Mansions Madness 2nd Edition......ugh!

Remember way back when I reviewed Mansions of Madness 1^st edition, or as I refer to it  the “ Unfriendly Tiny Card and Token House Search Monster Adventure” ?

Well if not here you go……(LINK HERE)

Not a Fantasy Flight game without a ton of tiny cards and tokens!

Now I got the chance to try the 2^nd edition of this game?

Why?

Well my loving wife thinks it might be better/ more fun than the 1^st edition.

Why?

Well I guess because it uses a computer application to run the run instead of a human.

WOW ! An app can tell me what is going on and ruin my game with rando encounters and such instead of a real human. We do live in the future!

So... of course we played it because I love my wife and maybe the computer will not be as harsh and annoying a person running the game. Right? An unthinking and unfeeling machine should go a little easier on us. Right?

Whatever.

It is not Fantasy Flight without "special" dice.

Mansions of Madness 2^nd edition. It is the same game as pervious with the differences being the playable characters and needing a tablet or nearby PC to play the game. There are still the stacks of tiny cards and a ,albeit smaller, amount  of tokens to throw on the tiles. Yup the various locations are built using tiles again. There are a pile of figures for characters and monsters. There are…ugh…puzzles. This time the dice are official Fantasy Flight. They areD8’s with a few blanks a pentagram and a magnifying glass symbol on the sides. That feels more like it. Fantasy Flight and their normal dice with wacky symbols instead of numbers.

A few turns into the game and my chick was hurt and starting to lose her marbles.

We each picked our character and chose the first mission to play. We had to explore a house and figure out what was going on there. You know that old search the creepy house chestnut.

After two turns, I knew that this was going to be no better or easier than  the 1^st edition of the game. We were assaulted by cultists. We had puzzles to solve before we could open certain doors. Of course a damn fire broke out. Is an out of control fire a running gag in this game? We were assaulted by various horror elements that made lose sanity. The turns were random and the longer we took, the worse this game got. Eventually I stumbled upon some ritual to summon not Cthulhu, but a close relative of him. Even better was the fact the item we needed to stop this was locked behind a damn puzzle that I didn’t bother to try since we were running out of time and spaces that were not on fire. Eventually, I died and that gave my lady only one turn to solve the mystery and then the game would be over. You can guess what happened.

Yup we lost.

What did I learn playing a second edition of this game?

I still dislike it.

Using the phrase uphill battle still does not do this game justice when describing this game.

The app is no better than a human when it comes to ruining the players day. The same but without comical human interaction.

It feels like there is no possible way two players can win this game and it was the easiest scenario of those available. Guessing you really need four players to be able to explore more and faster. Not to mention it would be easier to kill stuff with more people around. Oh yeah, it would make putting out fires faster too!

Having a tablet/PC run the game is a cool concept. One can play this game by themselves if they don’t have any friends to play with. The app does everything , but roll the dice.

Needing a tablet or PC to run the game, or support the game, could be an issue. You know needing a charged device/ nearby computer could be a minor annoyance. Even worse is if game support stops, then this game becomes useless. There are no rules to run this game without the application.

It is still a very expensive game.

I loathe online puzzles too!

Still way too easy to die/ go crazy and still too difficult to stop the beasties.

Pretty identical game play to 1^st edition. and I didn’t like that game either.

How I met my demise and the game was lost.

I guess if you love the 1^st edition of the game then this will be just as fun. It looks like this is somehow able to tie the original game to this. There are cards and stuff for the 1^st edition characters. The ability to tie 1^st to 2^nd might give some more game play options? I think the app running everything is a really good addition. It makes it easier to get the game going and lets everyone play instead on someone having to act as the game master.

Still, I would worry ( I am ever the pessimist ) that if online support stops then you have a $100 box of unplayable game.