General Impressions

[Pidesco]

I have just installed this on my tablet and I thought there might as well be a thread that collects people's thoughts on the game.

 

I haven't done anything with it yet, other than navigating the settings and the store. I'm currently staring at the first welcome message in the tutorial.

 

Everything seems to be very responsive and quick. I'm on a Mipad, a 7,9" Chinese tablet with a Tegra K1.

 

The music is great, and the art style is very nice too.

 

I've never ever interacted with anything Pathfinder related, so that's where I'm coming from. From what I've read from other people online this means I may have trouble understanding some things in the tutorial. Let's see what happens.

 

 

Feel free to post your impressions here as well, of course.

[da_mayor]

I'm playing on an old Google Nexus 10 and an HTC One M9 phone.  I LOVE this game.  It is taking all my willpower not to play it at work.

 

I've played the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (PACG) a LOT, so much of it was intuitive for me.  My only issue (Which I've mentioned else-post) was that for the most part, I became accustomed to the touch-and-get-buttons interface, but there are a few points where drag-and-drop are the only options (specifically when you can choose cards to pull from your Discard pile).  This was counter-intuitive to me, as I wanted to touch the cards in the discard pile, have it zoom in, and get a "Draw" or "Recharge" button.  It took me a while to realize (thanks to the helpful glowing-bits) that I needed to take an un-zoomed card and drag it to my hand or deck, as appropriate.

 

I read the dialogues the first time, but I find myself more drawn to the play than the plot, so I skip the dialogues.  I was going to watch them again once I'd unlocked my first character (Lem, though I've since caved and bought the bundle), but my fiancée and I play pass-and-play, and she's even less of a plot-person than *I* am, so we skip when we play together.

 

Immediately after the last game I played, I bought the bundle.  I look forward to playing with new characters tonight!  Perhaps I'll have more input then.

[Pidesco]

I have just played through the tutorial scenario and, while fun, everything seemed slightly unfathomable. Pathfinder's lingo isn't immediately clear (burying your ally is a good thing?), and while I finished the tutorial I'm still not sure about how the game works.

 

From what I figured out the goal is to find and defeat a boss card which is hidden in one of several locations, although it can move between them. Each location has a single henchman card which you have to defeat in order to make that location inaccessible to the boss. Once you confine the boss to a single location and defeat it there, you win the game. This seems a bit too simple to me, though.

 

In order to do all this you control a few characters (two or more?) which each have deck cards which represent things like equipment, powers, or allies. Characters also possess not-card abilities which you can use whenever you want? I'm not sure about this. I'm also not clear on whether these characters level up, or how their abilities are defined. Can you create characters from the start or are they always unlockables or purchaseables?

 

I also don't know whether locations are more or less generic, or whether they follow some kind of specific builds. Are certain characters better prepared to tackle certain locations? Are there support characters which shouldn't tackle locations alone? Does anything happen to a location if you go for too many turns without interacting with it? Is there a disadvantage to tackling locations one at a time with your whole party?

[da_mayor]

Would you like answers to those questions, or is this primarily a tool to help the devs see the game from a less-informed eye?  (Or both?)

[Pidesco]

Both, I guess.

 

While my questions are very much from a noob point of view, they are also informed by my experience as a PC gamer. That allows me to ask questions that your average new player wouldn't ask. While it seems to me like the tutorial is more geared towards people already familiar with Pathfinder, it's not completely undecipherable to people already familiar with games.

 

If, for example, my wholly non gamer wife happened to pick up Pathfinder Adventures, her reaction would probably be to not even finish the tutorial. The use of game specific terminology in the tutorial without much clarification is discouraging to new players and seems like something that should be corrected. I'd say a glossary, tooltips or both might go a long way towards making things a bit more user friendly.

[Kyzar]

I would also suggest some YouTube vids of playthroughs for the physical game. It can be daunting for beginners but it's an awesome game and Obsidian has done an awesome job with it.

[Brainwave]

Hoping to see if I can help out with some of your questions. Apologize in advance if I mention things that were already clear.

 

You've got it right about henchmen and the villain cards for the most part. The villain moves based on which locations are still open after he is encountered (thus if another character is at a different but still open location it will give you the option to temporarily close that location to limit his movement options). In fact in games with more characters, running out of time becomes a bigger issue (same amount of turns but more locations to go through) so a solid strategy is to cover all the locations with at least one character as soon as possible so if the villain is encountered anywhere, all of the other locations can be temp closed so he has nowhere to run for a quick win.

 

The other thing that could have been easily overlooked regarding villains in the tutorial is the differences between defeating and failing to defeat a villain. In addition to taking damage or any other effects on the villain card, when the villain is shuffled back in to an open location, it is mixed with enough blessing cards so that either a blessing or the villain card is going into each open location. The difference is that if the villain was defeated, those blessings are new blessings taken from the card pool, but if the villain was not defeated, they are taken from the cards in the blessings/timer deck so in addition to everything else, you lose turns when you fail to defeat the villain.

 

I haven't bought any additional characters yet, but in the normal card game, you can have 2-6 characters per game. It appeared during the character selection process that there were about that many slots to drag characters into (which was a bit confusing during the tutorial). In terms of your question about creating characters, I'm not sure what you mean. Basically each character you can choose is a set character with certain abilities, that can be customized by card choices and skill choices as you progress through the campaign. But (at least in the physical game) there's no way to say, create a custom rogue character with different stat dice or different powers.

 

In terms of character powers, you can use powers whenever appropriate, assuming you can pay the cost. The only limit is that you can only use a particular power once per "check". So, for example, Merisiels backstabbing power where she can recharge/discard any card to get a bonus 1d6/2d6 for a combat check can only be used once on a check, even if she has multiple cards on hand. Kyra's power is already limited in the description of the power as it replaces her first exploration of the turn. As a side note, there's a similar restriction on card plays. You can only play one of each card type per character per check, for its normal card usage. What I mean by that is if for example, Kyra had 2 armor cards in hand she could only play one of those for its actual armor power on a check. She could discard the second, or any card, as just a point of damage. Merisiel could play one armor to reduce damage and use a second armor as the discard to activate her power, but you can't play more than one card of a type for its actual card ability per character, per check.

 

Regarding your location questions, it pretty much all has to do with the specific abilities of a location, and your characters powers. For example, Merisiel is often best alone at a location because one of her powers only can be used when alone. All locations have some sort of "special" text, which can be good or bad. Locations like the general store give extra explores if you encounter certain card types and locations like the Goblin Fort make fighting goblins more difficult. So you'd want to send more combat oriented characters to the goblin fort, for example. Another thing to look at is closing requirements. If it takes a wisdom roll to close a location, then sending someone with a higher wisdom stat is probably best. And sometimes, looking at types of cards in a location can make a difference. For example, the wizard character can get free explores when acquiring spells, so a location with a lot of spell cards is a great place for him to burn through.

 

In terms of the standard scenarios, the locations are set for each adventure. More are added off a set list when you play with more characters. It's always 2 more locations than the number of characters in your party, other than special scenarios. I'm not sure how quest mode will work.

 

Anyway I hope that helps with some of the questions you had about the game, I agree completely that for a new player the tutorial could use some more depth and explanation.

[Mysterio]

From what I figured out the goal is to find and defeat a boss card which is hidden in one of several locations, although it can move between them. Each location has a single henchman card which you have to defeat in order to make that location inaccessible to the boss. Once you confine the boss to a single location and defeat it there, you win the game. This seems a bit too simple to me, though.

If you encounter the Villain and fail to defeat him, the Villain plus (<# of Locations> minus <# of closed Locations> minus 1) Blessings from the Blessings deck will be shuffled and randomly added to each open Location (one per Location), after which each Location deck is shuffled. If you encounter the Villain and defeat him, yet there's at least one other open Location for him to flee to, you'll do the same thing, but take random Blessings from the Vault instead of the Blessings deck (meaning you won't lose any turns).

 

In order to do all this you control a few characters (two or more?) which each have deck cards which represent things like equipment, powers, or allies. Characters also possess not-card abilities which you can use whenever you want? I'm not sure about this. I'm also not clear on whether these characters level up, or how their abilities are defined. Can you create characters from the start or are they always unlockables or purchaseables?

You can have one to six characters in your party. The larger the party size, however, the more locations will be in play. You always have 30 turns to win, regardless of the party size.

 

A character's deck contains Boons (beneficial cards), while Location decks contain Boons (added to the character's hand when successfully acquired) and Banes (Villain, Henchmen, Monsters, and Barriers), which characters must defeat. Each character also has unique Powers (active and passive) that can be used during the adventure. The description for each Power states when and where it can be used.

 

After completing the tutorial, you're given Merisiel the Rogue and Kyra the Cleric for free; the other 9 can be purchased using gold or by purchasing the Bundle with real-world money. When you first create a party, you can put whatever cards from your Gallery into each character's deck limited by the number of each card in your Gallery, from which deck the card belongs, and the deck build limitations for the character.

 

I also don't know whether locations are more or less generic, or whether they follow some kind of specific builds. Are certain characters better prepared to tackle certain locations? Are there support characters which shouldn't tackle locations alone? Does anything happen to a location if you go for too many turns without interacting with it? Is there a disadvantage to tackling locations one at a time with your whole party?

Each Location will contain Banes and Boons drawn randomly from the Vault, the type and quantity of each defined by the Location. For example, one Location will contain more Items than Allies, while another will contain more Allies than Items. And yes--certain characters are better suited to tackle certain Locations. Managing which characters to put where and when is a strategic decision you have to manage.

 

The use of game specific terminology in the tutorial without much clarification is discouraging to new players and seems like something that should be corrected. I'd say a glossary, tooltips or both might go a long way towards making things a bit more user friendly.

Refer to the Terms section in the Rules screen.

[torm3ntin]

I played the game once, 2 years ago and took me the tutorial to get back on track.

 

Having a lot of fun doing quests and upgrading my gear. 

 

They did a hell of a good job with this one!

[da_mayor]

TLDR:

 

Burying your ally is not GOOD, but it can sometimes gain you good things.

 

The Villain doesn't move about randomly...  Only when you fight him and fail to corner-and-defeat him.

 

You can play the game with a single character.  Each character has Skills, Powers (which can be used over and over), and a deck of Boons with which to do their thing.  They develop by adding flat pluses to their skills (Skill Feat), updating and potentially adding new powers (Power Feat), adding to the types of boons in their starting deck (Card Feat), or by swapping out the boons in their deck with better ones.  Each starting character is "fixed", as are the options to advance (Merisiel can add up to four Skill Feats to her Dexterity, but Kyra can't add more than one).  However, there are more options than feats rewarded, so several people may develop the same character different ways.  You start with two free characters (Kyra and Merisiel) and can purchase the other 9 with in-game gold or real money.

 

Each Scenario has a list of locations used.  Each location has a fixed deck list.  The first thing *I* consider is, "which character will be best to close this location?"  Next, I think about who can best acquire the listed boons, and who can handle any "While at this location" conditions best.  If you take your whole party to one location at a time, and you encounter the Villain, you can't temporarily close the other locations to corner it.  But some characters work best around others (Bards!) so it's all part of the strategy.

 

Yeah, that was the short version.

 

Ok, so, one at a time.  I may be telling you things you already know, but bear with me.

 

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Burying your ally...  The tutorial mentioned the may ways to "play" a card.  Reveal, Display, Recharge, Discard, Bury, and Banish.  Those are GENERALLY in order of preference, based on the idea that your Hand and your Deck together represent your current Health.  You die when you have to draw a card from your deck and there are no cards left.  The most common time for this to happen is when you're resetting your hand up to your hand size at the end of your turn.  Having cards in your hand prevents you from having to draw so many cards from your deck.  With that in mind:

 

"Reveal" means to just show that the card is in your hand.  It stays in your hand.  This means you can use it again at the immediate next opportunity.

"Display" means to move it out of your hand until the card instructions tell you to do something else with it.  The "Goodness" of this really depends on this latter development.

"Recharge" means to put it on the bottom of your draw deck.  You don't get to play it again any time soon, but it stays in your "health" pool

"Discard" means to put the card in your discard pile.  This takes the card OUT of your "health" pool, but many healing abilities return cards from your Discard pile to your hand or deck.

"Bury" means to put the card in that pile of dirt.  Only extremely high level abilities can return cards from your Buried pile into play, BUT at the end of the Scenario, the card is availble for rebuilding your deck.

"Banish" means to return the card to the game box.  The only way to get it back is to encounter the card again (generally by chance) and acquire it normally.

 

I believe the tutorial says NOT to be afraid to bury cards for their powers because boldness is rewarded.  Personally, I avoid Bury and Banish powers a lot.  To answer your question, Burying an ally isn't GOOD,  but there are times when it's worth it.

 

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Villains moving around...  And some about locations...

 

I'm going to make many generalizations about Scenarios.  Just be aware that there are exceptions to most (if not all) of them.

 

A typical scenario card has three main bits of information used to set up the game.  There is a list of locations, which tell you which Location cards to set up based on how many characters are playing.  Normally, it's two plus the number of characters, so there will be three if there's 1 character, one more for 2, etc.  Each location has a "While at this location" condition (special rules that apply to a character who is at that location), a "To Close" condition (the test or action that must be passed/taken to close the location either temporarily or permanently), and "When permanently Closed" text (a triggered action or persistent condtion that exists upon closing the location permanently).  It also has a list of (usually) nine cards of the eight types (Monstar, Barrior, Weapon, Armor, Item, Ally, and Blessing) that you mix together to build up that location deck.  Then you usually add one more card...

 

The second and third main bits of information on the cards are which Villain(s) and Henchmen will be used for the scenario.  The Villain, usually only one, is static.  The Henchmen may include unique "named" henchmen and/or generic ones in a list.  Typically, you start a pile with a Villain.  Then you add unique henchmen in order until the total number of card in your pile equals the number of Locations.  If that doesn't happen, start adding generic henchmen until you have the right number.  Then you shuffle and add one card from that pile to each location.  Then shuffle the location decks.  You play as normal.  If you defeat a henchman that is drawn from a location deck, you get a chance to close the location "permanently" by filling that location's "To close" requirement.  If you can't, or you try and fail, then you generally have to wait until the location is empty of location cards before you can attempt to close that location.  (In fact, if the last card of the location deck is the Henchman, and you defeat it, you get two chances to close!)  If you succeed, you trigger that location's "When permanently closed" text.

 

The Villain is in one random location.  It doesn't move about randomly...  Only under certain circumstances.  When you defeat a monster or Henchman, it's Banished back to the box.  If you fail to defeat a monster or Henchman, it's shuffled back into its location.  Villains are handled differently.  When you encounter (and don't evade) a Villain, the first thing that the game offers you to do is it temporarily close each occupied open location (other than the one where the Villain was found) by fulfilling its "To close" requirement.  This "temp close" only lasts until you are finished with the Villain.  This can make you think twice if the requirement is something costly.

 

If you defeat a Villain, the location where you drew the Villain immediately closes (triggering the When permanently closed" text).  If there are no other locations that are not closed (either temporarily or permanently), you start a new pile and add blessings from the game box until you have a total number of cards equal to the open locations.  (If there's only one, that's just the Villain alone, and the shuffle-animation looks a bit silly.)  Shuffle that pile and add one card from it into each open location, then shuffle each of those location decks.  (Once that's done, the temporarily closed locations are considered "Open" again.

 

If you FAIL to defeat the Villain, something similar happens.  The location where the Villain was drawn stays open.  You gather a pile of the Villain and blessings from the Blessings Deck (thus potentially shortening the game) equal to the number of open locations, and shuffle and distribute the cards in the same way above.  Note that it might end up in the same location if you don't defeat it.

 

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Characters and character development...

 

You can actually play just one character.  In another topic, one of the devs challenges anyone to play Lem solo on the hardest setting through all the released scenarios.  Each character is "pregenerated" with skills, powers, and a card list.

 

Every character has the skills Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, defined by a die-type.  They may have MORE skills based on those first six (Kyra has Wisdom at d12, and Divine listed "Wisdom + 2", so if she has to make a Divine check, she can roll a d12 and add 2).  If you don't have a skill on your card, you don't base it on an existing skill at all.  You just roll a d4.  (If you keep this in mind, it'll explain why dice pools change to d4s when you add bonuses which don't apply to the big six Skills.)  You develop these by adding a flat +1 to any roll based one of the big six every time you gain a "Skill Feat" as a Scenario, Adventure, or Adventure Path reward.  The choices you have are limited (as you can see on the beige-and-blue bards listed on the Skills tab of your character sheet), but every character has 15 total possibilties, and the entire Adventure Path won't reward you that many, so different folks may take the same characters and develop them differently.

 

Powers are wide and varied.  They include the size of your character's hand and any proficiencies with Weapons or Armor, but then they can get very individualized.  This must have been one of the bigger Dev nightmares, coding each and every power.  Most characters start with two or three powers on top of their Hand Size and Proficiencies.  Every character has four ways to improve their powers through "Power Feat" rewards.  (There will come a point in the future where you will choose one of two Roles for your characters, which further specializes them...  Each will add 8 more possible power feats.  We're still two adventure-releases out from when that'll become useful.)  Again, there tend to be more feats available than awarded.

 

Your starting deck consists of 15 cards.  Its composition comes from a fixed set of quantities and boon types that comes with the starting character (Kyra has three spells and one Item, Merisiel has zero spells and six items, etc).  As you progress, you can earn "Card Feats" that will let you choose to increase the quantity of one boon type by one.  This increases your starting "health" by one and is generally highly prized.  Each character has 10 possible upgrades, but again, Card Feats are few and far between.

 

The actual make-up of your starting deck can change every single scenario.  The numbers and types don't change (unless you get a Card Feat), but the individual boons do.  Before you start your first scenario, you can build your deck from any boons with the "B" deck number that have the "Basic" trait on the left side.  Otherwise you get the "default" deck (which, in most cases, I find horrible).  After a Scenario, you go through the boons you've acquired, plus the cards you started with (minus any you've banished) and rebuild your fifteen (or more) card deck.  You can trade freely with the other characters, and everything you don't end up using is returned to the game box.  I'm told you can freely pull from those same Basic boons each time you rebuild your deck up until you complete Black Fang's Dungeon and/or start on Attack on Sandpoint, but I've never checked.  After that point, you only get to choose from Basics when you've ended a Scenario and, from among all the characters who played, there aren't enough boons of a single type to build your deck (if you banished more spells than you acquired, for example).  Once you've been playing for a while, there are certain boons that you will rabidly try to acquire, like the Holy Light spell for clerics and bards, or the Deathbane Light Crossbow +1 for anyone whose Dexterity is better than their Strength...

 

As I said above, you always have unlimited access to Kyra and Merisiel.  The other nine (Lem the Bard, Valeros the Fighter, Harsk the Ranger, Seoni the Sorcerer, Ezren the Wizard, Amiri the Barbarian, Lini the Druid, Sajan the Monk, and Seelah the Paladin) can be purchased with in-game gold (which can, in turn, be purchased with real cash, or earned by playing relentlessly).  If you get the "Character Add-on Deck" (listed in the store), you get the last four I listed bundled in.  If you get the Season Pass, you immediately get all eleven characters, all the boons in the Character Add-on Deck access to all the Adventures (7 total, B thru 6) as they are released, and some promo cards (boons and banes, I believe), which seem to be exclusive to the Season Pass.

 

You can have multiple iterations of each character, as near as I can tell.  Basically, you can start a party fresh with un-advaced characters and basic decks, or build parties with advanced characters, though I haven't messed with that much.

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Location-base strategy...

 

As I mentioned, the first thing I consider when I start thinking about sending a character to a given location is, "which character is best able to meet the closing condition?"  For example, the Wooden Bridge required a Dexterity or Stealth check to close, so Merisiel's my best option for that.

 

Next, I consider the banes and boons in the location deck and see who might be best to defeat/acquire them.  For example, the Academy has a lot of Spells.  Lem has both Arcane AND Divine skills, and thus wouldn't be bad there...

 

Sometimes, the "While at this location" condition might be something like, "At the start of your turn, succeed at a Constitution or Fortitude 90 check or die a horrible, painful death" (I don't have an actual example in front of me, so I rely on hyperbole.)  I might send my character who has the best Constitution or Fortitude to that location, even if they were otherwise poorly suited to deal with those banes/boons at and/or close that location.

 

There isn't much more to day about bunching your party up.  If you're all at the same location, then each character can give one card to one other character at the beginning of every turn.  But that only works between characters at the same location.  Similarly (I haven't tested this in PA, but in the physical card game) when it comes time to temp-close a location, EACH character at an open location can opt to take a crack at the "To close" condition until someone succeeds.  Some boons can apply to the character playing it OR anyone at their location (potions, especially, can be used that way).  But some banes do damage to everyone at a given location.  Some things cause everyone at a location to summon and encounter a bane.  And if everyone spreads out, you can win the Scenario more quickly once you close two locations, because if one of you encounters the Villain, you have enough people to temp-close ALL the other locations, leaving it no escape if it's defeated, and only one place to which to escape if it isn't.  Knowing where the Villain is helps tremendously.  So, these are all things to consider when you build your strategy.  I'm playing a game with Lem, Seoni, and Merisiel using the physical cards, and we've had REAL trouble keeping Seoni alive.  So, our plan next time is for Lem to hang with Seoni and use his Bard Song power to recharge cards left and right to help her checks while also making sure she's an optional target for his Cure spells, while Merisiel goes off alone where she can use her Back Stab with impunity.

 

Ok, if there's a max-post-size, I've probably tripled it.  Now to see if everything I've said has been explained more concisely while I was typing up this novel...

[Convicsik]

Basically it's everything I've hoped for. It's Pathfinder Adventure Card Game with enhanced flare and flavor, no set up / tear down time, no rule hunting, and it keeps track of all of your characters progress. Best of all, I don't need to find a place to store hundreds of cards. I admit I was really disappointed with the delays, but I can see why now, considering how much extra content was added in. Congrations team, you've done it.

[Hannibal_PJV]

The game would definitely need better tutorial to non Pathfinder players!

It is a complex game (for a tablet game). And it has so Many terms that should be defined to the new player.

Maybe even onscreen help where you could get rules and explanation of all things that you can do at your current situation. Like there is for example MS-word program.

[PinkRose]

Mr. Pathfinder Paperclip?

[Hannibal_PJV]

Noooooooouuuuuu!

 

;-) that would be pure pain!

 

But maybe a ?-mark that puts the game to explain everything mode...

[StormbringerGT]

<3