The image above belongs to its respective owner, not me
Today I will be giving you my first impressions of the board game The Others: 7 Sins. I was able to play this game for the first time yesterday and, since each game can last a good deal of time, wasn't able to play too many games, so no full review on it for now.
So this is a horror based strategy game where one player controls one of the seven deadly sins while the other player(s) control the various members of the military team, F.A.I.T.H. (Federal Authority for the Interdiction of the Transdimensional Horrors). Each member of the team has various perks and stats, some of which are more powerful than others. The sins have various creatures that it sends out ahead of itself, most of which aren't too difficult to beat once the military team start to upgrade. When the monsters are attaching, they can inflict two different things on the heroes; they can cause health damage and corruption. Each hero character can take five health damage before they die (there are ways to heal), but the corruption is where it gets interesting. Each level of corruption that a hero gets will increase their power and ability to win a fight, ranging from an extra dice to roll to automatically adding one successful attack to any rolls. This, added on top of any upgrades, can be a huge game changer. Too much corruption can be a problem though, for after a hero hits the maximum benefits from corruption, any additional corruption will count as hits against health. It's a risk/reward scenario that needs to be monitored and adjusted in order to succeed.
While this may sound like the game favors the heroes, don't rush to fight for the heroes yet. The sins have plenty of their own tricks and benefits, including stronger monsters that can be summoned if the conditions are correct. There is also an apocalypse tracker that makes the game more difficult for the heroes each round. On top of all of that, there are fires around the board that can hurt any hero that enters or leaves a space that has it based on a skill check, as well as corruption tokens that work in the same way. The monsters' dice also include only four results instead of six, meaning that two of the results have twice as many chances to land. On both sides of the board there is also a lot of benefit to grouping together for fights, granting any hero or monster that shares a space with another hero or monster an additional dice to roll. In terms of win conditions, the monsters just need to kill all of the heroes in order to win. The heroes, on the other hand, need to complete certain goals that vary from map to map, and as I mentioned before, it pays for the heroes to take care of their objectives as quickly as possible because of the apocalypse tracker.
So the game is a lot of fun. It takes less time than some other strategy games that I've played before, like Eldritch Horror, but that doesn't take away from the fun that I had. It's also not the most difficult strategy game in the world, though I wasn't playing the more difficult maps when I got a chance to try it out. Unlike Descent, which I still believe requires house rules in some instances, the rules in here mostly work well how they are. The only rule that we updated was one about heroes leaving a space that contains a monster, which is supposed to cause 1 immediate damage. After some consideration, we decided that it would make more sense to role for the damage on the monster's side, but that one isn't any big deal (mostly because I rarely shy away from a fight). A cool aspect of the game as well is the fact that the city helping the heroes is something that is incorporated in the game. Healing, reducing corruption, upgrade chests, and even a laser strike from a satellite are all there because the people of the city want to assist the heroes in their quest to save the world.
One thing that did take a little bit to get used to was one of the easier things to generally grasp, the spaces. The different tiles aren't the spaces of the game, instead the spaces are defined by crosswalks in the street that often happen in the middle of a section of the board. Again, it's not a difficult concept, but it took me a bit to get used to the crack of the board not meaning that I was moving from one space to another. However, once you do get used to it, this can really work to your advantage when planning an attack, as a character can cross a map in just a turn or two. There are also several expansions on the base game (since the base game only comes with two sins, Sloth and Pride), and one of these expansions includes the four horseman of the apocalypse. Those horseman, along with all of the characters actually, have very detailed and all around fantastic figures. The low-level creatures in the game are pretty creepy, and the bosses can be outright frightening.
Overall, I liked this game a lot. It's not the simplest game I've ever played, but it doesn't take a lot of gaming experience to jump into this one and have a good time. I look forward to getting a bit more time with this one and learning some more of the ins and outs. If you like strategy games or horror, this could easily be a game to check out.
I give The Others: 7 Sins a 9 out of 10.
Sincerely,
The Bored Enthusiast
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