A Review of Descent: Journey into the Dark by Casters First
A Review of Descent: Journey into the Dark by Casters First
Let me start this off by just laying this down: Descent is not for the casual pick-up gamer. Last year at PAX East our group was playing Smallworld in the tabletop section and we noticed a group of gamers down at the end of the table that had just opened up a fresh new Descent box. After about twenty minutes of getting all the pieces detached and ready for play they quickly perused through the rule book. They lasted about another thirty minutes before they were packing the game back up and heading off for the night. Maybe I've should have taken the chance to meet some new gamers and given them a quick overview of the game or at the very least explained to them that Descent has a very high learning curve and not to give up, but Smallworld was just too enticing.
My gaming group took the board game progression of HeroQuest right to Descent. Before our first game, I had personally read the rules five times and I know another player had read them thoroughly at least once, maybe twice. They others in our group just quickly glanced through the rules to get an idea of what the game consisted of and then depended on myself to explain the rules. Even with this preparation it took us a whole 4 hour game to get a good understanding of the rules. With this said, please do not let this deter you from trying this game.
A game created by the great Fantasy Flight Games, Descent does not hold back on the quality of pieces, cards and maps. Many of the miniatures that came with this game we use for our D&D campaign. The hero characters used in this game will be very familiar to any who have played Runewars or Runebound. The unique aspect of the game Descent is that the Overlord (DM) is not just spinning the story for the adventurers, but also trying to kill them. In most other games the DM is just supposed to further the story and to handle the monsters, it is quite refreshing to actually try and kill the heroes before they kill the dungeon boss. As an overlord, there is nothing sweeter than having the heroes spend over 4 hours of crawling through monster infested caverns, reaching the throne room with the final boss and then wiping the party before they even get to engage (true story!).
Descent is actually a great game to help players prepare for D&D tournaments. It really comes down to the adventurers being able be to get through the dungeon as fast as possible. Line of sight is very important in this game as anything out of line of sight allows the overlord to spawn new monsters. It definitely gets you in the mentality of moving forward and dealing with only what is important. The players also draw random heroes in the beginning of each game which makes you think outside of the box if you are only used to playing a melee or caster type.
Fantasy Flight Games has done an excellent balancing act in regards to the hero's' and overlord's powers. I think it works best with five players, but it does allow for less. The later expansions also bring in new powers into play which add a new dimension. The one down fall is there is no continuity in quests (there is a campaign option later in the expansions) at the early levels which does take away from the connection to your character. Although with the randomness of starting heroes and the chance of cards the overlord pulls, Descent does allow for high replay ability. You can also go back to quests to try and beat your previous conquest tokens gained (gained throughout the quest for certain actions).
In the end, I must reiterate that Descent will frustrate you in the beginning with the steep learning curve, but when you have learned the in's and out's the reward is well worth the time invested. I would highly recommend this game; especially for those DM's who want a chance to slaughter some heroes!
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