by jubez187
I love this game and wanted to get the most mileage out of it. I originally played this game in 2015 and played as OL vs my brother and our friend. We made it to the first encounter of the Interlude and never really picked it back up again. I'm a massive fantasy nerd and didn't really care for playing the OL so I never really pushed to play it.So RtL got announced and I loved it but ultimately couldn't beat Kindred Fire and gave up, and trust me, it haunted me.
My friends and I started board gaming again and I brought Descent back out and showed them the app. We started Kindred Fire and first mission had bad dice rolls + Wendigos so we lost and quit. However, a spark of determination spawned inside of me and I couldn't contain it. I tried the intro mission 2 more times and finally won by a hair basically cause the game didn't spawn Wendigos but that's not important
. I completed Kindred Fire pretty handedly, many Delves on both Hard and Normal, a Rise of All Goblins on Hard, and I'm in the middle of Seeds of Corruption Normal campaign and it's completely faceroll at this point.Being hungry for more, I went and tried a physical adventure (Nature's Ire) and eventually said screw it and bought some Redjak's Automated Overlord cards so that I could play the campaigns I had.
All-in-all, that's just a really long winded to say I play a lot of Descent, but I wanted to get my credentials out of the way so you guys at least can understand this is someone who is pretty experienced with the game by now.
So now I'll get into the meat of breaking down each experience because they happen to all be very different.
Road to Legend (RtL):
Format - App
Difficulty - Varies
Turn Order - Alternative (Imperial Assault Style)
So let's talk about RtL first, because it's likely that any new player would use this as an avenue to play the game co-op seeing as it's the most recent and most polished option.
Let me start by saying RtL is a really good idea, and can be a fun experience. But it's also heavily flawed.
Many people, at a glance, would discern very little difference between Traditional (Overlord) Descent and RtL, but once you get into the nitty gritty, they couldn't be more different. OL Descent and RtL are like 2 really good spices that don't mix well. Because that's the thing, they don't mix well. The crux of this analysis boils down to the fact that being knocked out in Traditional doesn't matter. You don't have lives, you can stand up as many times as you like, it's more of an annoyance than anything actually threatening to your victory. Traditional was balanced around almost shooter-like game modes. There's escort missions, capture the flag missions, assassination missions (NPCs). This is important because when you're making a game with very little penalty for death, you have more leeway in balancing (or lack thereof) incoming damage. It really doesn't matter that an Ettin could either miss or crack your skull open for 8 damage in Act I even though that could be the difference between your Runemaster being primed and ready, or dead on the floor.
So that being said, RtL acts like the old-school Beat 'em Ups. You kill everything in the room and open the door. More stuff spawns, you beat it up, next door. This kinda funnels the gameplay into something Descent wasn't supposed to be..a Team Deathmatch. So now it does matter that the Ettin can kill you in 1 shot. This can lead to some serious frustration, and it will.
Next, you have these little monster buffs that happen on every activation. These are supposed to be in place of OL cards, which is fine, but they're VERY overtuned. If you play 4-heroes, you could get a Goblin Archer activation that gives all of the minions pierce 2, and they all attack the same hero. Descent was not balanced around taking in that much damage, mainly because there aren't many missions where the OL can afford to spend 3 minion Goblins on just attacking. Goblins in Traditional are usually used to carry things back and forth. It just doesn't feel natural in the game (because it's not, it's a tacked on game mode..that I love).
Okay, so now there's an extra layer of awkwardness to RtL. After everything I've said, what do you think is the best way to play RtL? Fire with Fire. You have to kill before you're killed. Once again, gameplay funneling. What I mean is that any hero/class ability and feat that doesn't have anything to do with killing/surviving is practically useless. While I was playing exclusively RtL I would look through the 30 Heroes I have and think "why would anyone choose these characters." I was baffled to see a tier list of Heroes and NOT see Leoric of the Book ranked at the top. But again, these are Traditional players talking.
So essentially, RtL is just a mosh-pit. There's no decision making outside of "how can I do the most damage." Use your Runemaster first every round, and make sure he blows up as many Goblin Archers, Fire Imps, Dark Priests, whatever, because they're activating next and if you don't kill them..they will kill you.
Physical Adventure
Format - Physical FFG package
Difficulty - Hard
Turn Order - Traditional
The physical adventures were actually kinda cool. The production value was definitely nice and I liked how the tiles stayed psuedo-random. However, it was a hell of a rude awakening coming from RtL. Everything I valued in RtL had very little value in Nature's Ire. Mobility and stat checks became much much more important, and it was kinda welcoming.
My only complaint is that this is a serious race. You get about 2 turns to complete a tile's mission and then you start accruing perils. It almost felt TOO race-y. It was honestly a more stressful experience than anything. I wouldn't really recommend it unless you're looking to challenge yourself. But I wouldn't expect to win on your first attempt. I'm gonna try again and focus more on mobility and such soon.
RAOV (Redjak's Automated Overlord Variant
Format - Physical Print-n-Play
Difficulty - Easy/Medium
Turn Order - Traditional
So eventually I became so invested in Descent I wanted to play the campaigns just for the lore and story, if not anything else. So I downloaded the cards and had them printed from the website Redjak linked in his post about the variant.
I wanna first and foremost say that he did a great job, and I don't know if he did the graphic design for the cards but they fit right in with the game. Much applause to Redjak.
The actual gameplay of Traditional Descent honestly takes the cake out of the 3. The objectives and scenarios are well thought out (I did the entire Lair of the Wyrm mini-campaign and I'm in the middle of Shadow Rune at the moment). Things like tactical body-blocking, movement, and all sorts of other game mechanics really shine here and you can tell this is how the game was supposed to be played.
Unfortunately, Redjak can't do everything, and I find the cards to be very detrimental to our fake Overlord, or sometimes just unfinished at all. In a mission in LotW, an Ettin can block a door from opening by standing on the opposite side, protecting his Master while he grabs precious ore. Redjak makes no mention of this mechanic, so on minion Ettin's turn, I flipped a card and opened the door to engage my target (following the AI script on the card). Next turn, Sir Valadir walked right through the now opened door and killed the master Ettin with his feat, ending the mission. This was turn 2. I replayed it and kept the Ettin blocking the door and had a MUCH different experience. If it wasn't for the Conjurer's Vortex ability sucking the master Ettin back in while he was trying to make a mad dash for the exit, I would have lost. That's great gameplay.
Redjak tries to balance the lack of a real OL but giving the AI more accessibility to Overlord Cards, but the "script" is very bare bones for them. Pretty much, the moment you can, you do. So if the Lieutenant has to make it out of the dungeon and activates 2nd, and you have a Dash card..well once you activate the first monster group the "script" tells you to activate Dash. Or, when the objective is to kill an NPC and you can either use "Knockback" with your surge or "+3" damage..it just doesn't make sense to use the knockback. I find myself overriding a lot of Redjak's script..and at this point I can say I'm more just playing against myself and adding a card to the OL hand when I see there is a blitz card drawn from Redjak's deck.
I don't mean to discredit Redjak in any way. I'm sure he's busy enough and doesn't have time to make fine-tuned rules for each encounter in the entire Descent 2e catalog, I just wanted to share my thoughts.
So if you're wondering what co-op Descent is like, I hope that paints the picture. If you've never played Descent, I wanna make it clear that this is all still really fun. This post is more for veterans that wanna talk about these small differences. I'm in no way insinuating that you shouldn't shelve Gloomhaven for Descent
If I had to say which is the best way to play Descent, I think I would have to say..just play it the traditional way if you can get someone to be excited about being the Overlord and your gaming group has good sportsmanship haha. It feels the most natural and has the most varied gameplay. After that, try RtL cause it's very accessible and most of the content is free, just don't try to do anything cool other than make things explode.
Agree? Disagree? Thoughts?