much easier with mutiple charaters, each can have a specialty symbol and as you know they will specailize in certain actions that can afect the cards you keep in hand as across them all to help you prep for those individual chalanges you said you strugel with. you need to do some exploring in fact the first mission for the drums threat requires you to go into areas beyond your ground shiver to sucseed. i think the rails story was added to combat just how lost people got in 7th continent.

I started watching your video as I continued to debate 7th Citadel, and then a limited stock went on sale ahead of the June 2024 Kickstarter and I've ordered it.... I have no restraint. My question is if there is an internal logic to the morality of the world that can be discovered or if the game mechanics (goal of what the game is trying to do to you) are inconsistent and there is no hope of tuning into the morality - and so the choices are arbitrary rather than adhering to an internal logic. Something for me to discover.

I received this one and Primal within a week of each other. Both were over 3 years since their KS campaigns ended. They are completely different games. For my tastes (which, I think, are similar to yours), Primal is by far superior. Strategic card play, very crunchy decisions, huge boss battler, no dice/luck involved, and very thematic. 7th Citadel is starting to feel repetitive by exploring the same tiles time and time again. We are on scenario 9 of 10 of one threat and will put it away for a while after we finish. Check out Primal if you can. ;)

22:00 what you're describing sound actually very stressful. You don't know in advance what weird combination of boosts you'll need so either you must turn back losing time, or you push on and fail. You're not "excitedly barely making it", you're blindly stumbling in a dark cellar kicking things until you find the door. That's not what I'm looking for in a game. It reminds me of isofarian guard, where you got to chapter 2 then suddenly everyone wanted metal fragments but they were out of stock. You actually had to gather a bunch from chapter 1. Tough luck. Or bad design.

I know when I went through the game i was playing battles wrong with that chain icon, because i was never reducing the die, which should have happened each time i got a success. It didn't spell that out in the book but i saw someone else's gameplay and was like oh if i knew i could do that maybe i wouldn't have died trying to escape the intro scenario, lol. Even if that's not the right way i think its how i will try it next time, beause I can't imagine playing it again without some sort of slight fail forward aspect as blowing through the remaining 75% of my life points on one monster battle wasn't fun and just felt frustrating because my solo build wasn't made for fighting.

This sounds very much like 7th Continent in the push and pull of exploration vs survival. It took me a few games of 7th Continent to get good at not dying. I think one big thing about the 7th C series is that you are NOT a murder hobo like in so many other games (Middara, Gloomhaven, etc) and that can be tough for some gamers who expect that one every turn they’re going to annihilate the challenge set before them.

Understandable it wasn't really for you! My experience was oddly almost diametrically opposite. We've finished the Dadachaem threat, and... I can't recall any of the coinflips you mention and felt there were always plenty of hints for choices (though some hints, like one of the boxes you are told to deliver, are found in unexpected places!). Rarely via hidden numbers though, those are much more rare than in 7th Continent.

This is more similar to 7th continent than I thought. The first one was really similar to the T.I.M.E. Stories series- where permadeath was a feature and you were supposed to explore. The one that did this mechanic the best, IMO, was Sleeping Gods. At least that one had a definitive ending.

Interesting to hear you mention Elden Ring, a game which, for me, felt punishing and unfun. It sounds like the game isn't for you, yet the things you say sound like the exact game experience that many people would want. A story based game that isn't guaranteed that you're going to "win" every time. A world where you can learn the landscape and generally what to expect, yet you won't just be seeing the exact same thing every time. A set of mechanics where, as a beginner, you are still able to succeed, even if you're scraping by at the end. My guess is, if you played the exact same scenario from the start again, now knowing what you know, you'd make some different choices, be more prepared for what's coming at the end, and experience different story beats, which is the kind of "replayability" many story games don't have.

For pure exploration, I feel like Sleeping Gods has yet to be beaten. I've been enjoying ISS Vanguard so far, but it's not nearly as freeform.

I really tried to love 7th Continent, and couldn't, and sounds like what I disliked about it have carried over into 7th Citadel. It feels like "guess what the designer was thinking" and getting punished for just *playing* the game and exploring. I backed the game while I was still learning what sort of games I enjoy (or not), but it is a shame to have waited 3 years for it to deliver, only to now decide to sell it, still in shrink.

I have a number of comments; if you were finding it too hard from life points/ you wanted more freedom to just explore you could have lowered the difficulty so that you get more cards per life point. I played the other threat first because that is what they recommend and if anything have found it a little too easy. The ambiguity of solutions is often give to you in the text either on the card or in the story book. I think you potentially missed the rule of compound actions? A lot of the actions that have 2 cards and 6 successes or similar can be done over multiple turns. There is still luck for sure but I’ve found combos of cards that feel a bit busted and always end up finishing way more than the game intends.

Sounds a lot like it´s just not designed for "True Solo" - you can´t be good at everything - but you kind of need to be. My comparison would be "Arkham Horror LCG" - you can play it true Solo - but then you are basically playing in Expert-mode and might still get trashed by bad luck. I backed 7th citadel and have not played it yet - but i´m for sure only playing it with 2 Characters.

It's funny you mentioned Elden Ring, because the game basically conveys the same thing(exploration and finding the way through in an unforgiving and punishing world) as it, but while you like one of them for what they are, you dislike the other for the same thing. And it really sounds like you played the whole game wrong somehow. Feels like how you messed up your "scenario flag" rule, you did something else wrong, or didn't go into the game with the right mindset. Something feels fishy. Not because you didn't like the game, that's fair, it happens. Your reasons feel weird somehow. I never felt the grind, always had fun in exploration and making choices, every scenario had something new and cool mechanics kept me going. Never felt punished, unless i did something that i was not supposed to(like go off exploring the wrong way while it clearly stated where i should be looking). It always felt like my decisions, and mistakes, not the game punishing me for no reason. After a few scenarios i learned that if i read everything, thought about what i needed to do, and commited to doing it, i had a lot of spare time to explore. If i didn't prioritise, i had a harder time completing my objectives. Yes the game is somewhat linear in what you need to do, but you do have options most of the time on how you do it. If you brute force something, it's gonna punish you. If you see a hard task ahead, and prepare with the right equipment, and action cards, your will feel smart for doing so and it will make your life a lot easier. Yeah it's a difficult game. Some of the puzzles are really hard to do, sometimes you waste your time trying something irrelevant, thinking there's something there. But there's always plenty of hints and clues around. And when you "get it" it feels so damn rewarding. And when you fail, know, it's always your damn fault. You should have been faster. You should have prepared the right cards in your hand. You shouldn't have gone into groundshiver 9 territory, with a level 5. You shouldn't have been so curious trying to everything all at once. You are trying to survive out there and help your settlement, not losing 15 life for a magic dragon sword, because it looks cool.

Pretty much my thoughts after I played the first one, which is why I wasnt interested in this one - just seems like a heavy punishment for not playing great, which isnt very discouraging for a new player 'you failed, go back to the start and play this multi hour session again' and yet you have no idea if the few changes you make wont just end up causing you to fail again, just with a new problem to solve. I like solving problems, I dont like being punished with a time sink if I make a mistake - sure I could just go back X steps and repeat, but this is A: not always possible to go back that far, and B: cheating as its not an option in the game, I dont feel successful if I overcome a challenge by cheating.

Did you try the other threat (Dadachaem)? I am on that one and not getting frustrated like you are. I read somewhere (but don’t recall where) that the designers recommend playing Dadachaem first, then Drums second.

There was no way, after the 7th Continent, that I was going to fall for this one again. I am sure that there is an audience for those who like a survival game with exploration elements, that sort of punishes you from playing the game like you assume you will. Its fine. I am sure this is for someone out there, but it just was not for me.

Good take. I myself love the game and disagree with roughly 95% of the reasoning, but I appreciate the constructive critisicm - people who aren't the target audience will probably recognize themselves in the argument and not pay premium prices for something they will end up disliking.

Great so basically, as much as they say it's no more die and retry like 7th Continent, it's essentially exactly the same, and exactly the same reasons I HATED 7th Continent. As much as they sold it like it's a "fail forward" type system it's still just as frustrating to actually engage in.

Git gud bruh