by Korppikoira
I've noticed that there isn't much information about the different Road to Legend campaigns, so I decided to write a short summary about each. I've played them all multiple times. The scores are my personal fun rating, compared to the other RtL campaigns.Kindred Fire 7/10
+ Decent quests overall
+ Decent story to give the campaign some flavor, but not too much text to read
+ The story has a couple points where you can experience different missions based on your success
- Hardest quest of the campaign is the first one, which is a design flaw
- Final mission is quite annoying with a thousand attribute tests and a badly designed "find a key" -part
Overall: it shows that Kindred Fire was the first campaign. It can't really compare with the other two, but it's still fun to play
Seeds of Corruption 9/10
+ Amazing, varied missions (for the most part)
+ Amazing map layouts, that change based on what expansions you own, so you get a different experience when you buy more expansions
+ Great story, choose your own path, RPG-lite, and your choices actually have consequences, which I didn't expect in a boardgame
+ Hands out XP like candies, you can get 9-10 for every character at the end, which I personally enjoy, but it makes the game easier
+ Varied city actions, that are fun to explore
- SHITLOAD of text to read, which can be pain if you have 4 players that aren't native English speakers (like our group). Slows the game down a lot, and most of it is unnecessary filler
- While the quests are good, the Finals are a bit lackluster, and depending on your choices they can play in the wrong order (taking account how the NPC's react). They are not bad, but I was expecting more.
Overall: an amazing campaign with good RPG elements, interesting story, good missions and fun character builds, but be prepared to read a lot. My favorite campaign because I like to theorycraft character builds and more XP gives more room for it, but it's basically splitting hairs with Embers of Dread.
Embers of Dread 9/10
+ Overall best quests
+ Good balance in fighting and very interesting puzzles
+ Good balance in story, it's interesting without having to read a wall of text after every quest
+ Most challenging campaign; the first two can become a bit easy, but EoD maintains it's difficulty the best
- Lack of choice in story compared to SoC
- Lackluster city actions: we just couldn't force ourselves to do the first one at all, because you lose Fame for it, and it's the most important resource early on in RtL
- Very stingy handing out XP, you only get 3 XP for the first THREE main missions (in SoC you get 3XP for the first mission+city action), so if you want to start with a 3 XP skills (quite common for Disciple, Beastmaster etc...) you are playing 10-15 hours with only your starting skill. You get a total of 7 XP on the campaign, but imo the campaign should start with giving 2 XP for the first mission
- The final is, again, a bit on the worse side, we one-shot the boss, lol
Overall: best campaign if you enjoy challenging missions / good puzzles more than character progression / story, which are better in SoC.
Last words: All of the campaigns are definitely worth playing and have good replay value. The side missions can be a bit repetitive on multiple playthroughs, so I usually only do one between main missions, or maybe two in the first opportunity.
I've played all the campaigns with varied hero counts, and mostly the balance seems to go like this:
2 heroes: easiest, if you pick heroes that benefit from the extra attack and choose balanced attributes. Still fun to play if you enjoy a more simple experience.
3 heroes: most challenging, since you lose one hero, but some of the most challenging monster groups (looking at you, goblin archers and sorcerers) only lose one minion. Good choice if you want the missions to go a bit faster, and a bit of extra challenge. If it's too easy, you can use 4 hero monster groups for extra challenge, which is nice.
4 heroes: most balanced and tactical option. I enjoy this hero count the most if there's 2 or 4 players, but with 3 players 3 heroes is the best.
Thank you for reading!