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Role playing games, or RPGs to those hip with the lingo, are so incredibly satisfying. It's a chance to drop reality for a few hours to take on the persona of someone else. There's no accountability and no requirements. Only a quest and a rich, vibrant world to explore. Euthia: Torment of Resurrection is a role playing, tile laying game for 1-4 players with a tonne of moving parts and many changing elements. It aims to feed that feeling of freedom and enable you to save the world. But not as a chosen one or someone destined for it, but as an average Joe hero who doesn't fancy being dragon food!
Please note- The copy of Euthia received for review is a preproduction one, meaning that what we have access to may not be the whole thing in the final product. As with many Kickstarter campaigns, things change and develop. Our impressions for this preview are based solely on this copy.
Set Up
Euthia's set up is prescriptive and associates tiles to symbols on the boards. You can't really get it wrong, but you'll want to make sure you know the component names and rules thoroughly. Many of the rules are associated to components and, to enable streamlined learning, link to symbols too. There's a lot of symbolism associating to times and events in the game, and at first it can seem a little overwhelming. No arguments! But hold your weeping, there's a robust and informative glossary to enable you to quickly flick to the information you need. It explains specifics about lots of elements within it and spares no detail. Giving examples is handy, but what the glossary does is beyond that. It's like a pre-populated FAQ.
There are four boards that players share, and each player has one hero board and associated hero tiles. These are colour coded so you won't misplace the barbarians axe in a fight! The shared boards monitor or control an aspect of the game including the scenario's progression, market, and combat elements. There are three scenarios available and each has a slightly different set up. What's more is that the map tiles are varied and not all used in every game. Coupling that with the adaptable player abilities, and you've got an experience you won't have twice!
Playing the Game!
Euthia is an experience. A brilliantly, fantastic, in depth and fun experience. But it's a heavy one because of the level of depth it provides. The game isn't complicated, don't get me wrong it looks it, but playing it shows otherwise. It holds more of a competent complexity, as its structured in a common sense way. The game runs in rounds and follows a sequence. You don't have to access everything available in one round, and may never access some elements in the game, but they're there for you to do so. You simply need to know that you can choose to and there are benefits to doing so.
On their turn, players have three action tokens to use and they may save one until the next round. These enable them to mine, trade or enter combat as actions, or players use them for movement. However, these are specific to the actions and can't be used otherwise. It follows a true RPG action point style, and appealed to me as a video game RPG fan on that basis - it made it so much easier to pick up! Being able to get about the map is easy enough, and utilising the resources available is purposeful and handy. Combat, mining points and trading points are obvious to see based on their visuals and, in all honesty, you can't get it wrong - the cards have the symbols on them too!
The world of Euthia is built using modular tiles and it's a busy, thriving place. Lots of monsters, many natural resources, and plenty of quests. These became my choice of basic income and involved find and retrieve activities. My partner instead went for the "kill anything on sight" path. Both worked, and often led us to do other activities too out of convenience. What's more is how vibrantly alive the map looks with the things on it. All of it had purpose!
Abilities, Gear and Items
Much of Euthia: Torment of Resurrection's heroes' equipments, like their abilities, are unique to them, and enable them to use abilities. Players earn these by gaining reputation, and unlock, train in, and equip them at trade points. You can change these as necessary and re-train in abilities to be more adaptable as necessary. It also means your character is unique fits to a play style that fits you. The abilities you can learn are scaled based on their reputation value, but aren't all necessarily conflict based. Some work innately, others players activate out of combat. It means you can build a character to meet you play preference easily, helping you greatly if you're a lover and not a fighter!
We adores the gear in Euthia. It seems trivial, as it's just equipment. However, it's a robust and excellent system that has lots of potential for big set ups and manipulation. To start off, your hero is pretty fragile and has three sacks to store items. Gear enables you to increase health and storage capacity. It also allows you to equip gems, which are an incredibly useful tool!
Each gem type does something unique and can passively enable you to bolster yourself or enhance your chances of survival. If it's a passive bonus, it's permanent so long as it's equipped. If not, when used it is "tapped", in the same way abilities and gear skills may be. Tapped is where you've used the resources ability and cannot use it again this round. When a new round starts, all equipped tapped gear is reset. It means that you can, again, build a character with a series of extra actions to meet your play style.
Fighting and Combat
Combat feels very RPG-esque too and doesn't sit awkwardly like in other games we've played. You fight monsters controlled by other players, and they control the monster in its entirety. This can sometimes lead to passive monsters and generous players, but Euthia: Torment of Resurrection doesn't allow for that. The monsters want to kill, and I guarantee the players will too! The combat is dice based with rolls being bracketed into damage outcomes.
Combat takes place over five phases which translate to hero preparation, monster turn, hero turn. You prepare by healing, or using specific abilities. Then the monster rolls, then the monster attacks. The hero rolls, the hero attacks. These are specific phases where some abilities or items can be used to manipulate the outcomes. Gaar tokens in particular are excellent for manipulating outcomes here, as they force a re-roll and change results too.
Monsters are unique in the fact that, if they die or win, all their starting Gaar and Chaos tokens are removed. It means that if the attacking player doesn't use them they lose them! So there's no reason to hold back... Euthia is a competitive game after all, and the only way to win sometimes is to take out the competition by force! There are also monster ability cards that players can collect out of turn and keep. The Chaos tokens players get enable them to make use of these cards for extra nasty attacks. These make the monster you're playing as a much more formidable foe!
Taking It All In
Euthia's theme and visuals are wonderful. The scenarios are set out as a story where somethings going to happen, so you have to get ready. This usually entails a dragon coming to ruin everyone's day because it's what dragons do. You track this in rounds and it serves as a count down for players. However, this wasn't what drove us to succeed. I didn't want anyone becoming crispy because of exposure to a dragon, but I didn't want to lose more. It was the competition that drove me to want to beat the dragon, not the land of Euthia. But that's not to say the game held no theme - it just made me a selfish hero! The game's theme flows through it in a classic RPG way. Middle Ages, people in need, wizards, dark magic and shady happenings. It's the royal flush of RPG tropes!
What's more is the games visuals themselves. We've mentioned how well it enables you to identify components visually, but the art style is spot on, too! Nothing feels out of place and the whole thing sits neatly within the category of a medieval universe. Even things as trivial as the names of abilities were clearly designed for their characters. Sure, the ability reduces costs by four, but its name is what adds the flavour and makes it an experience! What's been done has been done incredibly well, and we can't praise the execution of the theme or art enough.
Final Thoughts
Euthia: Torment of Resurrection is a wonderful tabletop RPG with enough diversity to make it unique every time. Everything in it fits the theme and it includes a fair few unique elements to set it aside from others in similar categories. It's a long game, don't get me wrong, and no doubt one more casual gamers may be scared away from. However, anyone with any experience of RPGs or heavier tabletop games will feel right at home with this. It's flashy, clear with what it is, and gives you freedom. A worth while role playing game by all accounts!