Gloomhaven

Gloomhaven is a turn-based tactical RPG adapted from the monster-hit tabletop board game of the same name, and Flaming Fowl Studios has done an admirable job translating its notoriously dense systems into a playable PC experience. You command a party of mercenaries, each with a unique deck of action cards, working through a branching campaign of dungeon scenarios set in a world that is grimy, morally ambiguous, and refreshingly free of chosen-one energy. Nobody here is saving the world out of heroism. Everyone wants gold, reputation, or to settle a personal score. The combat system is the heart of everything and it is genuinely unlike most tactical RPGs. Each character plays two cards per round, and the top half of one card and the bottom half of another combine to form your full action. Initiative is determined by a middle number on one of your chosen cards, which means timing is as much a puzzle as targeting. Add in a monster AI deck that governs enemy behavior, and every room becomes a logic problem you have to solve before the cards run out. Because they will run out. Running out of cards means death, and Gloomhaven is not shy about punishing overextension. This is a game where retreating is sometimes the smartest move. Party composition matters enormously, and the roster of unlockable classes is the engine of long-term replayability. Starting with options like the Brute, Spellweaver, and Scoundrel, you will eventually unlock stranger, more asymmetric classes that completely reshape how you approach scenarios. Build variety is real and it holds up well past the early hours, though some classes are clearly more accessible than others. The Mindthief in particular can feel like learning a second game. Each character also has a personal quest that, when completed, triggers retirement and unlocks a new class, which is a clever way to keep the roster cycling and give individual runs narrative weight without requiring a massive overarching story. Where the game stumbles is in its pacing. The campaign is enormous by board-game standards, but the scenario-to-scenario connective tissue is thin. You get text summaries and dialogue snippets, but nothing that approaches the narrative density an RPG fan coming from Divinity or Pathfinder Kingmaker will expect. The world has atmosphere, but it delivers it in scraps. If you care primarily about character arcs and dialogue trees, you will find Gloomhaven politely indifferent to your needs. There are also some interface friction points and occasional UI awkwardness that remind you this started life as a physical box of cardboard. For the right player, though, this is deeply satisfying. If you like systems that reward repeated reads, optimization puzzles, and the kind of cooperative tension where a single bad card draw can unravel a perfect plan, the scenario design here is excellent. The digital version adds a solo mode, adjustable difficulty, and quality-of-life features the tabletop cannot offer. It is a better entry point to the game than assembling a physical group and spending four hours sorting components.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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