Game 1: Base game + Dead of Night + Under Dark Waves + Secrets of the Order (Approach of Azathoth)
Game 2: Base game + Dead of Night + Under Dark Waves + Secrets of the Order (Approach of Azathoth, Story Mode)
Enthusiasm: ❤️❤️❤️❤️
- The third edition of Arkham Horror is the followup to one of the games that helped popularize cooperative board games, the second edition of Arkham Horror (who would have thought?). It’s built upon a lot of Fantasy Flight Games’ various games that followed after the release of the second edition, including Eldritch Horror, Fallout: The Board Game, and Arkham Horror: The Card Game.
- The biggest differences are the modular board to limit locations and the use of the Archive to direct the plot.
- By moving away from the one-size-fits-all approach that the second edition took (either collecting clues and going through portals or just beating down the Elder God), each scenario feels more different from the others.
- In the normal difficulty of the game, at least for the Approach of Azathoth scenario, the plot is driven at a more punishing pace, much more similar to Pandemic.
- The Blessed/Cursed conditions continue to be extremely powerful (in both directions). My wife became extremely frustrated when Cursed due to her inability to pass tests.
- The location-specific decks in Arkham Horror continue to really help build the feel of the locations - other FFG’s games with location decks have much more generic encounters.