Arkham Horror Review
Arkham Horror Review
If you thought H.P. Lovecraft’s horror stories couldn’t get any creepier, then you clearly haven’t tried to solve one yourself. Well, here’s your chance. Dive into our ultimate Arkham Horror review… before you lose your sanity. Read our Arkham Horror Board Game Review below.
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- SCARY STRATEGY GAME: Players take on the role of Arkham...
- COOPERATIVE MYSTERY GAME: Players work as a team to gather clues,...
Brief Overview of Arkham Horror (Third Edition)
The third edition of Arkham Horror is a co-operative strategy and dice game for three-to-six players. Set in the mid-1920s in HP Lovecraft’s seemingly always-doomed fictional city of Arkham, you can probably already guess it’s no walk in the park.
Taking on the role of investigators, your team must save the city from ghoulish beings that are emerging through portals from another dimension. As you play, you uncover clues and unlock story cards that advance the narrative towards your objective, with the success of your actions largely relying on a dice-based mechanic.
But it’s not all that simple. New monsters and gates from Cthulhu Mythos are appearing all the time. Will you be able to reach your goal before you are overrun?
Unboxing Arkham Horror
Those brave enough to open the can of worms that is Arkham Horror will find inside:
- 1 Rules Reference
- 12 Map Tiles
- 4 Scenario Sheets
- 12 Investigator Sheets, tokens and plastic stands
- 469 cards
- 271 tokens
I was really excited to get inside Arkham Horror, as it blends together a bunch of themes I have a real soft spot for. The mish-mash of the smoky 1920s Prohibition Era and a dank, ghoulish pulp horror series really is right up my scary, apparently deserted, alley. And, with a lot of cards and components in the box, there were plenty of opportunities for it to shine through.
The artwork and design are brilliant. The cards and game board modules, for example, brilliantly set the scene of the various districts and locations you could be visiting, like Downtown, Northside, or the Merchant District.
The tokens, too, are all brightly colored and, covered in icons like big magnifying glasses or oversized dollar bills, help set the scene as well.
Arkham Horror Rulebook (3rd Ed.)
It’s worth mentioning the rulebook too. It’s wonderfully written. From the scene-setting introduction to the playful explanations, it’s a nice tribute to HP Lovecraft’s work. And, thankfully, it avoids drawing from the author’s tendency for archaic and lengthy descriptions, compacting everything into a very concise 15 pages. (Although there is an additional rules reference with some clarifications.)
The game board modules are pretty cool. They mean each game can be set up slightly differently and adapted to the game in question (admittedly, this doesn’t make a huge amount of sense considering it’s all the same city). After a few plays, they might get a bit battered, but they generally fit together very well.
Lastly, it’s worth bearing in mind that while there are a lot of cards, you won’t be using them all in each game, as most will be for other scenarios.
How to Play Arkham Horror
Setup
First off, select the scenario you want to play and arrange the map tiles, event, and monster decks as explained on the scenario sheet. Separately, take the Archive cards for your scenario and keep them stacked in order – these will narrate your game and add new rules as you progress.
Every player then chooses an investigator sheet and takes their starting possessions before putting the relevant investigator token on the listed starting location.
Finally, put into effect any Archive card rules listed on the scenario by placing them next to the board in the ‘CODEX’.
Your Objective
There are several scenarios you can play in Arkham Horror’s third edition, all with different winning conditions. I will be careful not to give away any of the storylines, as this is such an important part of this game. However, you can be sure that thwarting the onslaught of some gruesome monsters as they spill through multidimensional gates to terrorize Arkham is going to be a big part of it.
Game Turns
Regardless of the scenario you’re playing, turns take place over four phases. Players must all take their actions in each phase before moving on to the next one.
Phase 1: Action
Players get to take two of the following actions:
- Move – move up to two spaces on the board, or pay to move more.
- Attack or evade a monster.
- Gather resources – receive a dollar!
- Focus – get a focus token. These can be spent to reroll a die in a skills check (explained below).
- Ward – resolve a lore skills check.
- Research – resolve a research skills check to add a clue to the scenario sheet.
- Trade – exchange items with other investigators.
- Component – use an action on one of your component cards.
Phase 2: Monster
Now it’s the monsters’ turn to attack, move or activate. Depending on the monster type (hunter, patroller, or lurker) the nature of their actions will differ. Hunters will track down their nearest investigator. Patrollers will head towards and defend certain locations. While lurkers will hang around and cause some kind of negative effect on their surroundings (like the guy that wants to talk politics at a party…).
Phase 3: Encounter
Take and resolve an encounter for the location you are in. The locations on the board have symbols reflecting what kind of encounter you’re likely to come up against, giving you the chance to play to your skills.
On finishing an event encounter, you’ll be rewarded with a chance to earn a clue, which you will need to advance through the scenario.
If you’re currently engaged with a monster, you skip this phase, as you have more pressing concerns.
Phase 4: Mythos
During this phase, each player takes two mythos tokens at random and resolves their effects. This could result in all manner of monstrous events, from spawning new monsters or upping your level of ‘doom’, through to a ‘gate burst’, to name just a few.
Skill Tests
Skill tests make up a bulk of the mechanics of the game, such as when attacking a monster, or a lore test.
To do so, you roll a number of dice determined by your level of skill for what’s being tested. For every 5 or 6 you roll, that is a success.
The number of dice you roll can be modified, such as by the items in your possessions, or your enemy’s powers. You are also able to reroll dice if you have a focus token.
Staying Alive
Your investigator’s health is measured both mentally and physically. If you rack up enough damage or horror points, your character will be defeated and removed from the game. The city of Arkham also suffers, adding a doom token to the scenario sheet (which is quite sweet, when you think about it).
You’re not totally out of the game, though. Instead, you get to rejoin with a new character from afresh.
Moving Through The Game
Your band of investigators must explore the city of Arkham, completing the objectives on the Archive cards while quelling the advance of monsters emerging from mythos. Each scenario will have a different ending, and often quite what that is will only become clear as the game unfolds.
Your First Game of Arkham Horror
It’s probably worth making clear when a player must battle a monster. On your action turn, if your investigator moves into a space with a ready monster, then the monster ‘engages’ you.
If the monster is already engaged or is exhausted from a previous battle, then you get away this time.
Otherwise, you choose whether to attack the monster. If not, then you must try to evade it, which is done with an observation skill test, modified by the monster’s evade level.
You can also be attacked by a monster on the monsters’ turn if they move into your space. In this instance, they simply deal damage to you and there’s no escaping it.
Versions & Expansions
Dead of Night
The Dead of Night expansion largely tops up the components you get in the base game, rather than introducing fresh ideas, including new encounters, headlines, items and allies. However, it also includes two extra scenarios, giving you a nice batch of new gameplay and story to unpick, along with some more investigators.
It’s a perfect expansion for those that have already played through the original storylines and want more of the same.
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- THRILLING HORROR GAME: In Dead of Night, investigators explore...
- COOPERATIVE MYSTERY GAME: Players work as a team to investigate...
Under Dark Waves
The 2nd expansion of the third edition brings us to unknown depths. This expansion adds 2 new locations and 8 new investigators, and 150 cards worth of aquatic monstrosities.
- THIS IS AN EXPANSION TO THE ARKHAM HORROR 3RD EDITION BOARD GAME:...
- THRILLING HORROR GAME: In Dead of Night, investigators explore...
- COOPERATIVE MYSTERY GAME: Players work as a team to investigate...
Secrets of the Order
The latest expansion for the 3rd edition comes out in 2021 and brings us to the lovely French Hill which happens to hold a passage into the Underworld where creatures beyond imagination and horror nest and lurch in a maddening cacophony of abominations.
There are also 4 new investigators, 3 new scenarios, and over 100 new cards.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Co-operative strategy game
- Fantastic and immersive storyline
- Not overly complex
Cons:
- Might feel a bit lightweight for hardcore dungeon-crawl gamers
- Limited replayability
HP Lovecraft fan or not, the real joy of Arkham Horror is its ability to tell a story and engage the players into taking on the roles of the investigators. I can’t give too much away, but from the moment your characters are placed in their starting positions on the board, with their scenario-specific item load-outs, it was hard not to feel like part of it.
Every location has its own thematic conditions and encounters to address, and these are all tied skillfully into each scenario.
The strength of the story doesn’t take precedence over the gameplay, though. The balance is just right, with the mechanics being simple enough to keep everyone engaged in the story, but also more than complex enough to pose a real challenge.
In many ways, due to how the phases progressed, it might appear to be a dungeon-crawler style game. First, your team gets to explore, take actions and attack; then the monsters get a turn. Even the dice-rolling, which makes up the core mechanics of the game, echoed the genre.
Cooperative, Immersive Storyline
But it didn’t feel like a dungeon-crawler. For one, because of how ingrained the story-line is in the flow of the game. However, also because of its reliance on strategy and decision-making, rather than tactical combat. Most of your time will be spent devising and discussing elaborate combinations of the many actions available to you. Two each per turn will never feel like enough.
Similar to the likes of Pandemic or Robinson Crusoe, often you’ll find yourself torn between simply keeping your heads above water and actually progressing towards your objective. Often, it’ll be a matter of simply deciding on what the least damaging sacrifice you can make is as the monsters gnaw away at your beloved Arkham.
This is where some gamers may find it a little frustrating. With so few actions per turn, the amount you actually get to do is quite limited, especially if it’s largely just a clean-up operation.
Sacrifice to the Dice Gods
The dice rolling element, too, can be a pain. I usually don’t have a problem with randomness and dice-rolling in a game. However, when you went to pains to devise the perfect strategy with only six actions, to then have it totally undermined with one dice roll was pretty disheartening.
It’s worth mentioning, too, that with the reliance on story here, Arkham Horror’s replayability is limited. Thankfully, the expansions go some way to addressing this, but the base game will lose some of its charm once you’ve run through all the scenarios once.
TL;DR
Arkham Horror is a co-operative, story-based strategy game in which players must explore the city of Arkham, uncover clues and battle monsters that have been spilling through multidimensional gates from Cthulhu Mythos.
It’s absolutely dripping in narrative, and it’s easy to get immersed in the story as you play through it.
With lots to do and only so much time to do it in, the core of the game will be spent deliberating with your team the best actions to take each turn. This can be hugely entertaining, however, some players may find the dice resolutions a little too overbearing.
Conclusion: Verdict?
For any fans of cooperative strategy games, Arkham Horror’s third edition is definitely worth adding to your list. This is a game that requires extensive teamwork to win, as there’s no way you’ll be able to do everything you need to on your own. Instead, it’s a real joint effort, in which players will find themselves in deep discussion as they identify how best to use their strengths and actions to their best advantage on each turn.
For those that prefer a more tactical monster battle, the combat itself might feel a little one-dimensional. While the randomness of the dice-rolls can also limit the strategy side of things somewhat. However, if you ask me, this is more than made up for by Arkham Horror’s engrossing narrative, and the brilliant way it brings to life the world of Arkham and Cthulhu Mythos on the table-top.
- THRILLING GAME OF COSMIC HORROR: A dark shadow grows in the city...
- SCARY STRATEGY GAME: Players take on the role of Arkham...
- COOPERATIVE MYSTERY GAME: Players work as a team to gather clues,...
We hope you enjoyed our comprehensive Arkham Horror review.
Have you played the third edition of Arkham Horror? How did it compare to the old edition? Do you like Arkham or Eldritch Horror better?
Drop a comment below – we’d love to hear from you.
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