Hi all, I’ve seen some of the previous impressions threads, but I wanted to ask specifically: for those of you who might have tried other dungeon crawlers, how does it hold up? Did you play it once and then used the minis for Infinity proper, or do you replay it at times? And are the expansions any good? I’ve read about issues with the production of those, but again, does the gameplay hold up? I’m a taker for any honest opinion. Thanks in advance!
Probably not the most representative respondent, but I'm playing Defiance and have played Star Wars Imperial Assault so I feel I'm vaguely qualified to answer. Only halfway (just finished mission 6) through Core, but it's fun for our group. Having previously played Imperial Assault with most of the same people I'm now playing Defiance with, I appreciate it being fully co-op. With IA, when I was running the Imps, I felt I was being too oppressive early game and so let up the gas to stop the rebels being discouraged. With that opening, and some minor rules errors, they then proceeded to snowball every subsequent mission so freely that I ended up actively conceding 2 or 3 of them, which I could have dragged out for another round or two, late campaign. Whereas the OpFor in Defiance is all AI, it expects you to win (to some degree), has no mercy, and improves the resources at its disposal regardless of your performance. Haven't played the expansions yet, though I've read them through and their pretty neat. I'm actually looking forward to Outcast more than the rest of Core, because of the [REDACTED] shenanigans in the former. Revenant is okay, though seems to be almost a monster of the week Saturday morning cartoon kind of campaign with no real narrative or connective plot, so is the one I'm least looking forward to (as a campaign, I'll still steal its other content for when we do Outcast). So, on average, I'd say expect a harder experience with Defiance. Particularly if you swap in some of the alternate enemies (Unidrons are especially gross). The guys who were kicking my ass as Rebels have learnt to bug out and often do so sooner than I expect (which is good, the soft timers of Defiance's Alert, Aggro, and Reinforcement systems are brutal). But they're still enjoying the experience, often suggesting times they're free to run the next mission before I can ask. Our Qiang even said he wanted to run through the campaign again to see how getting the objectives we missed could change things (not a huge amount, I'll probably try and direct his enthusiasm towards Outcast when the time comes). On the negatives, Spanglish is definitely a factor - as you probably expect, if you've played Infinity or Aristeia before. However, it's considerably more noticeable here. There's also issues in the campaign guide that can result in missions being basically unreadable and, in at least a couple cases, literally unplayable. CB are continuing to push out FAQs which have squashed most of these bugs at this point, but the community are still finding more and the updates aren't that frequent. There's a disparity between characters in the Core box - anywhere you look people will recommend you bring Jazz as the system assumes you'll have a hacker on your team. We don't have a Jazz, as I felt I could be a budget hacker with Trish and a Defensive Hacking Device, and we've definitely struggled more for it. I honestly don't believe it's possible to win the campaign if you bring Uma/Qiang/Cadin/Rahman and nobody takes a DHD, which is kinda problematic. Expansions get around this by adding Valerya, characters who aren't hackers but can hack decently (Cho, Raoul), and lots of characters who can bring mercs (with merc hacker options available). But if you play just Core then it can be a major issue. I feel obliged to assert that the enemy variety is limited and then shamelessly plug the unofficial enemies I've created, but honestly the CA variety is acceptable (becoming more disappointing with Human Sphere opponents). EDIT: the wall o'text seemed smaller on my mobile as I was typing it, honest.
On the contrary, thank you for taking the time and being expansive! And yeah, one thing that worries me is getting another game I can’t play without spending hours on the fora, Infinity is quite enough for that. By the way, in case you ever go back to IA - it is after all a fun if light experience, there are a couple of ways to play it full coop besides the limited official app. You can check Imperial Directive for a web based solution, or my favorite, RAIV for a card-based system that covers all expansions. You can find both on BGG.
I've been playing with 3 friends and playing Defiance has become a really nice regular meet-up for us. We've been having a blast and that's in the end the most important. When we started, I sort of pushed this game on my friends, fully knowing it is more up my street then anyone else's, which is why I always felt some responsibility to play the game the right way and get everything set up, etc. Because of that, I have a few gripes with the rules and basically needing a FAQ to play properly, but this really did not affect anyone's enjoyment as much as I thought it would. From the start, everyone liked the mechanics, most players also painted up their own mini, so that was a nice aspect and we basically just had fun. Several missions in and it's no longer me asking when we play the next mission, but the others as well. One friend even started checking up on upgrade cards in-between missions, etc. So overall, the depth of this game and its mechanics are really fun and if you can get some player buy-in it's just a really nice, co-operative, puzzle-solving experience. That and the art and universe really draw people in.
I've just played scenario 2 of the main campaign, between personal affairs, Covid and the festivities it's almost impossible to get everyone together to play. But we are enjoying it. Personally, I like many of the mechanics, like the Aggro/Reinforcement, how the respawning works, the AI behaviour... the problem lies in how the rules are redacted. And it's not a translation problem, as I'm playing the game in Spanish, it's just that the rules are poorly redacted (the FAQ document for Defiance is also pretty big). Regarding hackers, if you don't have one you end up loosing a lot of time interacting with consoles. We've decided to get a Defensive Hacker Device and give it to the John Hawkwood player, as he was in charge of manipulating consoles. It'll also help against hacker enemies, they proved to be pretty dangerous to our Qiang player. Also, while we have just started, we feel like there is a huge disparity between some characters' performance. Let's see how it goes when we have gotten better equipment and skills.
https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/review-and-remarks-on-defiance-gameplay.40455/ I can't sum it up any better than that. And since then we haven't played another mission. But ... I really like my newly painted Speculo Killeress so ... I think I'll push it a bit
Yeah, your post is the one that prompted this one, it just got me worried I would be too frustrated with the game to enjoy it. I’m happy to see others seem to be having a good time with it. i have everything Defiance back home, but then haven’t been able to go back all year. I have a window in February - although Omicron might change that - and I’m looking for the one or two games that will make it in the suitcase. So many KS arrived during this time, it was difficult to prioritize Defiance, but as I’m playing very little Infinity these days, I was hoping it’d be my fix. So thanks to everyone who took the time to reply here!
Yes, give it a try. Maybe you enjoy it. Obviously others are having a great time with it, although I suppose something is played wrong then ... What is getting more obvious with every request for a review or some opinions .... it seems as if most backers don't play the game. the miniatures are great. Just that. Totally justifying backing Defiance for them alone, but I thought more would back it to actually play it. I for myself did. Well at least the miniatures are great.
In fairness, a lot of people went for single wave shipping (which means they only got it about 6 months ago), and many of those will have tried to get stuff assembled and painted before playing. Then there's all the restrictions on gathering by various lockdowns. And of course, as you mentioned, there's those who just got it for the models. But, yeah, hopefully we do get more people popping up with their experiences over the next year.
After beating one campain, I'm looking forward to playing it again. Despite that it has almost 0 variety in character builds and rules (english) are written in such a way that sometimes it's really hard to understand - I'd say it's good for 2-3 campains.
Yes, I’m definitely one of those who backed it in the hope of getting a good sci-fi crawler in the Infinity universe - acknowledging this would be CB’s first foray in the genre. And I did expect them to give it a good try - after all, Blackstone Fortress was a big money maker for GW, and a great gateway game into Kill Team and WH40K, there’s a model worth emulating there. But then the KS turns out to be a one-shot, there will be no follow up, and clearly too little time and effort we’re put in polishing the game. I mean, we can joke all we want about CB’s inability to write rules, but Defiance clearly skipped some basic testing phases. And I think they get punished for it: TAG Raid raised a third of the funding that was pledged for Defiance. I’m sure there’s more than one reason for that, but Defiance lackluster reception has got to part of it. I just wish I understood what it is they are trying to achieve. Testing if they have the ability to genuinely branch out into board gaming beyond Aristea? Raise funding at critical junctures? Or are these just pet projects that might please the fans? In any case, and as with all their projects, I really wished they got their act together. I always feel CB is the company with a good idea and fantastic minis, and that just coasts on that without ever making the effort to transform them into truly, genuinely polished products…
Funnily enough, Aristeia apparently came out of Defiance, rather than the other way around. As I understand it, they'd always wanted to make a Dungeon Crawler style game in the Infinity setting, and the prototypes for Aristeia were just developed internally to test Defiance's core game mechanics. During that testing they realised Aristeia was good enough to stand on its own merits, and so they fleshed it out into a full-fledged game in its own right which was released a couple years before Defiance was ready (and then paused dev of Aristeia three years after launch to shuffle the team back over to Defiance to take what they'd learnt in Aristeia to help finish Defiance). Which is why its more ironic that they're supporting Aristeia onward whilst Defiance seems to have been a one-and-done passion project.
Oh, I recall having such big hopes for Defiance back then, during KS - a new book every half a year, equipment and skill add-on decks, decks for code one action packs, some aristeia arena mode, etc. And they like "Nah, we done". They don't even visit faq thread. Guess it was my own damn fault for having high hopes. No way I'm backing any other of their kickstarters unless the pull out a pile of minis for cheap (And I *really* need them).
