Product– Pericle: Gathering Darkness

System- Pericle: Gathering Darkness

Producer– Long Dog Games

Price– $ 150 here https://www.periclethegame.com/products 

TL; DR– Not quite Gloomhaven 83% 

Basics– Friends cancel for DnD?  Long Dog Games got a game for you.  Pericle: Gathering Darkness is a 1 to 4 (kind of) tabletop RPG with maps and miniatures provided.  You use an app to guide the monster’s turns, and you respond to the world.  Let’s break this down.

Mechanics- This game uses a D10 based mechanic for all skill and attack rolls.  One side is automatic failure, one side is a critical success, four sides are normal successes,and the other four are numbers 1 to 4.  When you do an action, if you have no skills the successes are the only ways to succeed.  If you have skill in an action, you can roll that number or a success to succeed.

Characters and leveling- While this is an app driven game, there are multiple ways to build characters.  There is a basic character generation system which lets you choose abilities and races however you want.  The game also comes with several pregenerated characters so you can just hit the ground running.

Combat– Combat is run by the app and the tabletop.  The app will randomly decide what side goes first, either players or enemies.  Then the game goes into movement for one side, movement for the other side, then based on initiative each character and enemy will go.   A very important thing to consider is the Embattled condition.  If you move and are in the forward arc of a character, you are embattled and stop your movement.  For my old school, 3.5 DnD friends, if you would provoke an attack of opportunity using the facing rules from the front, you are embattled. Also important, some actions like ranged weapons and spells cant be used if you move more than 1 hex.

Magic- This is an interesting use of magic. Magic is cast till you pass out!  When you cast a spell you take damage and exhaustion.  Each spell specifies an amount of damage or an amount you can vary for different effects.  The damage is hit points, but you mark down the damage as exhaustion as well.  When you rest you heal all exhaustion and that same amount of damage.

Let’s go into the breakdown.

MAJOR LET DOWN!  This game says it’s for 1 to 4 players, but that means 3 to 4 characters.  If, like me, you only want to play one character, then you have to play 3 to 4 players.  Which means, I might as well play DnD…  You can play 1 person, but then you have to run four characters.  That makes me angry on a personal level when I can’t just run one character and my wife run one character, so all scores max out at 4.5 for this one!

Mechanics or Crunch– Overall this game is done well,but it doesn’t quite hit all the points I was hoping for.  The d10 based mechanic is an interesting one.  It works decently well, but sometimes the embattled condition is more tiring as facing always does slow a game down. The addition of magic using HP is a fun way to let casters go wild while still keeping a bit of control in the system.  If you like facing based combat, you will love this.  I’m not as much of a fan.  4.25/5

Theme or Fluff– This game is an interesting mix of a choose your own adventure and a dudes on a map combat game.  The crunch is good, and for the most part the story is interesting.  You are slaves sold into being gladiators.  From there the story continues as your choices alter what happens next.  Like any RPG campaign, some things are always going to happen regardless of your choices, but overall, I do feel like I was playing a game with my buddies.  4.5/5

Execution–  Here is where I think I will get the biggest flack for my opinion.  I was not as impressed as I hoped to be.  The game provides several maps and acrylic miniatures.  Those are ok.  Some do not match the pictures the game uses, and that causes some problems, but I don’t think what I got was worth 150 bucks.  Next, the app is a choose your own adventure book online. It’s not a stand alone app, but a website that runs combat.  That’s ok, but some things are voiced with standing pictures on youtube.  And that’s ok.  I don’t need multi million dollar voice actors and animated cutscenes.  But only some things are videos.  Many are just text.  This goes as far as not even given pictures to all the named NPCs.  Even some of the tutorial isn’t voiced and is basically me reading the text in the rulebook on a screen instead of reading the rulebook.  The app is also interesting as you have to mark if you embattled a character.  You can go backwards and it will adjust a character’s actions, so if you miss someone being engaged in a fight, it will correct their actions.  That is a nice touch.  Overall, I just felt that several maps and an app where, at most, I get four choices at a time felt like I wasn’t quite getting my money’s worth.  See our unboxing here: https://youtu.be/PCMDwvbBow0    3.75/5

Summary-I love games where my wife and I can be on the same side and play an epic adventure.  This game gets me most of the way to where I want to be, but isn’t quite it.  The mechanics are good, but a bit like grinding gears.  The story is good and interesting.  What I got in the box and what I got on the app is ok, but not quite enough.  To put this in perspective, my favorite co-op RPG Gloomhaven retailed at about 150 and 12 bucks more for the storyteller app to read me the box text.  This is about that price and I feel I get less.  And two players can just be two players and play.  What’s here is ok, but I am automatically let down when I see I have to play multiple characters.  This is fun, but know EXACTLY what you are getting in the game! 83%