Legends of the Arena - TCbH Review
Transcript
Listen, I get it. You just need to take one look at me to know that I smash. In fact, I've been smashing since I was 13 years old with 1999's Milestone and 64 release of Super Smash Bros. And I've been following each of those games with every release and witnessing the myriad of imitators in the virtual space along with over the years of doing the Cardboard Herald, several attempts at bringing fighting games into a tabletop format. But none have worn their inspiration so clearly on their sleeve or tried to tap into this sort of platformbased fighter quite with the level of panache of Legends of the Arena.
A two-dimensional arena is set up and two or more fighters try to duke it out. If you knock your opponent out of the arena, they lose a stock and respawn if they have any lives left. then play until one team runs out and the surviving team wins. The magic to legends comes in the all too clever damage system and the array of abilities which ties it closer to the source inspiration than I could have imagined. During each play, you draw one of your characters four special cards into your hand of otherwise always renewed, always available standard abilities. Then program a sequence of three cards. Then players reveal each layer of sequence and turn, resolving all revealed cards based off of which has highest initiative and which player has priority. Attacks have proximity, direction, and strength. Moves can turn, rush, backpedal, and you can block, assuming your cardless flip resolves first. This results in an often beguiling, if not frustrating, dance of near hits, disrupted plans, and close calls, which anyone who has played or even watched Smash Bros. knows all too well. But when you manage to land a hit that exceeds your opponent's block, their fatigue moves up a step, then they get pushed a number of spaces based on counts to the right of their fatigue token equal to leftover damage. The more hits you take, the further your fatigue, the squishier you get. So even a low damage hit can eventually send you
flying. If you have stock left, you respawn with full health, fresh fatigue. Then you keep going at it until one team runs out. While it's far from the most popular tabletop genre, over the years with the cardboard held, I've had the opportunity to play a lot of games that were inspired by digital fighting games. And while there are some that I like, it wasn't until Legends of the Arena that I found something that actually kind of captured the tempo and frenetic precision that those games are best known for, even in this turnbased structure. That alone is kind of remarkable, but it does it with style and charm that's definitely drawing on inspiration from a lot of sources, but manages to make its roster its own with characters having interesting abilities, varying weight classes and flavorful personalities from Meatman and Beefy Viking Babe to werewolf Zatty and Maul Ninja. And while I'm kind of making fun of these characters, I genuinely do like their designs and their moves really do bring them to life. Getting pulled in with hook shot like sausage links for the wombo combo punch is devastating in the best sort of ways. That said, this game is aggressive AF. Anyone who likes low stakes, low pressure games, is going to have a bad time. Heck, Mrs. TCBH, who plays a lot of heavy conflict games with
me, though typically in the larger strategy game realm, hated the sort of syncopated dance and aggressive nature of this. Though friend of the show John, who also grew up with Smash Brothers like me, loved this game. Granted, he was responsible for the aforementioned meat-based brutality. Also, while there's a purity to the game that I can appreciate, it fails to capture the sort of party atmosphere of my favorite style of Smash Brothers playing these days. This is literally the Final Destination, no items of board games. And while I've had my time waved dashing all Falcons and Melee, these days I'm more of a banana peels and dynamic stage kind of guy. But that's not what Legends of the Arena is going for. And I'm not sure that a bunch of ancillary elements to reduce pressure and make it more broadly appealing would be all that successful as a debut design and initial release by a publisher. It probably makes sense to remain relatively focused. And while I got the box in hand, it's a small thing, but I love that the box is literally a small thing. It kind of speaks to the quick pick up and play, easy to teach, easytoplay nature of the game. And the dimensions just feel like something that you're going to stick into a backpack.
It almost reminds me of the handle that was on a Gamecube that just kind of invited you to hang out with your friends and just play a bunch of Smash Brothers. This is a high impact game that's played in under 20 minutes and is best if you play with a sort of focused group, even if that focused group is just two people, which may be my favorite way to play this game. But it is one of those ones that's going to be reliant on people investing their time and developing a sort of meta with one another, anticipating what the other person is going to do and then foiling them over and over again. which brings up that sort of nice balance between frustration and elation of being with someone who's evenly matched with you in a highly precise type of game. Now, heavy conflict programmingbased fighting games is a pretty specific area of appeal, but if you got the sort of group that kind of thrives on this particular thing and you're nostalgic for some Smash, then I think that Legends of the Arena is going to be a pretty damn good time. And that's our review. But let me know, what do you think of this game?
And what's your favorite board game fighting game adaptation? put it in the comments. And as always, thanks for watching, thanks for supporting, thanks for being such an awesome community.