Akkela

I have never played a tabletop RPG before. It has interested me, but the time commitment and being able to meet with a group of friends would be difficult (plus my friends would be harder to convince to play a tabletop RPG). So when I saw this game, I thought it would be a great RPG-like experience to play with my wife.

That being said, my wife and I have enjoyed the Pathfinder ACG a lot. The aspects that we like are the:

~ Persistent characters and being able to ‘level’ them up

~ My wife loves being able to roll dice:
(that was her first comment after we played our first scenario).

~ The world and story:
(while it is limited, it still engrossing for me. You also can create a memorable story from filling in the blanks as you play the game – the villain kept escaping or finding the much needed holy candle from a treasure chest)

~ The randomness:
(location decks will always be somewhat random – you know one location will have 4 monsters, but not what kind-of monsters. The number of characters will change the number of locations but not the time limit, so that adds a different experience. Finally, the characters are very different as well. Your play style will change depending on the character…or else you will make the same mistake as I did and Kill Lem to Blackfang because you decided to leave him at a location alone, thinking it would be safe)

~ Difficulty is at a good spot:
(take this with a grain of salt: I have played solo with 1 character, 2-player with my wife, and solo with 3 characters. Thus far in my limited experience, I have failed or died a few times but beat the scenario a majority of the times. Yet most of the time, it has been really close games. In my opinion, those close games are more memorable. I have also not played Adventure 2 yet, which I hear is the easiest)

~ With exception of the inaccuracies on the cards, it is fairly easy to learn:
(This will make it easier to introduce to our friends. If you follow what the card says, you should be good to go. In terms of the inaccuracies on the cards; I have not come across anything detrimental towards my enjoyment of the game)

~ Cooperative enjoyment:
(It feels like all players can take part in the game, even when it is not their turn. A player faces a monster can be helped by other players. What another player does, will directly affect you. They can obtain a boon for you, help close down locations, defeat monsters, and even heal you. For me it feels like you are actually working together, instead of working separately towards the same goal. In terms of me and my wife, we talk about our options for what we should do next. For instance, taking a risk to use a blessing to explore again or saving the blessing for later)

There are some faults with this game, most are very minor:

~ Long prep time:
(building or rebuilding your character deck, building the location decks, setting up the blessings deck does take a long time. I also find it hard to shuffle these small decks so they are even mixed. In other words, I feel that shuffling so few cards does not even out the different boons and banes that make up the deck)

~ Inaccuracies on the cards:
(Some cards maybe missing a trait or the directions are a bit confusing, there is definite problems that can be found. This depends on how serious you play. I am more laid-back, so this does not cause me as much grief as it would others. The developers have also included a faq sheet of fixed rules and cards that you can download or printed)

~ Card art:
(overall the art on the cards are good, especially the scenario/adventure/adventure path cards and the location cards. However, there is a lot of dead space in the background of the rest of the cards. This is a minor complaint, but I think having a background to the subject of the card would make them more appealing. In addition, the border colors of the card types are a little bland for the boon cards. Banes have a very different border colors depending on the card type: Villians are a dark red, henchmen are red, monsters are orange, and barriers are yellow. On the boon side, the colors are a lot more similar, ranging from light blue, light purple, and different hues of grey. It makes it a little difficult to quickly know what type of card it is (for instance, between an item and a blessing))

~ Limited back story:
(While I liked the story and setting, I feel it would have been nice to include more back story to some of the cards. The adventure card and the scenario cards give a short synopsis of what is going on, which helps you understand what is going on. I would have liked to see more flavor text on the different cards (like the villain cards). For instance, a short description or quote for the named allies and henchmen. Also maybe having some unique cards for a scenario that are not monsters or henchmen, like a unique ally that is included into the scenario in a similar fashion as you include the villain. Again, this is a very minor gripe I have…which is oddly turning into a suggestion)

These are just my opinion, and it may change. But at this point, my wife and I are enjoying this game a lot. I can guarantee that we plan on getting the next adventure path (Skull and Shackles) once it comes out late summer.