Krosmaster Quest Review

Krosmaster Quest is an absolute behemoth of a game, coming in a giant box filled to bursting with cardboard and plastic. It features lovingly pre-painted plastic Krosmasters, miniatures so large they can rest comfortably in the average adult hand and approximately* enough cardboard chits to fill a vault you can dive into Scrooge McDuck style. The artwork is fantastic, the variety, quite frankly, ridiculous. There is a huge pile of 3D cardboard terrain to assemble that really makes your battlefields pop. You truly get your moneys worth in terms of shear components here!

*approximately

 With so much stuff comes a breath-taking amount of variety in this game. There are 16 double-sided map tiles, of which you’ll be using all of 6 in a 4-player game. The game comes with 15 scenarios (not including 7 training games). You have 2 complete rosters of enemies, the humble woollen Gobballs and a vegetarian’s worst nightmare, birds called Tofu, which can be combined or played against separately as you see fit. Each faction contains nearly a dozen different types to fight against, from tiny micro-sheep to giant mother chic – Tofus, to the awesome Bat-tofu. Why is he awesome?

This is a weird world you find yourself in. Not only are farmyard animals trying to kill you, armour and weapons can be crafted out of feathers, eggs and wool, the sheep poo wears sunglasses… and it’s an actual valuable resource to be collected. It’s like a kid’s imagination has run wild, yet it’s tempered by some surprisingly dark humour. The fire breathing panda character is a recovering alcoholic for example. This juxtaposition is carried through the gameplay too. At once a gentle, friendly romp through parkland and chicken huts, the game can turn utterly brutal and cut throat at a moments notice, the dark undercurrent surging to the surface before once again vanishing.

You can play Krosmaster Quest either cooperatively against a dungeon master or in free-for-all mode, but either approach features the same fundamental objective, collecting Victory Points to fill up the bar at the top of your player board. In co-op mode the dungeon master will seem largely powerless, his dark minions about as terrifying as they look. But anyone who has played a Legend of Zelda game knows what will happen if you beat up on the chickens too much! In a flurry of cards the game can change and suddenly the players are scrambling to control an outbreak of wildlife that doing its level best to peck them to death.

In the free-for-all mode the role of dungeon master is played out in turn by each of the players, so everyone gets a chance to share out the damage, or move stuff around to help themselves. While you can ostensibly attack each other directly it is rarely worth doing so, the only punishment for dying is to lose a VP and return to the starting city in shame. But the moment a “kill another Krosmaster” objective is revealed, well, suddenly everyone is eyeing each other with suspicion!

As you should really be coming to expect from this game, the number of ways of gathering VPs is typically broad. You can just buy them for the cost indicated on the track, but more likely you’ll collect them from completing the quests offered to you. Maybe these will task you with killing a certain set of enemies or they’ll take you on a journey… like collecting two poo, killing a monster, chopping down a tree and going through a warp gate, the trick really being that you have to do them in order. There is also a track forming a “story quest” that all players can progress down one card at a time. These cards are drawn randomly by the demon player from a deck that also triggers enemy spawning and resource regurgitation and various other effects. Of course, “story quest” is used pretty loosely here. It tells a story like a 4 year old describes their day. I got up and then I went to school and then I found some eggs and then I killed a sheep and then…

But that is still far from everything that is going on in this game! There is a whole resource management game featuring fluctuating market values for each resource: sometimes you really can turn s*** into gold! These resources can then be used to craft items, weapons and armour, that in turn help you fight your way through the hordes. You can also pay to uncover new abilities and powers from your player board, to unlock additional baggage space for resources or equipment you’ve not yet crafted. You can go off into a dungeon, featuring new tiles off to the side of the board, where you’ll have lots of enemies to fight and a boss to overcome. This game absolutely captures the feel of an RPG, especially an MMORPG.

All these disparate elements come together to form an intriguing whole. The mini game of combining resources at the market and making your own items, just feels so satisfying! So too does unlocking new abilities, and completing quests. There are some really nice ways to plan out your actions so that you can have mega turns where you complete multiple quest elements or even score multiple VPs in quick succession. I’ve seen free-for-all games come down to a single dice roll between two evenly matched players, an initially disparate team pull together to snatch a win before time ran out in a co-op mission. There are great things to see here!

Unfortunately, the game also comes with some significant baggage. The shear amount of stuff makes almost every action that little bit too fiddly and drags out turns to the point where downtime becomes a real problem. While not complicated, all this stuff makes both set up and rules explanations a painful experience. These things are made worse by a slightly disorganised rulebook, with some rules hidden in paragraphs of text and special rules split up between different sections. The game really needs some simple player aids just to explain the different actions, and their costs, rather than forcing me to read out the damn rulebook every game. One awesome thing the game does have for new players is a pile of training scenarios you can play through to teach you the game, a great entry point but it will take a little dedication to get through them all.

The thing that is really missing for me though is some sense of why I’m doing all this. I feel no motivation for the things that are happening. Typically the most rewarding games are those where you feel like you are building towards something, constructing your city or your empire or paint trading business, whatever! The best elements of Krosmaster Quest, unlocking your new abilities, crafting new items, fit into that psychology. But for me the primary VP collection element doesn’t. I’ve got a beak in my bag so I get a VP! YES! I’m really feeling the character development here…

 

I feel this is the sort of game that has a target market in mind and I just don’t fall into it. I’ll stress that there is a lot to like here, but the fiddliness of it all bogs the complete experience down. Fundamentally, Krosmaster Quest is a grand sandbox laid out for your exploration. If you look at the crazy mass of stuff you get in the box, the almost endless smorgasbord of things you can do, and feel an excited thrill? This game is absolutely what you are looking for. If you see the heaps of tokens and their (admittedly excellent) storage trays and shudder in terror then there is nothing here for you. If you’re in the middle, I can only suggest you take a long hard look at yourself, because Krosmaster Quest knows what it is and makes no apologies for it! That, at least, is something to be admired.

 

Rating: Kros-maybe Quest

 

Our copy of Krosmaster Quest was kindly provided for us by Esdevium Games. It has an RRP of £79.99 and will be available through your friendly local game store!