GAME REVIEW: Betrayal Legacy
(Somewhere In Between - Lifehouse
Boardgames have seen a resurgence on the last 15 years, and thank goodness! They're a wonderful excuse for people to actually sit in a room with each other and properly interface. They're an incredible social tool for building relationships. They also have the added benefit of being as simple or as complex as you need; the selection of board games available today is absolutely massive!
Back in 2010, a new game called 'Betrayal At The House On The Hill' came out. Big name, but stick with me here. 'Betrayal' was s survival horror game that played out on a variety of randomized tiles. You played as a group of up to five explorers, each with a mixture of four stats to track your mental and physical toughness. Exploring the house starts out innocently enough, but all is not as it seems. The house is angry, and its anger manifests in a variety of ways, from traps to monsters to ghosts. The game's horror is all 'Theater Of The Mind', read from cards that allow your mind to fill in the blanks. It's macabre, to be sure, but more in the style of classic horror rather than the shock gore that today's kids are forced to settle with.
Invariably, if you survived in the house long enough, the house's anger would overflow into the world of the physical and the game's final phase, "The Haunt", would begin. The Haunt resulted in a more concerted effort to dispatch of the party wandering through the house's halls, and it frequently involved the house taking possession of one of the players, turning them into "The Traitor". This was a fantastic mechanic that suddenly turned one of your own party against you, and it was different every time you played the game. 'Betrayal' came with a book filled with 'Haunt' scenarios, each more different and creative than the last. If memory serves, the original game came with around 50 haunts, and another 30 haunt scenarios were released in an expansion a few years ago.
All told, it was an absolutely FANTASTIC game. Then, in 2018, it evolved into a 'Legacy' version.
Is this legacy a worthy one?
THE SHORT VERSION:
Yup. If you liked the original game, this is completely worth it.
THE LONG VERSION:
In order to understand why Betrayal Legacy is so cool, you need to understand what a Legacy game is.
A Legacy game is a board game that has lasting consequences after each play through. Each time you play the game, you'll make changes to how the game runs. Some of those changes will be permanent. Legacy games frequently come with stickers to change the appearance of the game board, cards, or game pieces. It's not uncommon to run into situations where you draw a card and see something like, "X Rule no longer applies. Find the X card and destroy it. The new rule is Y."
Example: Say you're playing Risk Legacy and you elect to Nuke a country. The next play through of that game, that country won't generate troops, and you can't go into it without losing troops due to the fallout. The game after THAT, the country -will- generate troops, but they won't be normal troops, they'll be mutated troops.
It's a great way to make replaying an already more enjoyable game even more appealing!
Betrayal Legacy builds on the already fantastic gameplay from the base game by adding persistent effects to the house. There's a 14-section story that you'll have to play through to properly set your house up. This story section consists of a prologue that explains the origins of the house itself, and the following 13 chapters tell a fantastic story about a struggle between light and darkness. Over the course of your playthrough of the story, the house will shape itself based on the decisions you make. Some of the changes are subtle and involve the discovery of new rooms. Some discoveries involve two entirely new zones of gameplay. The story spans several hundred years, the 1700s to 2004, and as time passes, the story evolves.
I don't want to say much more about the game than that to avoid spoiling it. You might be balking at the game's price tag, especially if you've already bought the base game. $60 feels like a lot of money for a board game, especially a second time. What I can tell you is that if you already play and love Betrayal At The House On The Hill, you will -LOVE- Betrayal Legacy, and you'll end up with a customized copy of the game to play when you're done with the story missions.
If you've never played the base Betrayal game, I would recommend familiarizing yourself with it before considering Betrayal Legacy. Legacy introduces a whole host of new rules and scenarios. If you're already comfortable with the base game's rules, this will only add to your enjoyment, but if you're not that solid on the base rules, Legacy can turn into a very complicated game very quickly.
Get a dedicated group of four or five people together -- the game can play with as few as two, but you really want at least four! -- set some time once a week, and you won't regret it. This is a wonderful gameplay experience!
Boardgames have seen a resurgence on the last 15 years, and thank goodness! They're a wonderful excuse for people to actually sit in a room with each other and properly interface. They're an incredible social tool for building relationships. They also have the added benefit of being as simple or as complex as you need; the selection of board games available today is absolutely massive!
Back in 2010, a new game called 'Betrayal At The House On The Hill' came out. Big name, but stick with me here. 'Betrayal' was s survival horror game that played out on a variety of randomized tiles. You played as a group of up to five explorers, each with a mixture of four stats to track your mental and physical toughness. Exploring the house starts out innocently enough, but all is not as it seems. The house is angry, and its anger manifests in a variety of ways, from traps to monsters to ghosts. The game's horror is all 'Theater Of The Mind', read from cards that allow your mind to fill in the blanks. It's macabre, to be sure, but more in the style of classic horror rather than the shock gore that today's kids are forced to settle with.
Invariably, if you survived in the house long enough, the house's anger would overflow into the world of the physical and the game's final phase, "The Haunt", would begin. The Haunt resulted in a more concerted effort to dispatch of the party wandering through the house's halls, and it frequently involved the house taking possession of one of the players, turning them into "The Traitor". This was a fantastic mechanic that suddenly turned one of your own party against you, and it was different every time you played the game. 'Betrayal' came with a book filled with 'Haunt' scenarios, each more different and creative than the last. If memory serves, the original game came with around 50 haunts, and another 30 haunt scenarios were released in an expansion a few years ago.
All told, it was an absolutely FANTASTIC game. Then, in 2018, it evolved into a 'Legacy' version.
Is this legacy a worthy one?
THE SHORT VERSION:
Yup. If you liked the original game, this is completely worth it.
THE LONG VERSION:
In order to understand why Betrayal Legacy is so cool, you need to understand what a Legacy game is.
A Legacy game is a board game that has lasting consequences after each play through. Each time you play the game, you'll make changes to how the game runs. Some of those changes will be permanent. Legacy games frequently come with stickers to change the appearance of the game board, cards, or game pieces. It's not uncommon to run into situations where you draw a card and see something like, "X Rule no longer applies. Find the X card and destroy it. The new rule is Y."
Example: Say you're playing Risk Legacy and you elect to Nuke a country. The next play through of that game, that country won't generate troops, and you can't go into it without losing troops due to the fallout. The game after THAT, the country -will- generate troops, but they won't be normal troops, they'll be mutated troops.
It's a great way to make replaying an already more enjoyable game even more appealing!
Betrayal Legacy builds on the already fantastic gameplay from the base game by adding persistent effects to the house. There's a 14-section story that you'll have to play through to properly set your house up. This story section consists of a prologue that explains the origins of the house itself, and the following 13 chapters tell a fantastic story about a struggle between light and darkness. Over the course of your playthrough of the story, the house will shape itself based on the decisions you make. Some of the changes are subtle and involve the discovery of new rooms. Some discoveries involve two entirely new zones of gameplay. The story spans several hundred years, the 1700s to 2004, and as time passes, the story evolves.
I don't want to say much more about the game than that to avoid spoiling it. You might be balking at the game's price tag, especially if you've already bought the base game. $60 feels like a lot of money for a board game, especially a second time. What I can tell you is that if you already play and love Betrayal At The House On The Hill, you will -LOVE- Betrayal Legacy, and you'll end up with a customized copy of the game to play when you're done with the story missions.
If you've never played the base Betrayal game, I would recommend familiarizing yourself with it before considering Betrayal Legacy. Legacy introduces a whole host of new rules and scenarios. If you're already comfortable with the base game's rules, this will only add to your enjoyment, but if you're not that solid on the base rules, Legacy can turn into a very complicated game very quickly.
Get a dedicated group of four or five people together -- the game can play with as few as two, but you really want at least four! -- set some time once a week, and you won't regret it. This is a wonderful gameplay experience!
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