The Fun Factors:

Mechanics:

Arkham Horror isn’t a game with “elegant” mechanics – there are a lot of variables, a lot to keep track of, and at times it can bog things down a bit. The game uses D6 die rolls to determine pretty much everything with fives and sixes needed to succeed. Investigators have ratings in various categories such as Fight, Sneak, Will, Lore, etc. The skill rating determines the number of dice you get to throw to perform a check – so if you have a Fight of four, you throw four dice, and so on. One of the interesting elements is the way that characters are designed and that there’s a ying and a yang to specific skills.

During the game’s Upkeep phase you can adjust certain skills, but if you raise your Speed, you automatically lower your Sneak. By bumping up for Fight up a notch or two, you suffer from a lower Will rating. These ratings play off of one another and it forces you to make some tough decisions during the game. If you want to fight the Dark Young who has taken residence in the Arkham Library, you may need to raise your Fight rating – but a lower Will rating makes it hard to pass the initial horror check.

In fact, the game overwhelms you with things to do and choices to make, which is why verbally working as a team is crucial if you are going to stop the Great Old One from waking up and rampaging through Arkham. Do you hurry up and try to close and seal gates? Do you focus on killing monsters? Who is going to snatch up the green clue tokens that are needed to seal gates as well as provide crucial re-rolls when you fail skill checks? There’s a lot to think about and the team of investigators who play their own way and who do not work as a team are almost guaranteed to be served as a snack lunch for Cthulhu.

One of the criticisms leveled at the game is that it’s a dice fest – in that you are throwing handfuls of dice at times to determine combat and skill checks. While it’s true that many skill checks, particularly when you add some of the more powerful weapons and magical items which add a lot of dice to your skill checks, this is a fuzzy gripe at best. Usually you only need a few successes to pass a tough check so even if you have ten dice to roll you’re only checking the successes and not tallying every number. It’s nowhere near as mind numbing when it comes to dice as a game like World of WarCraft.

The game’s mechanics aren’t the best around but to get too upset by it is missing the point of the game. Luck, both good and bad, is a huge part of the game – in fact it’s pretty much the point of it. Arkham Horror is not a game to be taken too seriously, nor is it one to test your brain cells – it’s a game to be enjoyed with friends over a few beers.

Duration and Downtime:

You simply need to know what you are getting into before playing. The game supports 1-8 players, but the sweet spot for our group is four. An eight player game is just too much and when playing a five player game with experienced players you are still looking at a minimum of three hours. Some games take longer than others due to the luck of the draw, but this is not a quick-play game so you need to schedule a nice chunk of time in order to play it. The game works as a solo game with one player controlling multiple investigators, but you’re really missing out on a lot of the game’s fun by playing alone. This is much less a game about winning than it is sharing the experience with your friends. Downtime isn’t a big problem, though. Unlike other dice-heavy games like Runebound or WarCraft, which both have a large amount of sitting and waiting, the turns in Arkham Horror move along at a nice clip.

Replay Value:

With numerous investigators and a large selection of monsters and Great Old Ones and literally a hoard of cards, each game of Arkham Horror, while it follows a similar pattern, feels different. There’s always something new to get your investigators into each and every time you play it.

Replay value is monumentally enhanced when you buy the Dunwich Horror expansion which is almost a required purchase if you like the base game. It adds more of everything: Great Old Ones, Investigators, cards, injury and madness traits, and even a small board addition (the town of Dunwich itself). If you do enjoy Arkham Horror, the Dunwich add-on is a must, must buy.

Conclusion

Arkham Horror is a wonderful game if you go into it knowing what to expect. This is not a game for the quiet, ponderous gamer who likes to study a board looking for a great strategy. It’s more of a gamer’s party game where insane and hilarious things happen to your team – from going crazy to gunning down monsters with a magical gun. It’s big, long, and full of fiddly rules and oodles of components, but if you have the time, and more importantly the right group of people to play with, Arkham Horror is a great way to spend a long evening saving humanity. - William Abner