Bloodborne: The Board Game Detailed Review!

So what exactly is the houserule you are using? The time marker still moves up a space each turn and hunters dream visit but just loops to the beginning after the last reset? And the campaign can only end when there are more than 2 deads in a chapter?

I'll say that although the timer mechanism didn't come from the IP, I am wholeheartedly in support of board games based on IPs implementing good game mechanics rather than trying to stay "true" to the mechanics of the source material. Most games that try to replicate video game mechanics in a board game fall very flat. The best ones use the setting/environments/theme on great board game mechanics. The timer is debatable as a good game mechanic. Lots of other games use it (Gloomhaven, Pandemic, etc) to great effect, so it's definitely not always a terrible thing.

Hey KoA!

I got my pledge essentially unnanounced (lucky my wife was home...) friday so I didnt have a chance to play yet.

Although after unboxing here's what I think :
-scale is too small 😢 I would have loved bigger scale, especially for the hunters. Although details came out nice.
-tiles are so low quality for their intended purpose... I actually damaged one corner of the Coueryard Lamp (your favorite tile!) when I dropped it when punching it out...
-the rulebook looked nice (although no index) but I understand how the lack of clarification from when the different attack effects can become a problem when they stack...
-colors from the cards are nice for the theme.
-dislike the mini's box (although the "Welcome home good hunter" is a nice touch) because I actually damaged a little my core box pulling it out...
-overall my minis were correct. Didnt have the mosquito-people (like my daughter called them) cut in the middle.
-I thought that although the timer was out of theme it was a nice way to control the duration of a game. However from your review I feel I will need to use your houserule because losing during a boss fight and having to reset the whole campaign only because you ran out of time because you were unlucky in how the tiles were randomly stacked is the kind of bullshit that makes me hate a game...
-I got way too much stuff for this game... No regerts (mispell intented if you understand the reference).

I'll try to get my first game this week if I can.

Did you try the Chalice dungeons?

Thanks again for your review. I would have been so disapppointed if I didnt known about your houserule before playing.

I agree that the Hunt Track ruins the game in my experience. I especially don't like that you feel punished for wanting to go and spend your "xp". I'm definitely looking to house rule too, although I almost NEVER do that.

CMON HQ, one employee is watching the different reviews for Bloodborne on internet. He finds KoA review and then.

KoA : I think CMON juste hates me!
Employee : Oh crap! He figured it out!

Maps in Gears of War are way superior... Both tile quality and tile placement...

Great video King. So what do you think about the expansions so far? What will be your first one to try? Forsaken cainhurst ? Probably not byrgenwerth lol!

so sad that CMON tiles quality has dropped so so much
But they will UP their quality for Massive Darkness and others
this will definitely determine if we still back CMON games

Nice review, but the timer is not a random decision, its basically the blood moon ending. So as in the game you loose if morning comes. Nontheless its true that its not a mechanic present in the videogame.

Managing failure in a long-term campaign is a recurrent issue. Players with unhappy with this aspect in 7th Continent, same for Tainted Grail, now Bloodborne. What is wrong with designers that would apply the same method that makes everyone unhappy again and again?

Did not back it, and think now if it was mistake, but was it? Dungeon Crawler I have enough, but this one seems to be different and the house rules I saw in the comments were easy. Great, what now?
thx for the review

I bought the KS set but haven’t opened anything yet, hoping to see some reviews. You’ve kind of worried me, but I do still want to paint the minis. Maybe it’ll at least make for some cool displays

With the house rule to only lose if you die more than the player count, how do you manage the enemies reset after you reached the end of the timer?

The rulebook complain is way overblown. Outside of 1 or 2 edge cases, it's everything there. Way better than some old CMON games.

For your house-rule: If you ever run into the issue that it gets too easy, since you can return to the dream whenever you want, you could try to only being able to do that on active lamp-spaced (or when no monsters are on your space/tile?)
We are getting through the game so far but I can imagine running a similar mode if we ever want to explore with a little less... time-pressure, haha. We'd have to set a limit on upgrade cards, though. Without a timer it can get exploited and throw off the balance. (on the other hand: So do the extra chapters from the expansions and they're still fun to do)

Get good before review, that is more better.

If I got this I would throw out the mini trays and cardboard box and just put the minis in a bin, that seems like it would be easier that that chaos. The whole point of having mini trays is to make it easier to get the minis to the table, this makes it look harder.

From what I see, I probably will sell the game when it arrives. There is way too much things that will bug me and even the minis will be frustrating. I might as well buy me a playstation and play the real deal. The amount of frustration in this game is unbelievable. Definetly never touching a cmon ks again. Its fiddly, cumbersome and you cant even protect the poor quality components because the box doesnt accomodate it. So bummed out right now. Thanks for covering the thing in all its imperfect state.

Bloodborne is not a casual dungeon crawler, it's a strategic puzzler where every card, every turn counts. If you fail a chapter, use what you have learned about the quests to succeed next time. Do not attempt quests if they don't fit your tile layout. There is a lot to think about in this game, especially for mitigating luck, and if you plip plop you will fail :)

thanks for your review man!

This has been sitting on my shelve. I've been pondering whether I should keep it or auction it.
The gameplay still sounds like it could be my cup of tea. I think I'll give the core box a go and decide from there.
Thanks for the review! I can see some house rules come into play from your feedback!

Bloodborne: The Board Game...this was never going to end well...the video game is brilliant. To make a board game from the video game doesn't make any sense imo.

With your house rule you keep advancing the track every time a hunter enters hunter's dream? What do you do when you reach le last red circle in the track?

Thank you for an excellent review… Be really enjoying the gameplay, but all the criticisms you had were spot on. Paragraph I think I will start using your house rule as well. Cheers and thanks

Thanks for a very detailed and captivating review. In my game group, we decided that when a hunter dies, the hunting tracker does not move, but the player skips 1 full round, recovering after death. Playing with 4 players, it turns out that someone is in a dream, and someone is on the field, and this does not create an advantage in strength against monsters, but the hunting tracker does not fly to the finish line with an arrow. In this case, we usually end the game at the last activation of the last round. And we don't always win. The movement of the game turns out to be not so fast, and allows you to start opening locations and quests, but also not so long that you could prepare for the final battle for a long time.

@The King of Average - BUT the tiles are linen finished! THAT means that they are MORE DURABLE! F linen finish! They could have spent that money on better cardboard!!!

Another CMON game that is just about lots of plastic minis. The game and other components are an afterthought. People need to stop backing these games because other companies are starting to copy this model.

The shipping of the Bloodborne pledges has been the biggest shit show I have ever seen when it comes to fulfillment. Their updates says everyone has either received their game or tracking, though clearly a lot of people have not. In addition a lot of people who receive tracking have received tracking of other peoples pledges, me included.

Right on

Thanks for the detailed review. I like the idea of your house rule, but it seems to me that without a timer, players would be going to the dream way too often.

Scourge beasts move 2 btw, probs would have made that mission easier

I 100% agree on the component quality. The character sheets are flimsy trash, the map tiles are soft piles of rubbish and the inside boxes are just nonsense. Like seriously CMON?? How many games have you made with better quality than this? It genuinely makes me rethink my next CMON purchase because the quality of this game is subpar to say the least. The small and tarot sized cards are fine but the rest are bad. So many of components came dinged, dented and with frayed corners and after the amount of money they want for this game, I expect a lot better quality and for it to be packed well enough to survive shipping.

I think I'm either playing the game incorrectly or I've been really lucky, because so far I've finished every mission well under time and it felt, almost too easy. I never died, I got beat up several times and quickly but it wasn't as punishing as the video game honestly. haha

The slight control you have over tiles to mitigate awful placement, is you get to pick how the tile gets locked in. You don't get to pick the tile and the tile has to be connected by door ways to be adjacent but you can pick which doors line up at least.

I really like the miniatures so against my better judgment I searched and completed an all-in pledge aftermarket price. After a repeated playing for a good 30 hours, I can now safely say the randomness issue with the tile drawing and not enough rounds to win the game is largely the player's own fault. Each campaign mission only requires TWO insight mission to finish so players have to make a decision to follow up on the mission they uncover or give up on it. You just don't have enough time to complete everything in each play through.
One thing is clear, if you're a completionist when playing a dungeon crawl, stay away from this game as you'll be hard pressed into giving up what you always do -- and that is explore every single tile, complete every mission, getting every treasure and rewards. Nope, not in Bloodborne, you ain't got the time to do everything.

The house rule I use is that defeating bosses or clearing the story or mission cards can turn back the Hunt Track time limit to it's last red space. It's made the scenarios really tense with players dashing to clear missions to keep the game alive, which has been very fun.

I appreciate the level of honesty in not taking money from developers to give favorable reviews. I dont know if there are many other same size YT channels that receive a game prototype without also receiving a check. Cheers

Have you also tryed out the expansions? and Can you recommend them?

Hi,
At first as this is my first post on this channel I'd like to thank you for all your effort and great reviews. I really got stuck here !(for quite a while actually)
Now to the main topic. I'm gonna play Bloodborne soon. I've already rushed trough the rulebook and watched a playthrough and having similar concerns about some mechanics. To reset a whole campaign after losing a single chapter??? That sounds bummerish to me. I guess I'll try to record all my stats after each chapter for only reseting the last one if necessary.
But the main problem is that I don't want to play Bloodborne " The Speedrun either". So I'd like to adopt your houserules right from the beginning. Only I'm wondering if I have to adjust the Hunter's Dream mechanic either. I mean being able to enter it on purpose as often as I want for a full recovery seems to be a bit to overwhelming to me without a timer. Did you houserule that too?
Again thanks for everything!

Watching this since a bloodmoon pledge is available locally for sale

I had to cancel my pledge due to ridiculous shipping by CMON. An online seller in India was selling this for a reasonable price. I pre ordered the Core Box, Chalice Dungeon and Hunter's Dream expansion for the price of my EB pledge + shipping. I can probably get another expansion for the import duty/taxes I would've had to pay on the KS pledge 😂

I'm a year late but we found that houseruling the timer so that it only moves when someone goes to the hunter's dream, by choice or by death. Ending the round does everything but move the timer. Definitely gives you more time to do more things but still keeps its challenging once the big boss comes out.

Oh man… this is giving me strong Rise of Moloch vibes with the rules. I loved the theme of that game and painstakingly got through the core box but the game was a huge point of frustration for my group because of the rules…

Hi! Do you plan to share the "king of average house rules" in some kind of document?

Thanks for the review!

I think the designers assumed a certain level of stacking logic that stems from card games like mtg

Where you explore, how fast, the layout you create - these are all strategic decisions your making. In a 3/4 player game the whole map is usually explored by round 2/3. In 1/2 it’s usually before the first red marker (if needed). Random tiles, and blank tiles give this game an element of strategy in the discovery and exploration phase. Set layouts I feel are far less interesting - and I would be much less likely to replay them. I grant the game is easier or harder from tile draw. But it is always winnable. I’ve always felt the level of randomness in tile draw and enemies is a boon to replayability of the game. I’ve always felt it’s manageable because combat is close to being deterministic puzzle without it being 100%.

The timer is 100% required, it creates tension, it forces you to take risks, and play efficiently/strategically. This game is too hard out of the box for most people. I think thats the failing. They should have made a "tutorial mode" to get people hooked. Then give them the "normal mode".

I recommend playing with "draw 4 cards" instead of "draw 3". Theres a lot less pressure. It's a lot more fun for people who don't like being pushed by the timer. Also - the first phase of the game is exploration - explore quicker.

lmao restart the game, fuck that, im good.

We tried to adjust Hunt track and I would conclude that it is an essential foundation of this game , eliminating or “fixing” it ruins experience . It make you feel on your toes every time, plan ahead and be focused . Indeed stupid , lazy decision in this game will lead to death, death will lead to losing a turn of track and that will be that turn you need to finish chapter. We lost once that way and it learned the lesson. Game indeed wants you to be better.

This is ridiculous 😂😂😂