However, in some areas it oversimplifies, such as with the character skills. Eldritch Horror gives players set skills with the ability to improve them, which takes time away from other, more urgent game tasks. Arkham Horror groups character skills into sets of two that relate to one another, such as Sneak and Speed, and allows players to adjust these somewhat at the beginning of every turn, with the catch that, for example, if you increase your character's Sneak it is at the expense of their Speed. This makes skill improvement into a strategic decision, where in Eldritch improving skills is semi-random and turn-consuming.
We played Arkham Horror recently for the first time since getting Eldritch, and one thing that struck me was how much more depth there is to the older game, almost overwhelmingly so. Granted, we have several hundred dollars invested in Arkham expansions, and to compare that to just the Eldritch base game isn't even remotely fair. But part of the point of this blog is to assess these games within the context of our game collection, so we have to look at the whole package. I have no doubt that Eldritch will soon have at least as much expansion content available, but do I really want or need to invest in all that content, when Arkham already has more expansions than I can handle?
The answer would be yes, if we preferred Eldritch to Arkham, even more so if we intended Eldritch to be a replacement, or truly found it to be different enough that we would play both regularly. But I don't think that is the case. For all its clunkiness, we are finding that we prefer Arkham. The games are similar enough that we're playing Eldritch instead of Arkham, and not having as much fun with it. Which isn't to say that one is a better game than the other, and in all honesty I would probably recommend Eldritch over Arkham for most new players.
One of the things we find frustrating about Eldritch Horror is its almost overwhelming sense of urgency. The game presents players with a detailed world with lots of places to explore, but then moves along at such a breakneck pace that you never have time to explore it. For example, the board features several locations featuring expedition sites such as central Africa, the Himalayas, and the Egyptian Pyramids, but in all the games we've played we've never felt like we had time to visit any of them, because we're given so little time to achieve the game's victory conditions.
This brings up another comparison, this one possibly less obvious: Fortune and Glory, Flying Frog's game of 1930s pulp adventure. Most online criticism of Eldritch Horror has focused heavily on comparing it to Arkham Horror, which is natural due to the games' common subject matter and publisher. I know this contradicts what I say in my earlier review, but in a lot of ways, Eldritch Horror has more in common with Fortune and Glory, with a similar early 20th century setting, and even more similar world-spanning game play. A major difference is that Fortune and Glory lets you slow down and enjoy the game's setting a little bit.
While it lacks a sense of impending Lovecraftian doom, Fortune and Glory does have a cooperative mode in which players team up against the Nazis or the Mafia, and with the Rise of the Crimson Hand expansion it even adds a sinister, Lovecraft-style cult for players to fight against. Additionally it's a bit more versatile, with a competitive game option where players race to be the first to recover a certain number of fortune points, and it's easily scalable for longer or shorter games by adjusting the amount of fortune needed to win, in either the competitive or cooperative modes.
The bottom line on Eldritch Horror for us is that, if it existed in a vacuum we would probably play it regularly. But we can't help but look at its similarities to Arkham Horror and Fortune and Glory, both of which we enjoy more.
Read the original review.
Original rating: 4 (out of 5)
New rating (pass or fail) FAIL