Darkness Absorbs the Moon! S.H.E.O.L. Game Review

ABOUT THE GAME

 In the not-so-distant future, something is found on the dark side of the Moon that provokes the awakening of Sheol, which envelops the Moon in impenetrable darkness. This darkness eventually reaches the Earth and gradually covers it. A new ice age begins, and creepy shadow monsters appear in the dark.

 Humanity's last frontier is the Citadel: a gigantic tower that houses not only the survivors, but also the remnants of lost technology from the time before the catastrophe. Here, people create the Shining: the only thing that can resist the shadows. You are a scout, one of the few who are ready to go into the darkness and defeat the monsters that live there before they reach the Citadel and destroy it.

 Each game you choose a mission that you will go through. Each mission has a set of mission cards. On them are indicated various tasks that you must complete. In addition, you will often encounter optional side tasks - also branched. Sometimes it is enough to get to a certain square on the field for execution, sometimes you need to pass a test (trying to roll a certain combination on the dice).

 The plot is revealed as through mission cards; each of the areas you reach has its own story, as well as often a personal set of events and a choice of several options, which helps to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the setting.

 Basically, the gameplay consists of a journey from the Citadel to the shadow lands and battles with the monsters you encounter. However, for this it is necessary to create a light source with Radiance; without it, it is impossible to travel in the dark. But the reserves of Radiance that you spend to create light are not infinite, and they are also your HP - so you will have to spend them carefully.

 Each character has their own unique set of cards that give different abilities or discounts on other actions. After all, Radiance is spent not only on creating light, but also on battles. And to highlight the shadow enemies waiting for you in the dark.

 As mentioned, the shadows seek the Citadel to destroy it. Each turn, new shadows will fill the field and start walking towards the Citadel. But you don't know exactly who is approaching you until you shine a light on them. Without light, they just look like signals. Signals that can kill you and destroy the tower. They are not invulnerable, but hitting an enemy hiding in the dark is much more difficult. But if you highlight him, you will not only understand who is in front of you and what his abilities are, but you will also get to him with a 100 percent probability. So you will have to make a difficult choice.

 Between missions, you manage the Citadel tablet. Due to the trophies brought from the mission, you can pump various areas of the city, which gives bonuses for future scenarios or new abilities. But that's not all; you don't just manage the city as a whole, but also the three city factions. The more you are respected by one of the factions, the more upgrades you have to choose from and items in the store.

IMPRESSION

 I invested in the kickstarter All-In: the complete set except for the mat and music tracks.

 In our opinion, SHEOL in general does not justify the time spent on it. Let's start with the fact that during the game you will have to deal with a lot of all kinds of components and tokens. In total, it took me about 10 hours to unpack the game, organize the storage of all tokens and cards, familiarize myself with the rules (I read the rule book cover to cover, watched 3-4 hours of videos with an overview of the rules and gameplay) and laying out the game on the table. The latter is a very slow process. The Kickstarter page claims that the layout takes 5 minutes, but this is an outright lie. It took me 20 minutes to lay out the first mission. It also takes 20 minutes to assemble. There are no bags in the set, and the built-in organizer does not allow you to sort the cards by character, which lengthens the layout of the next mission: you have to refer to the photo of the final state of the previous scenario, taken from the phone, to remember which cards you bought, and collect the character deck again. Because of all this, the first batch did not leave a very positive impression on my wife and son.

 I swear we love Amerithrash. SHEOL has enough thematics; it is felt in the gameplay, in the illustrations, etc. We also love rolling the dice, but I do not like how many different types of dice there are in SHEOL for each sneeze. They all have very different symbols and you have to remember them all. There is a die for enemy attacks, there is a die for moving enemies, there are two dice for breaking and repairing your weapon (but you usually only need one of them), there are two different dice for spawning enemies (an alarm die and a threat die).

 After I learned the rules, it took about an hour to explain to the company how to play (as well as read the introduction). The rules have a lot of all kinds of nuances and "if ... then" situations (for example, there are tokens for barriers, there are tokens for a light source, there are rules for the movement of players in the dark with and without a light source, there are rules for the movement of monsters in source area) of light, etc.).

 Movement is a key element of gameplay. Moreover, it is very difficult to move wherever you want. First, you need light source tokens to move. To get these tokens (if you don't have any left over from your previous turn), you need to perform a "planning" action by spending an action and a Glow. Then you need to perform the "illuminate" action, which also requires spending an action and Radiance. And then actually move, spending movement points. If you want to move a greater distance, you will have to spend more radiance (which is also your HP). As a result, it takes forever to move to the desired point. Moreover, there is no sequence of moves here, so all this commotion happens in the general move of the players, who have to decide who should move next.

 When you finally finish moving, you may encounter an enemy or new areas where you can perform a certain action. As for the events, they feel sewn to the game with white threads. When your character miniature lands on event tokens, you draw one of 12 cards from the deck and receive a faction reputation token, a small bonus, or a penalty. Not impressive.

 Enemies are basically divided into three tiers: three types of shadows, heralds, and outer lords. For defeating shadows and heralds you get a reward (umbra - the in-game currency), but for outer lords you don't, even though they are the most difficult opponents in the game. I don't see the logic here, especially considering the rules instruct you to avoid fighting shadows and focus on completing mission tasks, as the shadows are there to distract you and overwhelm you with numbers if you focus too much on fighting them.

 The illustrations and design of the field and components are very cool, but do not make up for the feeling at the end of the mission that the game was not worth the trouble. You don't feel the satisfaction of victory.

 As for the miniatures, these are some of the best I've seen in cascades: very detailed and high quality. Only the key component of the playing field - the Citadel - is difficult to assemble: it is divided into several parts, which you will have to gradually collect. Unlike the two-dimensional version, which simply consists of two pieces of cardboard. Given how leisurely SHEOL's gameplay is, by the time you lay out the basic components on the table, the desire to pull tons of miniatures out of the box disappears.

 Yes, regarding the rule book: it suffers from errors, references to other rules without indicating the right page, and simply not very clearly described points. Not the worst rulebook in the world, but along with SHEOL's other issues, it discourages me from continuing to play.

 I recently got Oathsworn, so I'll likely switch to her and give SHEOL another shot at a later date. But it is unlikely that anything will come of it, unless the plot of the next missions suddenly becomes very exciting.