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Game Review - "Tiny Epic Quest"
7 years ago
I finally got to play "Tiny Epic Quest", from the same people as "Tiny Epic Kingdoms/Defenders/Western/Etc." This one is an obvious "Legend of Zelda" imitation as a board game. My overall impression is that it's all right but not outstanding.
https://boardgamegeek.com/image/366.....iny-epic-quest
There's a map of cards laid out semi-randomly with colored castles for the four players. There are several Day and Night phases and then final scoring. You can score in three ways: killing goblins, completing quests, and learning magic. Goblins show up at standard locations. You get magic by visiting a series of shrines kinda in a certain order. You complete quests by moving in certain ways or beating some dungeons.
A key part of the game is that you each have three dudes you can move. During the day phase, one player picks one of five types of movement: raft, horse, foot, ship, and griffin. Each player can either move one of their dudes according to that movement rule, eg. rafts move you along one of the vertical rivers that's on every card. (I don't know about you, but if riding a griffin were a transportation option available to me, I'd pick that.) Not much happens besides movement, though certain spaces do something when landed on and goblins cost magic points to move past.
Then at night, adventure happens. Each player gets to roll five dice and apply the symbols rolled to making various things happen. Take damage, gain MP, increase the world's magic level, punch a goblin, or get torches/maps. These last two symbols advance meeples that you've put in a dungeon area, along a progress track. That is, to pass one temple you need to roll one torch, then one torch, then two torches, &c. There's a press-your-luck element here because you can keep rolling, but risk taking too much damage and losing all your progress. You can also kind of buy dungeon progress using MP, but that's a resource that can also block damage, so it's a tradeoff.
What's this about raising the magic level? It's a neat feature. Each day the world has a magic range from 0 to 3, and it grows when people roll magic symbols. High magic mostly makes dungeon-delving more dangerous, adding tension to the press-your-luck rules. But it's also necessary for learning magic, because you can only gain progress on the magic-learning track if you have a dude stationed at the shrine whose number is within [Global Magic] levels of your current number. So you might jump from 1 to 4 if you're in the right spot and lots of magic symbols get rolled that round.
You kill goblins just by having a dude stationed next to a goblin and rolling punch symbols. What about quests? There are three cards in play at any time, and whoever meets a goal first gets the card along with a reward. Often these are little plastic items like a boomerang or bomb that physically attaches to one of your meeples. When quests get completed, new ones appear.
How well does this actually play? Awkwardly. First of all, our group bumbled through the first half. The game's owner, who'd played before, several times said "oh wait, here's another rule I forgot about". One of these is crucial: when doing dungeon rolling, both wounds and good symbols apply to all players. In three different ways. Wounds and MP gain spill over, so that the roller gets the first symbol rolled, the next player gets the second symbol rolled, &c. The "raise global magic" symbols affect the world. The others can be used by every player. Eg. I roll a punch and I'm not fighting any goblins, but two other players are, and they can each hurt a goblin. These three rules make symbol usage both confusing and thematically weird. I can potentially kill off other players by rolling wounds on my turn, even though none of my dudes are near theirs, and their progress on their dungeons/goblins depends on how much risk I take for myself. I can screw over another player the same way by leaving them with dangerously low HP/MP before they even begin rolling. This system is by design, but it feels weird because we're all supposedly heroes and there's no in-universe reason why this would happen. There are a few other points that confused our group, such as the use of "Power" to mean magic points and the fact that each card looks like it has four spaces but acts like one or two.
Then there are the movement quests. These don't involve dungeons. Instead, you have to line up your three meeples along the same road, or diagonally, or have two in a certain spot or something. There's a name on the card explaining that you're exploring or training griffins or something, but... You're getting quest credit purely for having dudes standing around on the world map in some pattern. It doesn't feel heroic and it's not at all risky. Then there's the role that the dungeons play. These are six elemental temples, and by default your reward for beating one is... nothing! If a quest card is in play that says "Beat the Shadow Temple to get the Book", you get the Book and the quest card. There's a sword, shield and staff that each player can get if they beat specific dungeons in a specific order. (Different for each player, which I like.) But otherwise, you can just imagine stopping by the gift shop on the way out. Oh, and it's possible that a quest to "Beat the Forest Temple" will randomly go out of play while you're in the middle of doing it, making the trip pointless.
You're not fighting anything except goblins that are sitting there with visible arenas for you to walk into. You're not making decisions while dungeon-delving. You're not really interacting with other players at all except through the dice system and trying to beat quests before they do. There is no overall reason you're on this adventure, since the goal is a vague "get the most points" rather than "kill the dark lord". You're not even playing as a specific person, since you're managing three meeples who are interchangeable except that some of the plastic items only apply to the dude they're attached to. Riding a griffin is mechanically no different than riding a horse except that one moves diagonally and the other horizontally.
Part of the problem here is scope: if the game includes an overworld and dungeons and monsters and magic, none of those are going to have as much detail as in a narrower game. Magic, here, just means your position on a numbered track that affects your final score and your max MP. There are no specific spells. Similarly there's only one type of monster.
I also felt like the very obvious "unlicensed Legend of Zelda" theme actually hurts the game. It doesn't really feel like a Zelda game, for the reasons above. The turn counter is an elf princess head, but it has no other role in the game. There's a gold triangle icon, but it's just your MP counter. You can find a boomerang, but it doesn't solve puzzles or anything. There are elemental dungeons, but there's zero difference between them besides which symbols they take to beat. The game tries hard to reference a specific type of gameplay, but then delivers something different. For me the experience was still entertaining, but not really what was advertised or quite what I'd want.
https://boardgamegeek.com/image/366.....iny-epic-quest
There's a map of cards laid out semi-randomly with colored castles for the four players. There are several Day and Night phases and then final scoring. You can score in three ways: killing goblins, completing quests, and learning magic. Goblins show up at standard locations. You get magic by visiting a series of shrines kinda in a certain order. You complete quests by moving in certain ways or beating some dungeons.
A key part of the game is that you each have three dudes you can move. During the day phase, one player picks one of five types of movement: raft, horse, foot, ship, and griffin. Each player can either move one of their dudes according to that movement rule, eg. rafts move you along one of the vertical rivers that's on every card. (I don't know about you, but if riding a griffin were a transportation option available to me, I'd pick that.) Not much happens besides movement, though certain spaces do something when landed on and goblins cost magic points to move past.
Then at night, adventure happens. Each player gets to roll five dice and apply the symbols rolled to making various things happen. Take damage, gain MP, increase the world's magic level, punch a goblin, or get torches/maps. These last two symbols advance meeples that you've put in a dungeon area, along a progress track. That is, to pass one temple you need to roll one torch, then one torch, then two torches, &c. There's a press-your-luck element here because you can keep rolling, but risk taking too much damage and losing all your progress. You can also kind of buy dungeon progress using MP, but that's a resource that can also block damage, so it's a tradeoff.
What's this about raising the magic level? It's a neat feature. Each day the world has a magic range from 0 to 3, and it grows when people roll magic symbols. High magic mostly makes dungeon-delving more dangerous, adding tension to the press-your-luck rules. But it's also necessary for learning magic, because you can only gain progress on the magic-learning track if you have a dude stationed at the shrine whose number is within [Global Magic] levels of your current number. So you might jump from 1 to 4 if you're in the right spot and lots of magic symbols get rolled that round.
You kill goblins just by having a dude stationed next to a goblin and rolling punch symbols. What about quests? There are three cards in play at any time, and whoever meets a goal first gets the card along with a reward. Often these are little plastic items like a boomerang or bomb that physically attaches to one of your meeples. When quests get completed, new ones appear.
How well does this actually play? Awkwardly. First of all, our group bumbled through the first half. The game's owner, who'd played before, several times said "oh wait, here's another rule I forgot about". One of these is crucial: when doing dungeon rolling, both wounds and good symbols apply to all players. In three different ways. Wounds and MP gain spill over, so that the roller gets the first symbol rolled, the next player gets the second symbol rolled, &c. The "raise global magic" symbols affect the world. The others can be used by every player. Eg. I roll a punch and I'm not fighting any goblins, but two other players are, and they can each hurt a goblin. These three rules make symbol usage both confusing and thematically weird. I can potentially kill off other players by rolling wounds on my turn, even though none of my dudes are near theirs, and their progress on their dungeons/goblins depends on how much risk I take for myself. I can screw over another player the same way by leaving them with dangerously low HP/MP before they even begin rolling. This system is by design, but it feels weird because we're all supposedly heroes and there's no in-universe reason why this would happen. There are a few other points that confused our group, such as the use of "Power" to mean magic points and the fact that each card looks like it has four spaces but acts like one or two.
Then there are the movement quests. These don't involve dungeons. Instead, you have to line up your three meeples along the same road, or diagonally, or have two in a certain spot or something. There's a name on the card explaining that you're exploring or training griffins or something, but... You're getting quest credit purely for having dudes standing around on the world map in some pattern. It doesn't feel heroic and it's not at all risky. Then there's the role that the dungeons play. These are six elemental temples, and by default your reward for beating one is... nothing! If a quest card is in play that says "Beat the Shadow Temple to get the Book", you get the Book and the quest card. There's a sword, shield and staff that each player can get if they beat specific dungeons in a specific order. (Different for each player, which I like.) But otherwise, you can just imagine stopping by the gift shop on the way out. Oh, and it's possible that a quest to "Beat the Forest Temple" will randomly go out of play while you're in the middle of doing it, making the trip pointless.
You're not fighting anything except goblins that are sitting there with visible arenas for you to walk into. You're not making decisions while dungeon-delving. You're not really interacting with other players at all except through the dice system and trying to beat quests before they do. There is no overall reason you're on this adventure, since the goal is a vague "get the most points" rather than "kill the dark lord". You're not even playing as a specific person, since you're managing three meeples who are interchangeable except that some of the plastic items only apply to the dude they're attached to. Riding a griffin is mechanically no different than riding a horse except that one moves diagonally and the other horizontally.
Part of the problem here is scope: if the game includes an overworld and dungeons and monsters and magic, none of those are going to have as much detail as in a narrower game. Magic, here, just means your position on a numbered track that affects your final score and your max MP. There are no specific spells. Similarly there's only one type of monster.
I also felt like the very obvious "unlicensed Legend of Zelda" theme actually hurts the game. It doesn't really feel like a Zelda game, for the reasons above. The turn counter is an elf princess head, but it has no other role in the game. There's a gold triangle icon, but it's just your MP counter. You can find a boomerang, but it doesn't solve puzzles or anything. There are elemental dungeons, but there's zero difference between them besides which symbols they take to beat. The game tries hard to reference a specific type of gameplay, but then delivers something different. For me the experience was still entertaining, but not really what was advertised or quite what I'd want.
Good to know we didn't really miss much.