CW: article contains swears
Each one of these items and tokens and sheets is important. Each one of these pieces have been carefully considered by brilliant designers. Their role is clear. If I looked right now, I’m sure every token is explained somewhere in a game manual that unfortunately reads like a VCR repair guide that’s been run through Google Translate eight times. ‘Remember to put the second deck over the initial deck so the last piece from the regular meeples pool does not cross into the irregular meeples pool before the dice rolls a zero’. That’s not an actual line in the manual; I’m too lazy to dig through a board game box that’s larger than the ones I use to move furniture. Someone will get mad at me about this and, honestly, they are right.
Yeah Gloomhaven left me exhausted, too.
Plus, I'll be honest: the main card selection system is brilliant. Unlocking characters was fun. The rest was... there was something else?! It was that forgettable and flat. The story barely exists and is at its best very thin window dressing. The interactions are nonsensical due to the random nature. The game is grindy as fuck.
I dunno. Fun once. I have zero intention of playing any more of it or any successor, ever. Done way more than enough Gloomhaven for my life.
Amen.