I'm as excited as the next dungeon delver to hear that a new game in the genre is released. Maybe it's the pen-and-paper gamer in me, but I'm never able to get behind these fantasy adventure games either as good games, or as adequate replacements for the real thing.
Take Tomb, for instance. The tag line is about as in-your-face D&D as you can get. The graphic design and most of the art is beautiful, the rulebook is laid out in an interesting fashion, and the components don't have the 'we shrunk it to save money on production' feel to them. However, what was probably a great idea on paper falls flat on execution.
You can find excellent summaries of the rules in the other reviews, so I won't give you my own. What I will do is list and detail my issues with the game, and attempt to explain how they cause the game to fall short of its promise.
1) Party sizes are too big.
The largest crypts in the basic game hold 5 cards. However, since those cards are placed by players, and treasure is cooler to collect than monsters, it's unlikely that any crypt will have more than 2 monsters in it. In my initial play [5 players, 3 hours], this was the case, and a few crypts had a single monster guarding 2-4 pieces of loot.
Once the monsters are confronted, it will get 1 attack on the character of the player's choice [the one with the most HP or best defenses, naturally] and then the player will have up to 5 attacks on the monster before it can attack again. Since most monsters die to an average of 2-3 attacks, assuming average rolls and equipment, those monsters will probably not get a second attack. If one of the monsters is one of the 'lowbie' monsters [low HP, probably intended for smaller parties or first fights], they will probably die to my first attacker and never get to swing at all.
2) Allowing the banking of Loot for XP after equipping it is a bad idea.
If I can collect XP for anything I encounter, I'll always be able to use the best gear I get - the decision of XP or usage doesn't exist. 884
Because my party is so large, I'll always be able to kill off the unequipped, saving my XP for the next inn visit or the end of the game.
3) There's way too much to read at the start of the game.
Each player chooses 1 of 5 drawn adventurers at the start of the game, then places an equal portion of the 30 or so crypt cards, reading a few extra that they don't place. Before my first in-game decision, I have encountered more game text than I would have in any CCG session. Then I have to read the unchosen 4*num_players character cards to make the first hiring decision, taking my opponent's chosen characters into account to ensure my #2 pick isn't taken before my second chance to recruit.
Also, let me add that none of this is especially fun in and of itself - we're here to be pillaging and cracking skulls, not stretching our less-than-eidetic memories to the brink in a bizarre version of the SAT reading comprehension section. Doing this all as a 1st time player, when I probably don't fully understand the repercussions of all of these choices I'm being asked to make, is preposterous.
Added to this is the sense that you will actually be able to follow all 2-5 of your opponent's moves. Who placed multiple times to a crypt, who played the card they drew last turn, who placed the last card in each crypt, who filled the single-card crypts. This is all extremely valuable information, added in to a system that already asks too much from most players, and can be the difference between a fun progression in power and several instant defeats in the same game.
4) Monster/Player noun swapping leads to confusion and frustration.
The portion of the spell and item decks that require a player turn to use is, by definition, useless to a monster - they don't get turns. So too is any ability that references movement, the Inn, dead characters, or equipment attached to the user. The decision to allow the monsters draw 3 or more cards in hopes that one of them may be relevant to the situation does not fix this obviously broken dangling participle of a game mechanic.
5) Most of the spells aren't attacks.
Any 1-3 HP, 1-green attack die characters are horrible. Give them the ability to, say, increase your movement speed or flee to the Inn faster, and they still aren't worth playing. And how do you compensate for this? Make the player spend extra turns drawing from a spell deck hoping for a card that allows him to interact with the game in a meaningful manner, while watching those cards get drawn and discarded by monsters instead. 884