Frosthaven

My group put probably two hundred hours into Gloomhaven before this came out, so I went in already knowing the combat puzzle and mostly wanting to see what got improved. The scenario flowchart is the single best quality-of-life change, actually being able to see the shape of the campaign instead of guessing at a paper map, and the revised scenario book hiding information until you need it fixed a problem I didn’t realize was bothering me until it was gone.

Where it adds real weight is the outpost phase, managing and building up the town between scenarios. I was skeptical this would just be busywork bolted onto a combat game, and for the first several sessions it kind of was, we spent almost as long managing resources and building projects as we did actually fighting anything. It’s grown on me since, there’s a real strategic layer to deciding what to build when resources are tight, but I understand completely why some reviews describe it as “excel with extra steps.” Some sessions it earns that label.

The characters themselves feel meaningfully different from Gloomhaven’s roster rather than reskins, more of what I’d call lateral power creep, new tools and synergies rather than everything being strictly stronger. The starting difficulty spike caught my table off guard too, we lost our first three scenarios at the lowest difficulty setting with a group that cleared Gloomhaven’s back half without much trouble, and that early wall put a real dent in the first month of sessions before things clicked.

The story itself, I’ll be honest, fifty-some scenarios into Gloomhaven I never had a clear read on the overarching narrative either, and that hasn’t changed here. I play this for the combat puzzle and the character progression, not the plot, and on those terms it delivers.

Four stars, would be higher without the early difficulty wall and the upkeep between sessions.