Review Trudvang Legends

Trudvang Legends has become one of my most anticipated games of 2022, as well as one of the longest kickstarter projects. CMON even offered everyone a free two-wave split to deliver the base box to contributors while the rest of the content is still being finalized. As I've written before, the game was changed so significantly after the campaign that many contributors, myself included, doubted whether they would get what they expected.

So, was the wait that long? Now let's find out...

GAME PROCESS

You lay out the game according to the instructions in the saga book, then travel around the map. The game proceeds in phases. You start with phase 2, but I believe that will change at some point in the campaign. Even at the start, you fill your character's rune bag with runes corresponding to his cards. If there is an add. cards, you will receive an add. runes As a general rule, runes earned during a scenario do not carry over to the next scenario.

In the game, you mainly have to pass checks and fight. When passing a check, you are shown one of the runes and a number - the number of successes required. After that, you draw 7 runes and see if you managed to pass it.

Battles are a bit more difficult. You first draw 4 of your 8 (typically) feat cards, then draw runes - 3 at a time - and place them on those cards. Runes that do not correspond to the symbols on the cards, as well as dark runes, are laid out on the failure track. Keep pulling until 5 dips accumulate or until you decide enough is enough. If you stop drawing runes before you draw 4 failures, you get all the blue tokens from the failure track. The fifth rune means failure: in this case, all red tokens from the track of failure are activated. In addition, additional battle runes push old runes off the cards, which increases the chances of victory and reduces the negative consequences of defeats.

 After you stop drawing runes, you activate each ability. Skills and quick attacks are activated first. Then the enemies are activated; they draw a card and accordingly increase or decrease the attack parameter by the specified number. Also, sometimes an additional ability is activated if a card with a certain symbol is drawn. Some more feat cards give you Chronicle Points, which can be used to activate additional ones. abilities from other cards or spend them in locations for additional bonuses.

 After attacking the enemies, the heroes attack. If after that both of them are still on their feet, you move on to the next phase of the game. It will be possible to fight a new battle on the next turn, or leave the battle (and take a little damage while running away).

 When you win, you get an experience point. After gaining 3 experience points, you can draw 3 cards from the advanced feat deck and choose one of them; it will replace a similar, weaker card in your deck.

 You will run around the field, passing checks and fighting enemies until you complete the scenario. The story will progress by reading new chapters of the saga book, placing story cards on the field, as well as title cards that you receive based on your actions. There are still many locations on the field where you can spend actions and get bonuses.

IMPRESSION

 One of the most innovative ideas of Trudvang Legends is the field with card pockets, thanks to which the surrounding world is constantly changing throughout the campaign. The mechanics of extracting runes are at first glance a simple and fan system, which is quite suitable for a game that does not focus on battles, like Roll Player Adventures or Solomon Kane.

 The plot and setting are interesting. The plot is well developed, each piece you read consists of several short paragraphs, which is quite enough for an atmospheric description without scrolling through excesses like 8-page sheets of text. In the first part of the campaign that I played, there are many branching storylines - depending on the decisions you make, different quests and enemies/allies become available, which is a big plus. I have no doubt that some of these lines lead to the same denouement, just in a different way, but at least Trudvang Legends isn't as railed as many other adventure games. I also liked that if you have certain classes in your company, you automatically pass some checks or open new pieces of the plot, which increases replayability.

 The rune extraction mechanics are good, the hit/miss track works well too, but after a few scenarios it all feels a little too monotonous. Levelups are cool, but you swing at a snail's pace, and advanced skills are just slightly improved versions of your basic skills. The runes purchased during the scenario are usually returned to the box at the end of the scenario, so the bag building mechanic almost does not work and in addition adds fuss with the components: after each scenario, shake the bag again, throwing away extra tokens.

 I didn't like having to spend entire turns in combat with zero progress because I didn't draw an attack card. But although this is annoying and slows down the game, there is a more serious claim to combat: the almost complete absence of penalty for death. You revive with 6 health and gain a negative Wyrd card. If in your combat round you drew this card instead of one of the four feats, you can try to "finish" it, thereby removing it from play. If you fail to do this by the end of the scenario, you receive a minor penalty (though I haven't gone through the entire campaign yet; perhaps later the penalties will accumulate and become more severe). Of course, it is good that the game does not severely punish defeat, especially since the main thing here is the plot, but the almost complete lack of consequences of death together with mediocre combat mechanics kill the whole fan. And it is unlikely that deaths will be avoided given the fact that there is not much treatment here.

 However, the unfinished battle turned out to be more popular than passing the tests, surprisingly. I think the problem is the number of necessary successes. Claiming 4 water runes when the character most likely has 4 in a bag of 15 runes... Chances of success are extremely low (0.2 to 0.7% if I'm not mistaken) . Therefore, often, when I came across a skill check and looked at my character's letter, I immediately went to the "fail" section, so as not to waste time drawing runes in a hopeless situation. I don't seem to have passed a check requiring 4 runes once in 5 scenarios, and only passed a check requiring 3 runes twice in 20+ attempts.

CONCLUSIONS

 I was fascinated by the art and setting of the game, but after a few games I realized that I could read the book-game with the same success if I threw out all the non-fan mechanics from Trudvang Legends. I hate to write this - after all, a whole team of developers put a lot of time and effort into this project - but the game just doesn't work. I would have expected CMON to focus more on Trudvang Legends considering they bought the Trudvang license from Riotminds. It's better than NFT, but the bar is very low.

 Overall rating: 2 out of 5 - bland underdeveloped mechanics spoil interesting ideas and an exciting plot.