Gloomhaven Not In-Depth Enough For You? Try ‘Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era’
Do you scoff at the simplicity of games like Gloomhaven? Then you might love the open-world RPG Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era.
Even though I’ve openly made the claim I will probably never play Gloomhaven again, now that I have games like Tales From The Red Dragon Inn, I still appreciate the game for what it is. And while I may not be the target audience for the new Elder Scrolls board game, I can still more than appreciate the sheer depth afforded by it. If you thought Frosthaven really captured that RPG feel in a board game, you’re going to be blown away by what Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era has to offer.
Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era Overview
As with any good RPG, you begin with character creation. But character creation is more than simply pick a character and maybe a few starting cards. Don’t expect a full D&D style character sheet. But there’s a lot more going on than you will find in most other board games.
With your party ready, the game can begin! As with any complain based game, there’s options for playing a ongoing campaign or just setting up for a single one shot game. But regardless, the gameplay remains mostly the same.
The game takes places over a number of rounds, and each round is a day within the game. Each day, the party will explore the open world map and find adventure where ever they deem best. It truly is an open world board game unlike any other. They might stop by a town, have a random encounter, or engage in battle. In town, they’ll be able to buy new items, pick up side quests, gain training in new skills and rest to recover.
During random encounters, the party will be faced with a choice of how to proceed. But, sometimes they will be locked into a specific choice from how they encountered the event. Either way, the random events can be anything, from random battles or finding legendary artifacts and anything in between.
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Strategic Combat System With Cooldowns
But, Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era is still an RPG at heart. And the heart of any good RPG is combat [citation needed]. Combat is largely ability based. As characters use their abilities, they will be set on a cooldown. However, as characters get more tired, their cooldown track will get cluttered, slowing their cooldowns even further.
There are many different monsters players will encounter, from people, to wild beasts, to deadly daedra. Each monster token is chuck full of combat stats. This should give you a good idea, at a glance, the depth of the combat system in Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era. Monsters have health, targeting options, special abilities, levels, defense scores, and more all crammed into one small token.
There’s simply no way I could go over in detail anything but the broad strokes of the elder scrolls board game. But I can assure you if you loved Gloomhaven or open world games like Mage Knight or Skyrim, you’re very likely to love Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era.
