Aeon Trespass: Odyssey

The first 'campaign' game I haven't bounced off of since Gloomhaven. There's a lot of book-keeping, but the exploration "half" of the game is written better than I expected and the story, choices, and consequences are pretty interesting. The "boss battling" half is also extremely well done. I was kind of skeptical of the "inverted pyramid" combat system (or whatever they call it) but it actually works fantastically and the boss fights are a ton of fun and evolve over time amazingly well. The Boss AI decks also really "fit" the miniatures they are associated with and all the crazy stuff they do feels consistent and adds a bunch of variety across the fights.

Really great and well-tested game that improves upon KDM in many aspects and innovates at other aspects of the game.

not as fun as the skyseer.

Easy 10.Amazing game

Started out fairly strong at 7 or 8 but after 20 or so days, fighting lvl 2 primordials and then being faced by the boss for the first time I am done.

The game design here clearly believes that more mechanics is more interesting, but most of the new mechanics add relatively little, if nothing, to the decision space.

Switch between phases is extremely tedious, the voyage phase gets quite boring, each map tile adds very little besides draw some random resource cards and maybe resolve a bit of the story in the book, get an upgrade or start a fight. Fine, but why do I then have to pack away a fight, and sort through a bunch of map cards to lay the map out, get my 20+ technologies out, get my sheet out to mark resources etc.

The interesting part is the story, but there are so many mechanically tedious actions to do to get there that it's just not worth it.

The fights are just fine initially, but eventually you start to realise that they're just push your luck with relatively small decision spaces.

The first 2 primordials start off nice and friendly, but give you a glance into their evolutions. In both cases they basically put space between you, one runs around and the other shoves you around. The way to deal with this is to get gear, which adds relatively little decision making, are you going to get knocked back, well if you have the card to reduce that, reduce it, or maybe you can step to one side to avoid it, if so do that.

Your turn then is mostly just move and attack, the 'hard co-op' system is just adding tokens between fights, which mostly just help to mitigate dice rolls. When you do a wound you then have to spend time fiddling with the decks to escalate.

I feel like thats whole game in a nutshell, lots of mechanics to keep you busy but not actually providing a lot of decision making, or actively getting in the way of the story.

There's no way I could trudge through this for 80 hours and thats why it gets a low rating, its far from the worst game I've ever played, I enjoyed the first 15 or so days, but thats not good enough for this game. It costs $300 and requires you to sit down for 50-80 hours just to finish 1 of 3 cycles, if I'm already finding it tedious less than 20 hours in then its best for me to sell it on to someone who will actually enjoy it.

Initial rating: 9.3 Rating after Cycle 1: 9.5 Rating after Cycle 2: 10

As my first and only campaign game, AT:O is an incredible experience. Each game system is kept fairly simple (relative to future Cycles) in Cycle 1 to allow players to get a grip on the basic rules. These are expanded upon in Cycle 2 which means more management of game elements and things to keep track of, and that can put off some players. BUT, the payoff is so worth it. Better customisable gear loadouts, more interesting enemies, a new voyage experience, and an amazing story with a mind-blowing finale.

Into The Unknown have showed what is possible for campaign board games. What an achievement!

The greatest board game ever made. Incomparable.

Not that far in Yet, but so far amazing!

Not out