Arcadia Quest
In Arcadia Quest, players lead guilds of intrepid heroes on an epic campaign to dethrone the vampire lord and reclaim the mighty Arcadia for their own. But only one guild may lead in the end, so players must battle against each other as well as against the monstrous occupying forces. Through the branching scenarios of the campaign, the heroes gain awesome new weapons and abilities, and the game remembers the heroic deeds of players from one session to the next, unlocking exciting new possibilities in future scenarios!
Arcadia Quest is a miniatures boardgame for 2-4 players. Each player controls a Guild of 3 Heroes, competing to be the liberators of the city of Arcadia and, more importantly, becoming the richest Guild in the land!
Arcadia Quest is a lot like a World of Warcraft raid on a hapless NPC city, with Heroes working as a team, except that you're not the only Guild after the loot!
User Reviews (5)
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My wife and I finished our campaign 2 player playthrough not too terribly long ago.
Let me tell you about how it worked for us playing the two player version, and how I think it’ll differ with more players.
First, it has a fair amount of replay-ability, insofar as much as you’re only going to play half the total missions in any go. And there’s no assurance beyond consensus as to what you’ll end up playing any time that you do.
Even then, playing the same scenarios several times might not be terrible. The individual levels are well designed to be symmetrical and balanced with the placement and routes that are available to any player. Playing with more players, or the same number, you’re likely to get a slightly different experience in playing.
Part of that, comes in the way that the objectives are set. You’re going to not just need to complete environmental goals of killing monsters, or rescuing nobles, but there’s the ever present option to fight the other players for victory. It engenders a great amount of kill stealing and pressing people when they’re weak.
Then again, that depends greatly on how your table is going to be playing it. Maybe you’re not all bloodthirsty monsters that pounce on any moment of weakness. 🙂
Either way, we had a bit of a run away victory, so that there was no real good way to pull out a win at the end of the game for one side. Things weren’t that close. That’s probably my only real qualm with things.
Beyond that, it’s fun to buy new abilities and equipment at the end of things. It can turn some of the heroes into truly monstrous tanks, or incredible glass cannons, or for that matter open up entirely new strategies and options with certain spells. Some of them are simply upgraded versions of things that you’ve started with. Others present entirely new avenues of attack.
Of course, the action ramps up as you move on. Certain victories in previous levels unlock other options and reward possibilities. The monsters get tougher across the board, so even though you’ve gotten more powerful, the level of difficulty remains the same.
There’s also enough variance in team dynamics to make how you’re going to approach everything a little bit different every time that you’re going to play the game through.
You also don’t have to play it as a campaign every time either. You can play skirmishes on any of the maps, and can vary the difficulty as much as you’d like to.
The minis are also well sculpted as long as you don’t mind chibi minis. They look great painted, and there’s not too many of them to make it an unapproachable idea.
A swift opinion:
*Glorious miniatures!
*Simplified RPG mechanics may not impress veterans, but nevertheless makes for a very fun game.
*Multiple scenarios, various upgrades and a big bunch of quests ensure a hefty amount of replayability.
A wordy opinion: Arcadia Quest has you and up to three others head up a guild to storm into Arcadia and clear it of the rather unsavoury bunch of villains that have set up shop. Each game takes place in one of 11 scenarios, a segment of a 6 part campaign. At the beginning of a campaign, you pick 3 heroes with various traits and abilities and set them off in a bid to rid Arcadia of the vicious Lord Fang, who seems to think there’s nothing wrong in enveloping a city in darkness and fear.
Within a scenario, guilds are given a variety of quests to complete, from slaying beasts to gathering items. Whilst you’re all in agreement that this bunch of nasties has to go though, you’re all racing to be the first to actually accomplish the feats each scenario gives you, partly for gold, mainly for sweet, sweet prestige.
Whilst the landscapes of each scenario may change, the ways heroes tackle the arenas of anarchy remains simple throughout. On a player’s turn, they may activate a hero in their ranks by moving them and/or attacking an enemy in any order. When moving, you have three actions to move to an adjacent space, open any doors or move through portals to magically reappear on the other side of the map. If they wish, they can then delve into an attack, checking that an enemy is within their heroes line of sight and making sure nothing is blocking them (or by simply moving next to them). Once happy, they roll a set number of attack dice depending on the equipment or spell being used for an attack, count up the relevant successful icons and the enemy takes that much damage. The enemy can also defend if they have relevant equipment, attempting to deflect attacks and lower those successful hits.
Alternatively, a player could just let their heroes rest, allowing them to unexhaust any cards, reorganise any equipment and bring heroes back from the dead. Pretty lazy explanation, but hey, it’s a lazy action.
While these rather basic actions could trick someone into thinking this is a rather shallow (yet ridiculously pretty) game, once everyone get slicing, blasting and looting, the board starts to replicate the madness you find in an online multiplayer component of a video game. Arcadia Quest is all about seizing the moment, racing to complete objectives before anyone else gets a chance, and if those objectives consist of killing monsters, you’ll find yourself having to remain wary of opportunities to strike down foes in case they move away from the spot you want to make their grave, or before someone else gets a chance to ****** victory away from you. There isn’t a lot of depth here, but there are many, many instances of frantic dice rolling and tactical improv, scaled down into a familiar RPG format.
There may not be a lot of deep, tactical decisions in a scenario of Arcadia Quest, but that doesn’t mean to say you can’t develop your heroes into formidable fighting machines. Many heroic deeds grant you gold that can be spent in the end of a scenario on upgrades and equipment, personalising your rag tag group of adventurers into…well, they’ll still be pretty ragtag, but they’ll be able to slay anyone who looks down on them for it far easier. Once a campaign ends, it’s great to delve into it once again simply to try a new mix of abilities or weapons with a different set of characters, or maybe try out some of the scenarios that you had to miss out on the first run through. Alternatively you could just ignore the campaign structure and try out scenarios by themselves for a much quicker fix.
Despite its bulky rulebook, Arcadia Quest won’t find itself taking up many lobes in the brain. Its dice based combat is wonderfully simple. The semantics of movement and combat are completely logical. When we played, the rulebook rarely left its place, clarifications barely needed because everything just makes sense in relation to the action unfolding on the board.
Pictures speak louder than words, but I do have to say that all components look absolutely glorious, and whilst I may not be in the painting game myself, Arcadia Quest is doing a good job of convincing me I should take up the hobby. Their Chibi style reminds me of the glorious looking minis you find in Krosmaster Arena, and their clean style leaves room for some lovely tiny details here and there. They may likely encounter a brush of colour fairly soon.
The only negatives I can truly draw from this, the nit pickiest of cons isn’t with the game itself, but rather its infuriating inlay, or lack thereof. All miniatures are protected well, but this takes up a bulk of the box, leaving barely any space for the cavalcade of cardboard that’ll no longer have a home in punchboard after you’re first game. Yes, I am rather inlay centric. I like everything to have its place. But to not have dedicated spots for cards and equipment, especially in a campaign game where character specific items carry over to various games, it is something of a nuisance. If you don’t invest in some zip lock bags, the next time you open the box, you’ll likely find destruction and debris far beyond anything Lord Fang can muster.
Arcadia Quest’s simplicity means that it isn’t exactly the deepest experience you’ll find yourself embroiled in, but it’s certainly an enjoyable free-for-all of evolving heroes, dastardly villains and absolute flipping deathmatch madness.
Growing up playing a game called HeroQuest led me down the road to start playing many other fun RPG-style games. Arcadia Quest captures the same fun of dungeon crawling, killing monsters, stealing loot, and character progression, all while keeping it on a lighter side so that even people who aren’t fans of the fantasy genre can still enjoy.
So here’s how it works. You and your opponents control 3 characters who make up your team or guild. Yes, I said opponents. Where there are times you can form brief alliances with other players, and you are all trying to achieve the same goals relatively, there are other goals for each scenario that involve devastating the other teams in the game. So where other RPG in a box games like Mice and Mystics are a full team of players trying to defeat each scenario, or dungeon, Arcadia Quest is more of a Goblet of Fire contest from Harry Potter. Which leads me to my favorite game mechanic of this game… there is NO game master! Instead, one of your fellow opponents control the enemy monsters turn when they are forced to act. That way, everyone can enjoy the game, and there isn’t one person creating all the action and not getting a chance to have fun killing monsters. Don’t get me wrong, classic style RPG’s are great, sometimes you want to be the person creating the story and putting other people’s characters trough numerous trials and tribulations, but that just makes games heavier in depth and require a lot of commitment. With Arcadia quest you can knock out a scenario/encounter in about an hour, call it quits for the day, come back next week with your friends and pick up where you left off. Plus, all of your characters progress through time. They level up so to speak and get better items to help them deal with the harder dungeons.
PRO’S
-Everyone can play, no GM
-Scenario times are about an hour long
-Progressive characters and campaign
-Awesome replay value
CON’S
-Lacks a lot of depth that you would see in Descent and other games
-Not a true co-op game or a printed option of being one
-Some heroes snowball harder in the later game then some.
Overall this game is great if you love RPGs and some of your other friends aren’t so into them. The miniatures look amazing, the mechanics are simple to understand, and you can play the campaign over and over again with different heroes or use all different scenarios. Even when you’ve played those heroes and missions to death, there are a number of expansions and add-on characters you can buy to add even more diversity. One of my favorites hands down.
I am gonna limit myself to reviewing only the miniatures of this game. Dont get me wrong, I love this game and it is easy to learn (try an online video of gameplay, there are a couple good ones), but my true love is painting and these miniatures are perfect for me!
They take a primer well and paint up nicely. The details on the plastic are SHARP and really lend themselves to easy definition. Even at just an inch or so tall, they are large enough (due to their chibi nature) to allow for remarkable details.
In addition to being good at taking paint, they are so numerous and varied that I kept getting caught up in jumping from one figure to another. There are some duplicates in the monsters, but I let my creative side show by doing different marking on their bodies. There are 12 heroes in the base game and around another 20-30 with the expansions and kickstarter figures. Each one gets me excited to be painting them and hoping for even more figures in the future!
So, if you like to paint minis, get this game! Beside being full of paintable goodness, it is a great game.
The game isn’t the most deep game when you really look at it, but in truth, it replays really great and opens the door for a great amount of home brew scenarios with the components.
Exploding dice are always fun for our game group, but the thing that has been really bad in this game is the steam rolling. Once someone starts winning or gets a lucky scenario, it all starts to work in their favor because obviously having better equipment leads to doing better.
I was concerned about that before buying the game, but most competitive games have that. Legendary begins to roll once someone gets an ultimate card, Catan rolls once someone has a city, it all starts to go their way. So really, most games have them, and you can counter this, but in Arcadia it’s harder because some people still have starter equipment and can’t touch late enemies or other players.