Well, I finally got a hold of this beast. Didn't really plan to, because not only do I not have a room for a truck-sized box, nor people to play it regularly with (or even irregularly), but there is really so much you can do when you see an ad for the #1 BGG game on sale, mint condition, bargain-priced. Well, bargain-priced considering it's actual price, not as in "well I do have some loose change in my pocket as a matter of fact, so why don't you be a good lad and throw that huge orange cardboard brick over here yonder".
So it arrived and I realized how much trouble I was in, since this wasn't one of those games you can just quickly shove on the boardgame shelf and pretend it was always there so your wife can then pretend she believes you. This called for an emergency "B strategy", also known as "I bought this as an investment", or "I got a good price for this, I will play it for a bit and then resell it for profit"... which, btw, is why you NEVER tell your wife about legacy games (unless you really really want to play Pandemic:S1with her).
So I got this. I played with it for a bit. I tried to pitch it to the people I occasionally game with (results below). And now I'm writing a short review.
So what is in this huge monstrosity
In short - a lot of stuff. But you've seen it all already. The game has been around for a while, and come on, it's #1 on BGG, there's no way in hell this is the first review you are reading about it.
If I had to describe what Gloomhaven is in the fewest words possible, I would say it's an Eurotrash legacy dungeon crawler (and yes, I used the term Eurotrash, because I know you know what I mean by the term, and not what that dude over there would mean by that term, unless that dude over there is also perusing BGG like you are right now, which he isn't, because look at him, can you imagine that dude playing boardgames? Seriously.)
Gloomhaven is obviously inspired by computer games. It has unlockables. It has achievements. It has.. grinding. 304
You don't die, you just respawn (unless you are a fan of dying, in which case, sure, you can die. Seriously, go, die, it's not a problem, the game won't mind.) The game has piles of stuff upon piles of stuff upon piles of stuff. It's truly overwhelming when you first see it. Intimidating even.
However, and this is what honestly surprised me, at the heart of those piles of stuff there is a deceptively simple hand management game with a tiny hint of deckbuilding. Simple as in "requires very few components", not "devoid of intelligence". I honestly think that you could remove 95% of the game's contents, abstract the theme even, and you would have an ingenious little puzzler of having a tiny deck of cards which you want to play in an optimal order before the timer runs out - and the timer is that same little deck of cards which gradually gets smaller after each reshuffle.
Yes, this is the essence of Gloomhaven. It's as if someone took a typical Ameritrash Dungeon Crawler, surgically removed the dice and then grafted a completely unrelated abstract Euro puzzler. Only for some inexplicable reason you do not end up with some sort of unplayable monstrosity, but rather the two extremes somehow start feeding off each other and create a wonderful, inseparable synergy. It's uncanny.
How does this work? In this game your character basically does not have any stats beyond his/her HP. The deck is everything. It's your speed, it's your moves, it's your stamina, it's your energy. Each turn you pick two cards, which represent your available actions, but it's not just a matter of one card - one action. Each card offers two choices, but each is printed on the top or bottom section of the card, and you can never play actions from the same "sides" - one has to come from the top, other from the bottom. Complicated? No? Just wait. Each card also has an initiative number, which dictates how quickly you will act, so you must take that into account too - do you want to act fast, or slow (perhaps you want to let the enemies come to you instead of you running towards them)? But once you pick the two cards, you also pick which initiative number will be the "leading" one, meaning it will completely overrule the second number. 237