Descent: Journeys in the Dark and Baldur's Gate

This is a single blog about two subjects, so bear with me. I really wanted to talk about both, and I haven’t written in a few days, so I figured I’d get them all out on the table at once.

Descent: Journeys in the Dark

A game of Descent in progress.

A couple of nights ago, Bridget and I sat down to try out Descent. For those of you who don’t know, Descent is an adventure board game, that frankly is just an RPG in board game packaging. It’s made by Fantasy Flight Games, so its quality is very high.

I’ve had the game for more than 3 years now (probably more like 4) and have never actually played it. I would occasionally open it up, look at the pieces, sort some of the tokens, but never did anything with it. There was so much to take in, I just sort of froze up.

So a couple of nights ago, we decided to sit down and figure it out. After Bridget drew two random heroes (Silhouette, a female assassin and Twohorns, the Minotaur fighter) and I set up all the things I needed according to the rules. We began working our way through the game, only to discover…

it’s actually really easy! All our concerns over complexity were alleviated as we realized that all the rules are pretty straightforward.

Additionally, like everyone said when we begged the question: “What do you do when your players don’t show up?” we could definitely see playing this on days when everyone’s not there. Also, with Fantasy Flight’s rules for making your own hero, everyone could design their heroes from D&D in Descent, and play them in that game as well!

In the end, we only made it through the first room of the first scenario before deciding that we should pack it up for the night. Now that we know how it’s played, it should move much faster.

I would definitely go and pick this thing up if you can.

Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance

A screenshot from Dark Alliance

I had picked this game up a little while ago, used, for my PS2. I thought it might be a good game for me and Bridget to play some evenings, working together through the game.

So we sat down and played it last night. I began playing as a Human Archer before switching over to Dwarf Fighter once I realized I was using my Archer to charge head-first into battle. Bridget played the Elven Sorceress. It was a blast!

We used the tactic of standing outside the door, opening it and both of us running in, where I would start hacking things to bits while she mowed them down with burning hands. I think it worked out pretty well. We took down a ton of giant rats, some Kobolds, some goblins, and the biggest of baddies so far: A couple of Bugbears (not bad for two 2nd level heroes).

Bridget and I both like that fairly well invokes some d20 elements in there, making it accessible and understandable (when I couldn’t figure out why she was getting charged less by the merchant for equipment, she suggested it was because she had higher Charisma. Sure enough, it was true!).

If you’re looking at picking up a good hack-and-slash game that is easily recognizable and familiar, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance is the way to go.