Other than visual issues, I think that Blood Rage is brilliant in digital form. It’s tough, challenging, and it is a well-planned and sophisticated game to play in digital form. I think the developers translated the game perfectly from its table-top brethren, but there is room for improvement.
I’m uninformed. Yeah, I know. You’re reading that and thinking, “Well, I’m glad he wrote this review.” — end sarcasm — I’m glad I wrote this review, but I’m uninformed. Uninformed in what, you might ask? I’m uninformed of the fact that Blood Rage was an actual board game. I had no idea that this was played and has been played since 2015. It makes complete sense considering how the game is played in its new digital released form from Asmodee Digital.
Without further banter, let’s dig right into it.
To say it took me more than a few tries to grasp the concept of this game is an incredible understatement. Blood Rage is not for the weak of heart when it comes to a learning curve, as it prides itself on several strategic ways to play, and requiring you to be conscious of more than a few things as you continue to play. In short, there is a lot to juggle with Blood Rage — more than I expected.
Anyway, you start the game with a round of three ‘ages’ (we will get back to that in a second). For each age, you have a certain amount of moves you can make, which are gauged with ‘rage’ points. Rage points are actions that you have in a single age, meaning that once you run out of rage points, you run out of actions/moves, and you have to wait until the next age to go again.
Ages are essentially rounds in the game. You have three rounds to conquer villages, defeat enemies, and to increase your stats. Stats are broken up into Horns/Rage/Axes. Those three stats give you the greatest chance of defeating your enemies and give you the best shot to gain the most glory points in the game, which is what you want to do because the victor of the game is determined by total glory points. Those stats determine how many troops you can have on the battlefield, how many actions you can take on the battlefield, and the brutality of the actions.
Is it cut and dry like this? No. The beef of the game, outside of strategizing how you’re going to attack the enemy and in what way you’re going to increase your stats, is based on cards. Yes, this is a card-based game in the center of it all. You have several categories of cards to choose from in Blood Rage. One set helps you during battles by increasing your battle points to help defeat your enemy. The second set of cards allow you to bring in special abilities and monsters, the latter of which are nice to have around (yay for trolls!). The last set of cards are called quest cards, which reward you at the end of each age for completing the tasks stated on the card. Which ones you choose and how you use them is all part of the strategy of the game, as they will probably affect the above stat categories previously mentioned. Everything is literally connected in this game.
Unlike other card games, you are highly encouraged to use your cards before the end of each age, as said cards will pretty much go back into the deck, sans one you get to choose to keep. Don’t waste opportunities or hold onto cards in hopes of destroying your enemies at the end. You have to be incredibly conscious of Rage points and your own strategy with the cards.
If all this wasn’t complicated enough, at the end of the first and second age the game chooses a ‘doomed’ providence that you or someone else has taken and proceeds to go full Ragnarok on it. If you have troops on that doomed province, they are sent back to your deck and you’re allowed to have them in the next age (unless it’s the third age). The purpose of this Ragnarok event is to limit the land size, which means there are more intense fighting and card choices going on as each round goes by. If you need a simplified reason for this, think about how Fortnite starts limiting space as the game gets closer to the end — the same concept. It forces the fight, which makes the climax of the game more fun.
Can you see how big this game is for a small release? Good gravy, there’s a lot to learn in a single setting, lots to take in as you play it, and create strategies for victory, and I HIGHLY recommend taking a walk through the tutorial a couple of times to retain all the lessons for you best possible chance at victory. I’m not sure I would have survived this review period without the tutorial, as it is not the type of game where you just skip the tutorial and go in guns blazing. I tried about 10 times before I gave in to the lessons. Skip the grief, get right to the tutorial.
I must have played about 10-15 games of this before firmly grasping what the hell was going on in the game, even after the tutorial. This is like going to watch the movie Cloud Atlas and not reading the book — it will take you more than a few viewings to grasp all the moving parts, and the entire time you might feel like you’re miserable until it all starts coming together. Then you enjoy it.
Anyway, once you get almost every aspect of the game down, it actually is quite fun. I might even invest in finding the table-top game and torturing my kids with it. It is quite fun and incredibly challenging, and it has been a while since I have felt that way about a card-based game.
Things that could be improved? Well, you honestly can’t dumb down the game, so don’t expect me to gripe/moan about the game needing to being simplified. It shouldn’t be simplified at all, as all the moving parts make it engaging on an intellectual strategic level. It’s like playing a really difficult game of RISK with a lot of rules, and with a Viking theme. Who wouldn’t want to play that?
My suggestions are more visual. The game board needs to be increased in size. While the outside of the board is neat, and the animations of the giant sea serpent is cool, very Viking, the game really needs to wrangle in that artsy real estate, as it will help us visually challenged folk from squinting. It will also be easier to see spots and areas of importance and probably improve the art on the actual battlefield. In addition, the cards need to be a bit larger for the same reason. I had difficulty reading the text on the card and understanding fully what the cards did. I played this on a 24” monitor and on a laptop but still had issues reading the text. I understand that the digital version of the game allows for cooler scenery, but making the gameplay design visuals important more than anything else is vital for the enjoyment of the game.
Other than visual issues, I think that Blood Rage is brilliant in digital form. It’s tough, challenging, and it is a well-planned and sophisticated game to play in digital form. I think the developers translated the game perfectly from its table-top brethren, but there is room for improvement.
