Blood Bowl 2 Review

Blood Bowl 2 is a turn-based strategy game about American Football, in a fantasy setting, and missing out on 90% of the rules that the real-life sport has. You as the player can create, manage and control your team on and off the pitch, playing competitive games against other players or AI-controlled opponents to earn points for each player and level them up to stardom. Players can gain skills and abilities to make them more proficient on the pitch but don’t get too attached because death is permanent and the threat of a debilitating injury is ever-present.

Meet the Team

In the base game (many buyable extras were added at later dates) there are 8 teams, or races, to choose from: Humans, Orcs, Dwarves, Skaven (Rat People), High Elves, Dark Elves, Bretonnians (Knights and Peasants) and Chaos. Each race has their own unique roster of player types you can buy to fill out the team list. For balance, there is a limit to the number of each player type, and each player type also has a cost which must be taken into consideration. Do you go for a more expensive roster, or sacrifice a few positions to get an apothecary with the aim to buy those players you are missing with your earnings from matches? While in theory there are a lot of customisation options, it does become readily apparent what the best lineup for each team tends to be, and so any other roster will only seemingly put you at a disadvantage. However, Blood Bowl 2 makes up for this with the sheer number of different teams available- even though they must be bought separately as part of a different edition of the game or as a DLC.

All in all there are 24 teams available in Blood Bowl 2 which provides an option for any style of play that you wish. Want to run the ball and make outrageous passes? Try the Wood Elves, High Elves or Skaven. Want to forget about the ball entirely and focus on dealing as much damage to the opposing team as possible? Try Chaos, Undead or Orcs. Want a good mix of both? Try Humans, Amazon or Bretonnian. Each team has their own set of strengths, weaknesses and playstyles to experiment with. This makes Blood Bowl 2 cater to everyone and all players should be able to find a team they like and want to play with, meaning everyone will be able to have fun with their own team.

And the customisation options only increase as you begin to play with your team. Provided you are not playing a ‘Friendly Match’, where nothing that happens will affect your team in any way outside of that game, your players will earn points as they score, make passes, injure or kill other players. Once a player reaches enough points in a game (provided they survive the rest of that game) they will have the opportunity to level up. When you go on that player’s profile, dice will be rolled (as they are for everything- which we will get onto later) and, depending on the number rolled, you can choose a skill to give that player permanently. This will differ for every player type for each team, as different players have restricted access to different things. For example, a Wood Elf lineman would need to roll a higher number to get access to a strength-based skill than a Chaos Warrior would. By letting you give your players new skills, the player can customise everyone on their team, and their team as a whole, by choosing skills to specialise in certain aspects. For example, you could give a Blitzer the ‘Strip Ball’ ability and now they are an extra scary threat to ball carriers. It's these options upon options and choices upon choice that really let you give a personal touch to each and every one of your players and the team as a whole and it gives the player a good amount of freedom to do what they wish with their squad of elite or not-so-elite players.

Rolling The Dice

So how does all this fantasy football translate into actual gameplay? Each game is split into two, eight-turn halves, following a kickoff and any number of drives determined by how many touchdowns are scored within those turns. Your commentators are immortal vampire Jim Johnson and ogre Bob Bifford, who provide funny (at least initially) commentary that differs according to what happens on the pitch. They are enjoyable to listen to at first, but by the twentieth time I hear the same phrase, I got a little tired of them.

Blood Bowl 2 is a game about risk management and strategy. Nearly every action a player can do, with the exception of simply moving (provided they are not standing next to an opponent or moving more than they are usually able to), is determined by a dice roll. These dice rolls are done by a computer in the background and they make the very core of the game. For example, a player moves onto the ball and attempts to pick it up. Depending on their Agility value, the player has a varying chance of successfully picking up the ball. The roll to pick up the ball itself is conducted by the computer, completely off-screen with the exception of a little log of dice rolls you can view at any time. So this is where the main strategy of Blood Bowl 2 comes in, as any failed action will result in a ‘Turnover’- prematurely ending your turn and moving on to your opponent. This leaves the player needing to make decisions of whether they should do a certain action or not, taking into consideration what the potential impact is if it fails.

Nearly everything you could do involves this level of risk that it all goes wrong. Making attacks (or ‘Blocks’) will match up your players' Strength value against their opponent’s, including any modifiers and roll more dice. Equal Strength results in a single die, higher Strength results in two, double results in three, less results in two dice that your opponent will choose the outcome for and finally half results in three dice your opponent chooses the outcome for. The Block dice have the following faces: Defender Down, Defender Stumbles (is down unless they have the ‘Dodge’ ability), Push, Both Players Down and Attacker Down. These results, like everything, are generated randomly, and while there are ways to mitigate this risk, I could talk forever about it and it's better you go explore those options yourselves.

This reliance on the random element is a massive double-edged sword. Yes, it's the main draw of the game and would never be changed for anything, but it can get extremely frustrating at times. I have had games where everything went wrong all the time. Need to pick up the ball and score to tie up the game? Nope, the computer rolled a 1 and my player dropped the ball, losing the match. Have a really big strength advantage and roll 3 dice to squish a little goblin? Nope, the computer rolled three ‘Attacker Down’ faces. Need to just go that one step further than normal? Nope, the computer rolled a 1 and my player fell flat on his face. Plus, it can get worse with injury rolls. Every player has an Armour Value and a roll is made when they are hit. If the result exceeds that value, another roll is made to determine if they are stunned, knocked unconscious, injured (which yet another roll determines the nature) or killed. So now, imagine the scenario where a star player runs that one step further, falls over and dies. They are gone forever over something so tiny as that, and it does happen- way more than you would think. Or even worse, the computer rolls poorly for the kickoff event and a fan throws a rock at a player, which hits your star player and kills him before the match starts. Yet on the other hand the dice can be really favourable and it feels amazing when everything goes right. Despite all decision-making and risk management you can do, at its very core, nothing is really in your control and it's this game design that I really have a love-hate relationship with.

Finally, Blood Bowl 2 has a roughly 18 hour long single-player campaign where you take over managing the Human team the ‘Reikland Raiders’ and their journey from nobodies to stardom. The campaign matches also have unique one-time events (such as a helicopter crash) that you must play around. It’s a fun and unique twist on the regular games that offers more enjoyment through its twists and turns, but is still the same game at its heart.

Verdict

Fantasy Football taken literally, Blood Bowl 2 lets you control teams of many different races to play against, score on, and beat the living daylights out of other teams. The game relies on a random element of dice rolls which, being out of the player’s control, can (and will) feel unfair at times and amazing at others. Risk management can only go so far when there is a random chance anything could fail.