Wednesday 17 September 2014

Talisman on Ipad and Iphone - a quick review

Hello all,
So last week I found out that Nomad Games had put out a version of the old Games Workshop boardgame Talisman for Ipad. A great game that I never got to play as much as I wanted to. Naturally, I bought it ASAP and have since played about ten games, some solo and others with my two sons.



So is it any good? Well to put it in a few words, yes, it is a very faithful adaptation of the board game so if you liked that, you will probably enjoy this version as well.

Below I've listed my observation after a few games, just to help you choose whether to buy it or not.
Please ntoe: I have not tried the online parts of the game nor explored much into the whole idea of character levelling - put both things are elements of the game you can disregard if you so choose).

Talisman, Games Workshop, GW, Nomad, board game, iphone, ipad, review,
The good
It is a, more or less, faithful adaption - everything is there and nothing noticeable has been left out. You can still turn into a toad, the warrior is still great and so forth. Actually I find this quite impressive, considering the huge amount of random events, spells, equipment and so on, that influence each turn.

The graphics are wonderful - the game pieces are painted miniatures and the map looks great.

The AI is good enough to be a challenge - not bad considering my first point above.

It works very well as an occasional pause - play it five minutes and resume the game without problems five hours later.

Quite a fun way to experience some of the less played characters.


The bad

To be honest I havn't found much bad stuff to list. One thing that has happened a single time is that the AI will sometimes (but quite rarely) go into stupid-mode. I had a Sage who would use spells to his (its?) own disadvantage. But considering the amount of random stuff going on I wouldnt see this as too much of a problem - some of the players I've played the real game with would also be quite likely (even more so than the AI) to make bad decisions...

The interface can be a bit counterintuitive at times. Sometimes it will be difficult (especially at first) to decipher what exactly is going on or what options you have. This is particularly noticeable when trying to cast spells on other players. This has caused some concern - I managed to get my smallest son's Monk killed because I misunderstood the situation.

A lack of an "un-do" option. As mentioned above, mistakes and miss-clicks happens and it would have been very nice to be able to undo non-random things.

Apart from these minor things, the game suffers from the problems of the original game, e.g. some characters are just better than others.


All in all, it is a very nice way of getting to play a great game, much easier than gathering a bunch of players and persuading them to play an old game, rather than one of the billion new (also great) games.

I would really recommend it - but please note that you will almost immediately buy one of the expansions (the Reaper) after which the game really shines.

It is also due out on the Iphone next week, which will make playing the game even easier.

All the best,
Kasper

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