The box’s handy storage and app’s step-by-step approach even manages to keep the time spent slotting together each map to a minimum, with new areas revealed as the players explore rather than requiring an upfront building session. Almost every 3D object can be interacted with on-screen, often with a variety of options - will you climb the tree to scout ahead, use its branches to reach a new level, pick its fruit to regain health or simply forage some materials for later on? In these moments, the benefit of having a companion app operate as a digital dungeon master is obvious - handling so many dynamic interactions using just cards or tables in a book would be overwhelming. The terrain couples with the companion app to offer an experience that comes closer to a tabletop RPG than a typical board game in terms of players’ ability to interact with the world. The multilayered 3D environments are one of Descent: Legends of the Dark's visual highlights, and make for some outstanding level design during scenarios. Characters can find themselves suddenly falling between levels, climbing the circling stairs of a tower that actually ascends from the tabletop, outrunning crumbling architecture - which vanishes off the table with each passing round - and clambering up objects to access new areas, sometimes all in the space of a single scenario.
The game’s creators use the terrain to spellbinding effect, creating multiple layers of verticality in the environments that couples with some of the most impressive level design any modern dungeon-crawler has to offer. Legends of the Dark boasts some of the most impressive level design any modern dungeon-crawler has to offer.ĭotting some trees around is one thing, but Legends of the Dark’s visual panache kicks into overdrive the first time it asks you to take some of those pillars and suspend a map tile above the table. Cardboard terrain may seem like a simple addition but, as anyone who remembers the days of classic dungeon-crawler HeroQuest will know, that third dimension goes a long way in conjuring up Descent’s fantasy world of Terrinoth and its varied dungeons, forests and settlements. The main reason for that awkwardly-proportioned, Kallax-filling cube which - surprise! - arrives half-empty? It’s to store a table’s worth of 3D terrain, which you’ll spend your first couple of hours building like a Lego set for fans of trees, stone pillars and bookshelves. On the table, Legends of the Dark is an astonishing presence. Having now spent over 40 hours with the game and seen its campaign to conclusion, I’ve found myself appreciating its ambition and boldness, while also hitting moments of severe frustration and disappointment at its flaws. The good news is that it’s a quality experience on both table and screen. In fact, Legends of the Dark has the deepest app integration of almost any board game I’ve played. If you’re already convinced that pixels and paper shouldn’t mix, this won’t be the game to convince you otherwise.
(Journeys was eventually granted an optional companion app, Road to Legend, that introduced an AI opponent, but Legends’ hybrid approach is baked in as absolutely mandatory.)
#DESCENT LEGENDS OF THE DARK PAINTED MINIATURES FREE#
In addition to its well-stocked box of plastic and cardboard toys, you’ll need a free companion app to play, replacing the human DM-like overlord of Descents past. Let’s address the pixelated elephant in the room, and the biggest reason why Legends of the Dark isn’t Journeys in the Dark: Third Edition. Luckily, they’re broad shoulders, encased in a dense cardboard cube roughly the size of a small footstool that costs a take-a-seat-for-a-moment $175/£175. The successor-not-sequel to Fantasy Flight Games’ beloved dungeon-crawler Descent: Journeys in the Dark, Legends of the Dark has nearly a decade’s worth of expectation and hype riding on its shoulders.
In every sense of the word, Descent: Legends of the Dark is the biggest board game release of the summer.
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