The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle Earth | 5 in Five Review 

Awesome! Hope you continue to have a bunch of fun

All true, but it still meant I had to play 3-4 missions before getting a great card, and even then it might never give me more than a success icon

Sure but when you only have like 4 success icons in the first place, a 5th might be the Godsend you need. :) I haven't started my campaign up yet as I decided to make this game my first ever painting project, but I'm pretty excited about it.

Haha, good point. Enjoy the painting!

Good point. I feel like the huge box is fairly empty, and I’m the end all the enemy minis aren’t super necessary. If it was a $60 game that might be more in-line with where it should be.

You're probably not in IT, but don't forget how much development costs an app has. That's not in Gloomhaven... Plus this game has the IP from lotrs, which probably isn't free for FFGs.

@@NightSpook Then don't do it if you can't give your supporters a fulfilling experience.

Glad you enjoyed it

Absolutely. I wish the progression was more exciting.

I’ve heard this several times. I haven’t played with 4 much, so didn’t get a chance to see this in action.

@@OneStopCoopShop I've played about 6 or 7 adventures with 4 characters and only won twice. Failed the first adventure. All the losses were due to running out of time (max threat reached), not deaths. I tried restarting with 2 characters and the first adventure was a breeze. Nearly lost the second one, but only because of luck really (ie I kept pulling single successes and with no inspiration, I could only deal a few hits at a time). I have yet to try other scenarios, so I guess I'll see how I go.

Second one has been my most common loss. Very tight combat scenario

Thanks for sharing! I think some classes and abilities just make the experience easier or harder. Still fun, but the balance isn't always great :)

Enjoy!

Awesome! Glad to have you :)

Yeah, the final thoughts section is based entirely on how much I want to keep playing the game and how much fun I’m having. A game’s design can have lots of flaws, and still be super fun, or can be nearly perfect but lacking some sort of soul that keeps me coming back.

Look at that young man back then 😅😅😭😭

This is a great idea! I wouldn’t want to make the category TOO specific. I don’t know how many low luck dungeon crawlers I’ve played, for example! By the way, I am planning to do my first top 20 list, in the Colin style, soon. Probably going to be top 20 solo games.

@@OneStopCoopShop Indeed, "low luck" would be quite a relative concept among DCs... Perhaps one can say Gloomhaven with its card play and no dice is "lower" luck... but still...

@@OneStopCoopShop I for example still struggle in finding the "perfect" DC... I love for example the puzzly feel and card play of Gloomhaven but I hate the campaign being so long and repetitive and the leveling up so slow (I have other things going on in life)... In City of Kings, I really like the "in-game" leveling up of the characters attributes, but everything else is random as hell. Street Master campaign-less approach is great, but it is fiddly and some decks simply do not combine well. Sword Sorcery has great enemy AI, production and variety but progression is slow and the dice will kill you eventually after a 3hr session and piss you off forever (although the dice itself looks awesome)... mmm...

I just did a playthrough recently on the channel (which is the first time I'd played in a while). Overall, I'd say this: 1 - I still think the narrative/theme isn't great. 2 - I still think the core card mechanic is pretty slick. 3 - I've come to feel that the campaigns are too long for my tastes. I rarely finish them. But that's me... I prefer campaigns with 5-8 scenarios to ones with 12+

I don’t think it’s a danger to our little industry, personally, because generally only the biggest companies have the time to invest in a digital app to go along with a game. It’s not like we suddenly have 50% of games with app integration all of a sudden. It’s still very rare.

@@OneStopCoopShop As it stands right now, I agree, and I'm grateful for that circumstance. A couple of oreos a day won't kill you either, but that doesn't make them healthy. There's no virtue in it, and its destructive effect is mitigated solely by its rarity.

Sadly, Colin (creator of the channel) is the big LOTR fan who made all those videos. He is taking a break from the channel. I might play LOTR card game at some point, but I’m pretty bad at it. Not a master like Colin!

You are right. It’s definitely an odd one. I see lots of flaws, but still really enjoy the game as a whole.

If you look Lotr Lcg story lines... well this is much more epic than those... Lotr and Silmarillion books Are all about epic adventures, but in the games, even rpg games lower scale works much better. And the story is ok in this first scenario. Ffg does not have Tolkien in their gaming Group... not even George Martin. So it is no good to Expect bigger than life Stories. Otherwice They would sell boooks and movie scripts.

I like the characters being from LOTR though. If this was Terrinoth, I’d see the same story-less characters that I’ve cared nothing about in so many previous Terrinoth games

I could have seen this as either Runebound 4ed or Descent 3rd. I know why they didn’t do that & LotR IP sells. I wish it had been set in Terrinoth as well. I actually have grown fond of those characters and that universe. I think the fact that the characters don’t have story baggage allows for more storytelling opportunities. Although it’s cool to play as your fav. LotR Characters it does seem odd that I’m growing Main characters- feels fan fictiony. But the slow character growth (and not focusing on loot/item growth) feels right for this IP. I just had to get past my own expectations. In that way it is more like Descent 2ed than MoM 2ED. This is a great review and for the most part I agree with the criticisms. But I def. agree that somehow even with those, it is still a fun game. Addictively fun in fact. Not because of the weak story, or gaining the next piece of loot (‘cause those parts aren’t great in what is essentially a dungeon crawl), rather because of the characters and their growth. And THAT does feel true to LotR! Thanks for the fantastic review

I would love to feel the same fondness for this descent characters, but so far the little paragraphs of stories haven’t been enough for me :)

One Stop Co-op Shop yeah. I get that & it’s more than fair. I jumped on the Terrinoth char. At Runebound 2ed. And then even more so, Descent 1ed. There was absolutely no story or even character growth. There was a little more from Runebound but barely. My fondness is because I spent so much time with those char. That I made up my own narratives filtering into the “history” I did know from Runebound. So your point is completely valid because I relied on my own story to shape them. So much so when Descent 2.0 It took me a while to be ok letting ffg take over the storytelling b/c my story of their world was not theirs. Esp. When they introduced the app. But in comparison to what they do now, yes the characters are still bare-bones. In the interim I’ve found that Runebound 3ed tried to flesh it out more and the Terrinoth source book is fantastic. But that’s a lot of work to ask for for investment. Also Legacy of Dragonholt helps as well. So yeah, really I have determined that it comes down to how you like your stories in games told and how much work and imagination one is willing to invest. That’s just the conclusion I have come to about myself. There’s something to be said about getting to play with your fav. Characters from a fav. IP as well! Either way it’s a win. I’m sure that we will be seeing a Terrinoth implementation of something similar sometime down the road! Again. Great short review. Enjoy your content! Thanks!

Hope you got more than $6.50 for it :)

I’m seeing it on Amazon, Cardhaus, a few other online places. Not sure what you mean by Steam… while it uses an app, this is a tabletop boardgame 😅

Enjoy!

Glad you’re enjoying it! Despite my complaints, I am too ;)

I’m pretty sure you will find a lot of unrealistic things in the game. Orcs, dark magic and healing with songs. It’s not a consim :D

@@joelbergvonlinde1389 I mean it slow the game down to a crawl, you play 10sec and you deal/suffer with events for 2 minutes. They should have used Armor points instead of stupid meaningless fear.

I agree it can slow the game a bit. I do enjoy the tension of flipping them though; so it’s a mix for me, not too important to the experience either way.

One Stop Co-op Shop it’s def not as bad as Arkham Horror 3ed. I actually think an app would have helped balance the feel of playing the game vs. the game playing you. I am pretty sure it’s about the same amount of bookkeeping going on here but it’s masked by the speed of an app vs. the players pulling cards and chits. Coming so soon on the heels of AH, I add it into a comparative plus. The formula of 2 actions and then sit and get hit with XYZ+1 is their coop calling card now. They’ve been doing that formula for a while now.

I don’t see how armor points would reflect the psycological side of Tolkiens world (corruption and so on). It sounds mostly like you might be looking for whole other game and a different genre of game?

For sure, they aren’t everyone’s bag. And this one can be more obtrusive than others

Hahaha, that's great :)