Marshlight Reviews: Aeon Trespass: Odyssey - First Impressions (Patreon)

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of the Prelude version of this game for the purposes of  reviewing and providing playtesting feedback. This is also a 'first impressions' review, written based on one playthrough of the Prelude version only and I can't guarantee I played every rule 100% correctly on the first try.

For a long time when people have been asked 'what games are like Kingdom Death?' The name Gloomhaven has been brought up, this comparison has never sat well with me because - well Gloomhaven is a clear direct descendant of Fantasy Flight's game Descent.  Initially, when I heard about Aeon Trespass: Odyssey, it looked like it was going to be another Descent style game from a small company without much in the way of a history. So I dismissed it.

Why do I write this? Because I want to give you the context that I was in the camp of 'not interested in this game' of KDM players so you can understand the baseline value of what I write going ahead. When AT:O returned onto my radar early this summer I decided to reach out to the guys at Into the Unknown Studios, get over my preconceptions and give the game a fair shake. Judge it on its own merits and give it a chance to win me over. This game has to really shine in order to get me to endorse it.

Let's lay it out there from the start - Aeon Trespass Odyssey is not simply "a Kingdom Death clone", while it shares the same philosophy in that it is a story based game with battles against complex card based AI that has both active and reactive elements, that system is very different. Both the player controlled pieces; 10m tall mysterious Titans that are controlled by the Argonauts that the players represent and the automated Primordials have a lot of very different mechanics and because of how different the battle phase is, I'll be putting up a step by step breakdown of the experience of playing the first fight in the Prelude next Wednesday. I think the battle system is something you should see, because it is incredible how they have mutated the AI/HL system into something new and cohesive. It's thrilling to see that the Action/Reaction AI system can be evolved and it is amazing that the very next game to use it has achieved this so well.

Battling

In fact, the battle phase in ATO is just great; from the very first battle, despite being armed with only fists, you have a wealth of choices and decisions.  Do I attack first, increasing my rage and drawing the priority token so that the pressure on my companion's titan is lessened or can they keep the focus a bit longer? What kratos tokens should I leave for the next person to take advantage of, will they need more accuracy or more power?

There are also a whole bunch of interesting attacking mechanics, your Titans can be knocked back through pillars or cities (bad news that one) or they can even be pushed back by the Primordial. Moving backwards while the Primordial follows.  There are mechanics for helping create more openings or even getting a small 'backpedal' and the ever present Fate pool for each player gives a whole bunch of rerolls - you can push through a vital action, but there are consequences for doing so, the Primordial sometimes punishes high fate Titans and if you go too high, well there are some bad things that can happen. This mixture of chance and mitigation gives you a lot of decisions to make each turn.

It's fast, it's easy to get into and the way that the Titans and the Primordial become stronger the closer they are to death is thrilling. You're encouraged to push your luck and the limits of your titan's form by being rewarded, and because of how attacking increases rage, and rage eventually results in the loss of your titan - you can't turtle. Every attack feels like it matters, even if you don't manage to wound the Primordial, you still contribute!

We did have some problems with the iconography on the cards, it's a bit small and not very clear except in bright light, I am hopeful that they sort this out - especially the icon for opening (accuracy) which is an eye and the icon for evasion which is a half circle arrow around a dot (it also looks kind of like an eye). Also, there's not much you can do to mitigate being Knocked down, if it happens your just kinda sitting there on your ass for the whole of your next turn. no Encourage here. That can be frustrating.

The trauma/damage system for both the Primordials and the Titans is super cool, the Primordials lose their BP Cards (HL) as they get wounded and gain new ones, these new ones are tougher and more dangerous, but you get to see when they are coming. While the Titans draw Trauma cards from three different decks (depending how high your Danger aka wounds is). These trauma cards can result in injuries, death, temporary conditions or even bonuses. It's very thrilling and the way that these are decks means that they can be changed during the campaign progression. I love it.

Voyaging & Exploring

The rest of the game outside of the battles is also very different; you voyage around a tile/card based map where you pick a direction and reveal a tile. There's a lot of well positioned information on the gorgeous tiles. Here's how the tutorial tiles look once you've laid them all out. They are not a part of the actual game map and serve to just help teach you on a linear path.

Each tile has one or more exit arrows that tell you what numbered tile comes next, the colour of the arrow also matters because it informs you what type of resource is available in the direction you head - I appreciate this because you're not entirely travelling around blind.  In addition there are potentially 'adventure hubs' on a tile, here this is the T in a white circle. These adventure hubs are where the aptly named 'Adventure Phase' happens, and that system is far more substantial than the voyage phase.

There are other things that occur on these tiles, you can encounter peril - which is a deck of cards that starts out relatively safe, but can gain more cards as time moves forward depending on your actions/choices. You can end up adding in mutinies or even Primordial ambushes.  Or you can find progress, advancing your own goals, or doom - which advances the foes' goals in the cycle. It feels like the 7th Continent and that's a good thing.  It could feel really bad when you hit multiple doom tiles if you pick the wrong route, we were fortunate and avoided that.

This phase however contains the first of the mechanics I did not really like, and that's resource generation. The first time you move the Argo onto a tile, if it has a resource icon, you roll a red dice and get that much of the resource. This dice can generate 0, 1 or 2 and while it can be upgraded through technology, rolling a 0 just sucks hard because you never get another chance to generate that resource. On our first playthrough we got a bounty of resources, but every time we rolled that dice, it just didn't feel good and I can see campaigns where you're struggling to craft anything happening.

I like that there is resource generation that's not linked to the 'all or nothing must kill the monster' system that KDM has, but I am not a fan of there being in essence 3 types of resources and that you have to generate them in a single instance per tile and can get nothing at all. Gear is a big part of what makes a campaign/story game like KDM feel so deep and engaging, and resource generation matters on that front. Gathering resources while you travel feels great, but smashing them off monsters when you battle them feels even better. I know I'm not alone in feeling a bit unhappy with this resource system and it's one of a couple of negatives that this game has.

The technology side of this experience on the other hand is wonderful, technology flows in a logical fashion and every step, whether it's gaining a new location on the Argo or some breakthrough in understanding, there's new things to discover and a feeling of replay-ability though different technology routes.  The tech system in the Prelude is truncated, but I still loved what they showed us.

Equipment

This brings me to the second negative area of the ATO experience, I don't know if this is just because of the limited form in the Prelude version; but the gear system is in some ways less engaging than the KDM one. 

The individual gear mechanics are very interesting and I do not have problems with the theme of the gear (some of it looks so cool and badass) or the use of them. There's a host of sweet things here.

But each Titan is limited to 1-2 hands worth of weapons, armor and 2 support cards. There's no gear grid, no affinities, the system is more like the ones in Descent and Gloomhaven. I feel this is a sad loss of depth, especially when combined with the resource system - and it pushes ATO more towards the story portion of the experience, making the game more accessible, but at the cost of some of the most interesting new gear/equipment mechanics we've seen in this genre. This is one area I wish the game was more close to KDM and I'm hopeful that the full game's equipment mechanics offer more flexibility, diversity and the puzzle like mechanics of layouts. There's a MASSIVE amount of replayability in KDM just because of the grid loadouts, and it would be a shame to miss that here.  

It is worth noting that choosing titans, who have different abilities, does give you some elements that KDM doesn't have, but those varied titans are not part of the Prelude, so I can't fully comment on if it's a sufficient balance for what was puzzle solving was lost with the switch to a more traditional gear system.

Art & Theme

The art and style of this game is marvelous, the blend of "science fantasy" with Greek mythology makes things both familiar and alien at the same time and this game is absolutely beautiful to look at. The board is busy with many different pieces of Greek style art, but the clever choice to have it all in muted brown tones means that it doesn't distract you when the battles are flowing. The tiles are also gorgeous, with a map-like style that feeds into the themes of the game and everything is topped off with the relief style art on some cards and the breathtaking full art on other. This game looks good even in the Prelude form.

Adventuring & Mystery

So the adventure phase is where the meat of the game lays outside of the battles and it's a great phase. If you have been lucky enough to play Legacy of Dragonholt from Fantasy Flight Games then you'll know almost exactly what this portion feels like.  If you haven't, then it's like a cooperative choose your own adventure story. 

This does mean there's a lot of reading and making decisions, sometimes without much information to go on. For example, do you pay attention to a bunch of kids or an old woman on arrival in a city? 

These decisions set of a branching set of paths that are followed around each time you reach an adventure hub, you'll encounter mysterious spirals, deserted villages and even the strange pasts of your amnesiac tabula rasa Argonauts. Stories are absolutely everywhere, they're well written and once you get over the fear of making the 'wrong' choice, you'll plunge into a whole bunch of them without repeating things because of the way that the game closes off stories you've already experienced.

Legacy of Dragonholt was one of the best story games I played this year, and I was thrilled to see it be a part of ATO, decisions you make matter and can come back to aid or haunt you later on. When finished you feel like you've missed out on cool stuff and that drives you to go back and play a second time so you can make different decisions and see where things end up. It's well realized, well written and above all else, fun. And though it does lean a lot on the trope of 'mysterious, forgotten pasts', that helps with you making the same journey of discovery that your argonaut(s) do.

Summary

The grips and issues I have with this game are honestly few and far between (it's basically resources and lack of gear grid/affinities as a mechanic), and there is no doubt in my mind that Aeon Trespass: Odyssey is one of the 'must back' kickstarters of this year (alongside Middara, which I couldn't afford) - at the very minimum you should seriously consider getting the Prelude backing option, which is a wonderful, accessible story driven boss battle game that serves as a great introduction to the genre. It's about 2-3 sessions of play and has (apparently) 12 different endings, so if you want to hit all of those and experience all the content you could probably end up playing just the Prelude for over a hundred hours.  But the main game is sitting at a really affordable price for something that's mature in style while also being more family friendly (there is some sort of graphic violence).  It's different enough to KDM to justify its existence and its price point, easy of access and broader appeal means that this one is likely to be an absolutely massive hit by bringing the boss battle genre to the masses.

Beautiful, mysterious, dripping with theme and unique. With unique mechanics, a strong blend of story and monster battling plus wonderful miniatures that are full of character. This one deserves a slot on your shelf whether you're a solo player, someone who wants to dip your toe into the boss battle genre but can't afford the cost of the other option or a die in the wool KDM player who wants to lure people into their favourite genre.  Yeah this one is a good gateway game to swing people across to your chosen hobby.

I will be backing it, all in.