Bardsung Board Game Review

 I invested in Bardsung at the Legend level (all gameplay content, but no perks like furniture or a neoprene mat), despite the fact that the Dark Souls tabletop left me with... less than rosy impressions. And I'm happy to note that Bardsung turned out to be much friendlier and more interesting than Dark Souls.

 The box is quite large; the Descent-sized base alone. The kit comes with a bunch of trays of varying degrees of usefulness. Token holders are great, but most other trays are just slots for coins. And the card holder cannot even be pulled out of the box separately from the other trays.

 They look great, but you have to pay for beauty with convenience. The same applies to the tiles: they are bright and colorful, but it is quite difficult to consider the tiles demarcating the line zones. Because of this, a whole sheet is added to the game, which explains exactly how each tile is delimited.

 The same applies to the rule book. The rules explain quite well the process of battle (with a visual example), expeditions and campaigns. However, due to this, the rules are scattered in different sections, and it is very difficult to find the right moments. And even after rereading, it is difficult to find them the second time.

 FFG usually avoids this problem by having two rulebooks: a tutorial and a reference. In Bardsung, however, the guide is far from complete, and it was of little use even after I played a few solo games for practice.

 You might think that I didn't like the game as a whole, but I didn't. Apart from the rule book, I really liked Bardsung. In my opinion, this is one of the best dungeon crawlers I've played, and definitely the best among the Descent-like ones (I personally don't care about Grim Harbor, but this game is a completely different game).

 What did I really like? I can highlight the following:

BATTLE

 It's nice that you finally have just cubes with numbers and a minimum of modifiers. Most checks require you to roll a D20, add a skill parameter, and compare to the required number. That's all. It's probably the closest analogue to D&D, if you don't take into account the official line of D&D tabletops. Bardsung has the same 6 parameters and the same advantages and obstacles mechanics as in fifth edition. The main thing is that it works and that everything is solved quickly.

PERFECTION

 Once you get the hang of the rules, the moves flow very quickly. Shuffle cards to determine initiative, take 2 actions. Attack is simply a skill check followed by a damage roll to determine whether or not you hit a critical hit. All possibilities are indicated on the cards, it is easy to track them. The monsters' AI is simple, but quite effective.

MONSTER HEALTH MONITORING

 Monsters are either healthy, injured, or dead. Living monsters simply flip over after receiving a wound. Bosses can have several cards, each of which must be "killed" separately. Compared to games where you can have dozens of damage tokens lying next to a monster, this is just a breath of fresh air.

RANDOM DUNGEON

 Dungeons are generated in the style of Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower - a deck of cards. There are also decks of cards that modify the monsters and obstacles you encounter; as a rule, by increasing their parameters or making skill checks more difficult. This makes every encounter a little different from the last, and you never know exactly what is waiting for you around the corner.

 There is also a great analog timer here in the form of echo tokens. If you stay in one place for too long, traps or traveling monsters will appear. It also makes sense to close the door behind you, as this will reduce the frequency of the aforementioned.

CHARACTER SKILLS AND PROGRESS

 Bardsung has a very flexible pumping system; you can build up options, gain new skills, and flip existing ones to make them stronger. You can also take skills from other classes at a slightly higher cost. But even within one class there are several development options. For example, Nightfeather (rogue birdperson) under my leadership buffed skills that make it easier to isolate monsters and give bonuses in 1v1 combat. But I could also buff poison or focus on finishing wounded enemies with free actions.

TACTICS

 In my opinion, there are interesting tactical decisions in the game. I especially liked the twist of the following combination: damage the monster with the first attack and then move it or yourself into a suitable position for the task of the second, more powerful attack. Or, in the process of research, use a special ability to break into a room, take out a monster, and then destroy a flag that would give my enemies a big bonus.

DURATION OF THE PARTY

 Each chapter is divided into "chapters" and each chapter plays fairly quickly (or will when I finally get the hang of the rules) so it's easy to play through the current chapter and then collect the game, unlike other dungeon crawlers where each a batch takes at least 1-2 hours.

 Something I didn't like:

BOOK OF RULES

 As mentioned above.

RANDOMLY

 Sometimes you just get unlucky and your shots are terrible. Not that it's a critical flaw, since randomness is an integral part of dungeon crawlers, but in Bardsung it's exacerbated by the fact that your items don't recharge without spending gold, which can snowball. With good rolls, you have nothing to recharge items, so you spend gold to buy more treasures and become stronger. With bad rolls, you not only lose access to items, but also gold, so it becomes difficult to recover from a series of failures. Personally, I'm ready to put up with it, writing it off as an integral part of the game, which also helps generate a variety of stories.

 Small flaws aside, Bardsung is a great game that reminded me of when I first opened the red box of D&D as a ten-year-old and wandered through dungeons with a level 1 warrior, rolling dice and hoping that this time I would finally get my hands on a +2 sword . In my opinion, Bardsung perfectly conveys the same experience of a dungeon adventure, and I'm willing to close my eyes to its shortcomings. The game will definitely remain in my collection and I recommend it to all dungeon crawlers.