While waiting for my late platinum pledge in EU countries [specifically Italy], I was wondering and looking for any reviews of the final version of the game, maybe with actual pics of the materials, as some AUS - USA has already gotten hands on... Obviously I was checking in this thread/sub-forum, but with poor results...
I don't know of any reviews, but I've got a list of minor complaints so far while getting the box ready to play: I dislike the fact that the condition rules are six cards instead of being in the rulebook or printed on a reference sheet. The hacking program cards are double sided and not all of them are the same on both sides. Some of the enemy tokens have different models on each side of the token. There's a slot in the tray which is the right size for the small state/condition tokens, but there are more than will fit in that slot. The tiles and character consoles and tokens are decent cardboard. As usual, that ends up looking better after the application of colored markers to the sides; particularly the tokens benefit from using colored markers on the sides. The big question in my mind is how benign CB will be when people start sitting down and compiling all of the card information for reference or making replacement cards. Or variant cards, for that matter. P.S.: "Bugs" encountered so far: - Console interaction example on page 12 appears to have the inputs in the wrong numeric order. - One of the AI cards has an unknown symbol on it. - Blinded doesn't have any way to end. - Seed embryos appear to get stuck if no one triggers their explosion after being deployed. I'm just about to sit down and do my model inventory, but I've read people mentioning missing their two remotes and one of the bases.
I've only played the first mission so far, so haven't formed a lot of thoughts yet. The game definitely needs some reference charts, the enemy AI keys and some other stuff should be on one sheet, and the conditions would be handy there too. The tray slots for the character tokens and the condition tokens are nice, but no idea how you'd actually use them during a game, so I keep them in bags anyway. It probably doesn't fit due to the late addition of the Blind tokens and stuff though.
After going through the figures, it looks like I'm in the common group of people who didn't get Duchess, Gaspar, and the 40mm base(s). (I think someone said that Duchess and Gaspar were in the same bag, so it looks like that one got missed when my box got packed...)
And after looking at the hacking cards again, I -somewhat- withdraw my complaint about them being double sided, because the back sides that are different than the front sides are upgrades of the front side.
Yep, those two small REMs are in a bag together. My 40mm base was hard to find, but was in a foam tray slot by itself.
Hoping CB could solve these problems for the EU shipment... I really would have preferred to have my pledge for Christmas with these lproblems rather than waiting a month more, but... For now I'm searching for other opinions on the actual game, in particular for: 1) Review of the game mechanics, the Aristea engine works fine for a dungeon crawler? 2) Apart from the demo mission, when player master the core mechanics, what is the duration of a standard game? 3) The development/growth of the character is fulfilling as expected?
Notes from my first play through: If you're coming from Infinity, the names of the Nox units may be confusing. Nox "Spec Ops", Nox "Leader", and Nox "Hacker" are each two models each. I didn't notice this until setting up for the first mission and trying to figure out how two Nox "Spec Ops" models are supposed to work with just one initiative card. I think the Available Units card for the first mission is supposed to be "black card" Nox "Fire Team". It's really easy to overlook the page in the campaign rules which explains the difference between 'deploy an enemy model here at the start of the game' and 'this is a spawn point for an event during the mission'. The starting equipment and hacking programs for each character each has that character's picture on it. That's helpful to know when you're looking at the helmet for a certain PanO character and wondering why it looks like a Bolt helmet. I assume the hacker is supposed to start with the three hacking programs with her picture. The part of the rules that says you can put programs in hacking device before the mission is in the hacking rules, not the mission setup rules. The part telling you that you start the campaign with four fixed characters in the rulebook, not the campaign book.
Glad to see that the rules are not very well organized... But if the game engine is rock solid for me it is a minor issues.
Overall, I think the mechanics are pretty solid. After complaining about it in another thread, it turns out that I misunderstood the deck setup at the start of the game. The available units line for the first mission should be blue card Nox "Hacker", rather than the black card symbol. I didn't read the deck descriptions quite closely enough, and couldn't quite believe that you'd put all of the cards in one deck, and then move some of them to other decks during setup. During one of the kickstarter videos, they discuss the specialties card/chart for each player, and they mention a mechanic for the versatile specialty. I can't find the paragraph for that in the specialties rules. Overall, I think the mechanics are pretty solid. Right now, I want to sit down and write up a reference/summary sheet for the AI symbols, and the alert levels. But part of that is that the implications of each alert level would have more impact on the players if they were prominently displayed on a reference sheet. Like the part in the first scenario where the alert level jumps to 4, which is impressive but becomes more so if you remember the part about the alert level going up when the AI deck gets reshuffled. And the other part of that is that I'm the sort of gamer that ends up wanting to write up reference sheets for the games that I play and fuss with the tokens and scenery. At the Gen Con seminar, part of the sales pitch for this was "Something do with Infinity models that isn't as competitive and complicated as Infinity" and "Infinity the co-op game". Because of the "some assembly required" metal figures, it definitely isn't an easy to get into board game. But now that I've got most of the figures from the box primed and assembled, and some of the figures with their primary colors blocked in, and the 3D scenery primed and partially painted, it's looking pretty good.
To get the versatile card you need the rank 1 abilities from the other 3 trees. It says it on the versatile card.
Ok so played through the first mission twice tonight with my son and a friend. I think it’s a great game had a ton of fun. In my opinion it’s a great beer and pretzel game with a lot of replay potential. 8 outa 10 CB
Thank you all for the feedbacks! As a co-op game, nothing better than a good Beer & Pretzel experience, even if there are some minor issues with rule organization and materials. Hope to read more opinions and reviews, while I'm looking forward to have my hands on my platinum pledge.
I've only played the demo and the first two missions. I'm having a lot of fun playing solo, but it is a lot to keep track of and remember. There are a lot of different places that you have to check for things, the mission, characters, skills, equipment, the enemies, then the keywords, then a few other rulebook pages.... It has been easy to miss something solo.
We're up to mission 4, I feel that the game is reasonably well designed, although with a couple of hiccups. We've yet to feel that we've ever gotten control over the enemy forces. It's almost always felt easier to leave non significant enemies alive than wipe out their unit. Perhaps this will be different later on when racking up lots of damage becomes easier. I think there's a few pillars to the game. 1) Reinforcement Token Control 2) Aggro Generation Control 3) Activation Efficiency 4) Enemy Model Control Maximising for those 4 pillars I think is crucial to crushing the EI. Some examples: Having a character good at Stealth helps with Reinforcement Token Control and Activation Efficiency, as would something like Jazz's versatile skill. Having a character be able to do significant damage in one hit (such as a stacked SMG Uma) is great for Enemy Model Control as death is the best CC. Having characters that can clear multiple enemies on their own turn covers Aggro Generation Control. I feel most characters have at least 2 sorts of build paths you can go along and can cover different events of the above. The best you'll get is when a team tries to work out builds and tactics that cover each other and turn you from a ragtag bunch into a team of true Operators. One thing that frustrates me about the game is the lack of variety in the equipment. Some weapons are just the optional pick (Looking at you SMG, Hacking Device Plus and Assault Helmet), and because of how good the basic pistol is, it's almost worthless to take any stops in between towards your final builds main weapon set. Why anyone would choose an Assault or Killer Hacking Device is beyond me. And the complete lack of support for "Support" weapons feels kinda bad (you can never live the Feuerbach Dream and be better on average than someone with a Pistol and an Assault Helmet). I hope that future waves introduce more varied weapon options, build support for under utilised weapons (Shotguns and Support).
I'm pretty sure he means any support beyond initial KS goals, since their statement about "buy KS, available only here and now, no retail release" clearly shows their lack of interest in developing Defiance any further. With only 5300 backers there's no point making any more campains since it won't be profitable (unless they run them all through KS, but still sales would be lower). I only hope for some kind of campain builder in one of these expansions so the game will not be collecting dust in a year or so...
Well he'd be wrong to mean that because the guy he replied to was asking about whether or not there'd be support for different weapon types later, and there's certainly room for that in the expansions.