Let's Play Middara (Part 103) Lore, Rules, and Critique
7Shoutout to Meet Me At The Table: https://www.youtube.com/c/MeetMeAtTheTable
So much to talk about and never enough time.
Overall, Middara is one of my favorite games. The gameplay loop is simple to teach and learn. The only issues are the edge cases the rulebook really makes no effort in clarifying and the fact the devs don't seem to take advantage of their various keywords and flags they made.
Act 1 was great and I look forward to seeing how decisions in the first act affect the next two. Just hope it does not just flat out lead to a game over. There were a few events/totems/etc that were rather cheap (particularly in the bounty). But, most of them can be handled with proper caution. Some parts of the story felt a bit weird by sudden mood swings by certain characters. Zeke's reaction to defeating the coffin literally changes based on who gets eaten by it.
Even if the story goes Bioware and turns to trash, the gameplay itself is fun enough to keep me playing regardless.
The devs putting this on TTS is important and I hope other board game devs follow suit. They are mostly listening to feedback on their discord though they default to saying that their rules are clear when they are not.
I am also worried that they are devoting resources towards forever 'fixing' what has already been worked on and released. Some people have already joked about how many more times they are going to go change Utility Cores. They also seem to want to nerf what healing there is (Font of Renewal) in hopes of getting people buying consumables. I feel this is just going to hurt newer players as healing is there to make up for less optimized builds and bad luck / mistakes.
Speaking of Consumables, the devs REALLY want us to spend gold on them. You know gold, the thing we have a finite resource of (even with bounties)? Nearly every consumable is not worth the gold and risking not being able to afford more permanent items (like relics). But it is not just a gold issue, it is a space issue. You only have six slots at most without a backpack/pouch. Most of the healing items do not heal enough. Some consumables are situational (until you get an effect, balms and sprays just take up space). The few items that are universally good (pagers, rerolls, and dynamite) can quickly eat up your gold regardless.
Think I forgot to mention another factor that decides your gold spending and that is the builds themselves. Courage Stifle and support builds can survive with fewer upgrades than others. The amount of gold you spend if you went four full DPS builds is crazy.
The discord is pretty funny as it goes in cycles. New players come in to try the game and immediately say summoning is overpowered when summoning is barely average DPS at best. This only becomes an issue when the devs agree with them despite having already stated that the HP bloat is because of Quick Blow builds.
If they must forever tweak things, they should focus on buffing what is lacking instead of nerfing builds that work and are fun to play.
Anywho, just a wall of text to add to my ramblings. I still very much enjoy the game but there are things worthy of critique. Hope you enjoyed the playthrough!