Talisman

This particular review is going to be more of an attempt to show how the development of games has positively affected the views of people that actually play games and how nostalgia can be a powerful force when it comes to trying to determine what is good and what is not. I think there are powerful memories associated with this particular game and it actually becomes quite a contentious issue in terms of trying to talk with people about how we can objectively assess the worth of a game. It becomes difficult to fight the perceptions of people when, after telling them that you think the game is bad/has bad rules, they simply respond with "well I had fun, doesn't that invalidate your argument?". Well, in a way, it does, because of the aforementioned cemented perspective, but that still doesn't stand to scrutiny. Still, there shouldn't be a reason to comment negatively on the choices someone makes in order to have fun: we aren't trying to be the Fun Police and shaming people into playing games that we think are somehow, in our mind's eye, objectively better. The argument almost always comes down to this crux: if you find something fun and repeating that activity is fun to you, then there's no reason why people should suggest that you play something else just because in the wider community that game is not considered to be good.

On the other hand, I think there is an element of trying to inform people about the alternatives: if they are aware of what are so-termed 'superior' alternatives and still choose to play the so-termed 'inferior' game, more power to them. But if being informed makes them at least try what was suggested and they like it better, I think this can be a positive force within the community. There's almost nothing lost by following this route and much to gain, although it can occur that the sensibilities of some people that are overly attached to their games (or even to the definition of good/bad) can be hurt by aggressively campaigning for better games.

Quite frankly, fuck those people, especially if they come to a discussion forum and mysteriously find that people disagree with them and thus are subsequently  outraged by this. There's a saying about heat and kitchens and it fits equally well in regards to forums and discussion: if you can't stand discussions, why are you in a forum in the first place?

Anyway, going back to Talisman itself, in a sentence, the game is bad. Really bad. It manages to incorporate some of the very worst elements of 80s boardgaming design and the game really shows its age. For those not familiar with the game, the basis of it is that you are an adventurer walking around a realm divided into different concentric zones and you move up and down it fighting monsters, getting items and growing in power. Eventually, you are powerful enough to defeat the bigger, stronger creatures nearer the center of the board and thus you travel to that zone (after completing a random quest) in order to gain the crown of command and use it to kill the other players. In actuality, very few players will be able to experience even a fraction of accomplishments listed above. 

The problems start at the character selection/randomization stage. Each character within the game has different special abilities, power and crafting. Unfortunately, it becomes readily apparent that some are widely overpowered while others are distinctively underpowered, which gives a distinct advantage to the player that picks/is lucky enough to get the good characters.

Movement across the board is done by rolling a dice, destroying all possible attempts at a cohesive strategy by forcing you to make one of two choices when running around the board. There might be a magic item that some other hero decided not to take but unless you roll the correct number, you aren't going to get it. Combat is a simple matter of dice roll + stat, with an all or nothing result, which more often than not leads to situation in which you just can't improve your character since you keep facing the stronger enemies rather than falling over items like other heroes seem to be doing.The end game is, as you might have guessed, another dice-fest, with the holder of the crown just rolling dice until the other players die. This is a game in which the game gets more boring once you get in the lead, surely a piece of genius design intended to keep the fun level constant both among people losing and winning.

One argument that you'll often hear in favour of Talisman is that you are meant to view it as a progression, a storyline of the increasing power of your hero. Unfortunately, the game actively prevents certain people from achieving this goal and acts more like an adversarial DM that, not wanting you to have even a modicum of choice, decides where your character moves for you. The location are also fairly boring: some of the regions have extra rules but it feels almost too mechanical: A better storyline is created even in relatively terrible games of Arkham Horror, because at least the locations within the game feel distinct and each had different challenges and in the end, at least gives you some choice on how to perform your turn, something that is completely lacking with Talisman.

To wrap it up, since I think I have expended more words that I would ever want to while talking about Talisman, the game is bad. It is, although I almost not dare say it, objectively bad. There are so many mechanisms within the game which seem almost destined to make the game reach an state in which a large proportion of the people playing it will not have as good a time as others, but selective memory always seem to center around remembering the good times, when you fought a dragon rather than not being able to beat anything at all. The only reason to play this would be just to bring back the old nostalgia from those times, but if you want to be a hero in a fantasy setting there is so much out there nowadays that it seems weird that people still fall back on this particular game.

Unfortunately, I can only give 1 angry scowling Philip since this game should have remained in whatever weird board-gaming museum it came from.