Bôken - In Focus

0:07 Adventure awaits in the world of Lenoth, and you and your teammate are two heroes in search of great quests as the two of you look to level up your skills, fight baddies, and create a memorable legend for yourself. This is Boken, which was designed by Miki Tajima and published by Control R, who sponsored this video. Hey everyone, I'm Mike Murphy the Brothers Murph, and I'm here with boardgamegeek.com. Well, we have the world to explore, so let's get this game down to the table and go a little more in focus on Boken. In Boken, you will play solo or with a teammate as heroes exploring the world of Lenoth, visiting locations, meeting NPCs, going on quests, and fighting monsters. Boken brings a lot of the style and adventure of Japanese RPGs from video games and brings it to the tabletop. Thanks to its magnetic save system, you can set it up, save your progress, and pack the game away in just 1 to 2 minutes. You'll be exploring the world map, drawing exploration cards to grant movement. There are different features like terrain types, icons denoting locations and objectives.

0:58 Moving around the map will also cause you to draw encounter cards, which will trigger a battle. Enemies have abilities and attacks, and when battling, you can equip items and skills and weapons to even the playing field. During combat, when attacking with an equipped weapon, you roll dice to determine whether you score a normal, critical, or super critical hit, which determines the strength of the attack. When using a talent, however, you generally have direct control over how much damage you deal. Enemies may have armor for certain types of attacks, which will potentially reduce the amount of damage you deal. If you reduce an enemy's health to zero, they are KO'd. When all enemies are defeated, the heroes then gain rewards from battle, which can often earn them gellos and XP. Whenever you gain XP, you check to see if your character levels up. When they do, they reset their health and now have a higher maximum health level. Leveling up also gives heroes access to new skills as well, which allows them to take on even greater challenges. When exploring the map, you may come across peaceful villages. These villages give you the opportunity to visit shops, spend your money on items, and meet the characters of the world. Throughout the adventure, you will take on both main quests that progress the story and optional side quests. There are also hostile dungeons which give you chances to loot treasures but often come at the cost of more dangerous foes. As you gain quests you may be tasked with defeating specific enemies who will note that quest on their rewards. Completing the requirements on quests allows you to flip over their cards gaining rewards and furthering the story. Taking on quests can also lead you to boss battles which represent the most dangerous foes in the game. These of course come with the greatest rewards as well. This game is meant to be played in sessions with the ability to save your progress as you go. Defeating sub bosses and bosses will add to your overall score whereas being KO'd in battle can give you game over cards which will reduce your end

2:28 game score. Players will go through many great and grand adventures over this extended campaign and the choice is yours of how you want your adventure to play out. In Boken it's all about seeing the story develop before you. The choices you make and the directions you go can shape the types of quests you see and the enemies you battle and how powerful your heroes become. If you'd like to learn more about Boken be sure to check out his page at boardgamegeek.com. Until next time I'm Mike Murphy I've been here at boardgamegeek and we've been going in focus on Boken. Have a great day.