Thinking about getting this, how is it?

Thinking about getting this, how is it?

Theme and flavor are great. In the actual game play department, it leaves a bit to be desired, but it's not abysmal. I find it a lot of fun, personally. Be prepared for imbalanced endgames.

It's not balanced, the game play can be clunky, but I basically always have fun with it. Don't read the scenarios ahead of time. Just grab a bunch of folks who are into casual games or who don't spazz out about losing or balance and have a blast.

Not very good. The game feels clunky, including the arbitrary parameters that start the haunt, and the fact that you need to outright stop play for 5-10 minutes to read the haunt scenario ruins the flow of the game.

It's alright. Have you got anything similar, like Mansion of Madness, already? If so, might as well skip it.

If not, then as long as you aren't paying through the nose for it...

If you play it with people who are used to complexity in their boardgames, you'll have fun. If you play with people who aren't and don't really want to learn, you'll just be bored.

It's a fun game, but the balance is pretty wonky. If the haunt (the betrayer is revealed) to early the betrayer almost always win, if the haunt happens to late the survivors almost always win. It's only about 1/4-5 game that feel interesting for both sides.

It's a good mindless party game. The other thing no one's mentioned balance-wise is that if the red guy is betrayer he pretty much automatically wins via punching the other players to death.

If you have Tabletop Simulator there's almost always a Betrayal game going on, you can play a few rounds and see what you think of it.

It's "board game setup, the board game."

No, really. You can't make any informed choices until the Haunt begins. You don't know if you're going to need areas in the Basement, Main Floor, or Upper Level, you don't know what items will be useful, you don't know whether the other players will be your friends or enemies. All you do is wander around trying to luck into good shit and luck out of bad shit until the game finally begins for real. At which point about half the time the game's already decided because someone chanced into what they needed to win.

It's quite fun honestly. Altho it's a bit frustrating when you have a perfect plan layed out and the traitor/survivors luck into the thing they need to win. But still, quite fun.

OX BELLOWS SMASH

>Everytime I play Ox the haunt always ends up being Sanity or Knowledge based...

I really, really, really liked the game. It's plenty replayable with tons of scenarios, characters and randomization. Games take about 1 hour, depending how lucky/unlucky you are with the Haunt rolls.

My fav. traitor scenario was the dolls. I lost it as the traitor, but it was fun as hell.

> You don't know if you're going to need areas in the Basement, Main Floor, or Upper Level, you don't know what items will be useful, you don't know whether the other players will be your friends or enemies.

Heal / Buff, don't make long corridors where the traitor or monsters can trap you, find a lot of items if you can. The traitor gets enough bonuses, plus, the chances are that you're NOT the traitor, so better go carefully.

It's fantastic, particularly if you stick to the same character each time you re-play and imagine that if you're all stuck in a Groundhog Day loop.

The best thing to do is play Ox and spend the whole time trying to break into the vault with your sub-par intelligence.

It's a lot more fun when you don't know what all the haunts, items, rooms, etc. are. Once you know them all the tension goes away and it doesn't feel spooky anymore.

I moderately enjoyed it the first five times I played, but now I'm just sort of over it. It feels samey to me now. Boring, unpolished, terrible rules. But there are plenty of people who like it and I'm not saying those people are wrong.

Inferior to Mansions of Madness, but with less set-up.

Garbage. lolsorandumb garbage.

The variety kind of kills it, at times.

Even beyond the overall trend that was talked about, sometimes the haunt triggers are just anti climatic as all fuck.

The one I remember most starkly is when we got the haunt where you had to purge the evil by bringing some item to the church. Turns out one of the survivors had the item and was already in the church, so bam, won game. Yea, the most extreme example, but things like this happen enough that you feel like you just wasted your time.

I prefer Arkam Horror

It's fun with 5 players. Any less and the haunt can turn lopsided fast.

It's very repetitive until the haunt begins. If the haunt begins too early, then the chances of the game becoming lopsided in the haunt's (or survivor's) favor increases tremendously.

That being said, having many haunts makes the game highly re-playable, and when the factors listed above do not occur, you get REALLY FUN GAMES!

Once you understand how the game works it becomes real shitty real fast. There's a real good chance that when the Haunt pops everything you've been doing for the last thirty minutes becomes totally irrelevant, and I'm not even talking about the entirely separate problem of the Haunt initiating sudden death and randomly ending the game in like two turns).

It's not totally awful, betrayer wins more often than not though

I think it's a lot of fun. Gets really spooky if you're the kind of guy who gets immersed in games.