For years, Fantasy Flight Games’ Arkham Horrorwas the game to go to for your <PERSON> fix, and along with its roaring success came expansion after expansion, each bloating what was already an overblown game into some gargantuan behemoth. Finally, in 2011, Fantasy Flight released the Miskatonic Horrorexpansion for Arkham, its sole responsibility being to somehow tie in everything that came before it. There have been no more expansions since. Two years later, a new game based on the same Mythos, Eldritch Horror, was released, with its goal being to simplify and streamline. It would have been unfair to compare the two games at this stage simply because one had grown, the other had still to incorporate any additions. Christmas 2014, though, brought Eldritch’s second expansion – and first big-box one – so we can now compare. Which is ‘better’?
I’m going to save you a lot of reading now, and skip directly to my conclusion. You should buy Eldritch Horror. This is the answer to a different question, however. I’m not saying Eldritch is better – bizarrely, I still prefer Arkham – but the son has usurped the father in almost every comparison that a gamer looks for. Read further if you’re interested in finding how my perverse conclusion came to be.
Let’s begin with the very first game of both editions. I first played Arkham around eighteen months ago, solo, having watched three run-throughs. The game lasted around three hours – more, actually, if you factor in tea breaks and quiet time to rest my poor wheezy brain – and countless references to the rules. When the game was over, I was emotionally spent. Arkham Horror weaved a tale so intricate, so refined, that I genuinely cared about the characters and dreaded turning over Mythos cards. I knew I’d made some rules errors, but the narrative held me totally in its spell. It took me ages to get to sleep that night, with all the stories spinning in my head. I won the game, which led me to believe that perhaps there wasn’t as much skill involved as there could be.
My first game of Eldritch was two months ago. Again, I watched a couple of playthroughs first in order to familiarise myself. I won this one too, so skill didn’t seem to be a great consideration. The game took a smidge over two hours, with no breaks, and I think I may have referred to the rulebook twice. 857
With evil defeated, I packed everything away and pretty much forgot the whole thing. I slept like a log. But dang, playing the game was such a blast. The game flowed in a way that Arkham didn’t – and probably never has – and, for the game’s duration, was thrilling. Conclusion: if Arkham Horror is a book, Eldritch Horror is the movie adaptation.
Arkham has three big-box expansions, four small-box, and the aforementioned Miskatonic super-glue expansion. I bought them all, and then had to figure out a way to store them all. I wrote a few months ago how I bought a suitcase and created a foamcore insert for it to make it super-duper. I bought custom dice, an Arkham dice tray, and still continue my pimping of the game even now. There’s a nifty monster bag I’ve got my eye on. This is what Arkham does well; it envelops you so that you become a collector. But I digress.
With expansions on-board, I started playing Arkham with a friend, someone of a similar experience level as mine. These were all-night affairs, kicking off at 6.30 and ending at midnight, totally spent. I can still picture some of the scrapes we got into as we battled, and the growing dread as we realised that we were simply powerless to conquer. Each expansion ramps up the difficulty, and Arkhamites get a perverse satisfaction in making the game as difficult to beat as possible. It’s less of a game, more of an exercise in self-flagellation.
Conversely, I taught my wife to play Eldritch. I’d never classify her as a gamer, but she will take time out occasionally to give things a go. She absolutely LOVED the game. She cheered successes, pouted (cutely, I might add, in case she reads this) when we failed an encounter, and the next day asked to play again. This has never happened before. She ‘got’ what we needed to do, and the best way to go about it. I showed her Arkham one time – only a turn or two – and her blank, bored expression was priceless. 504