Mass Effect board game
Does Mass Effect have that „mass effect”?
In this computer game, we can romance many different species of aliens, with the exciting plot and battles merely providing a backdrop to our love conquests.
However, in the board game version, there is no time for courtship. Instead, a short campaign awaits, in which Commander Shepard and his crew travel to the planet Hagalaz — the similarity to the popular ice cream brand is purely coincidental. There, they must face the mysterious Cerberus organisation and the Reapers.
The entire campaign consists of three main missions and two optional side quests. Throughout our adventure, we can choose different paths through the story, which will present us with different challenges and bosses to defeat.
Climactic Effect
When I played Mass Effect on the computer, I encountered complex dialogue and side missions for the characters that intertwined with the game’s storyline. This gave me the opportunity to familiarise myself with their stories. In the board game version, there are story interludes in the storybook that add to the atmosphere of the game. Sometimes, we also get a good one-liner from a companion, which brought a tear to my eye as I reminisced about the good old days. In my opinion, the Mass Effect atmosphere is more noticeable here out of nostalgia.
Cosmonovella Effect
If you were expecting an epic space saga involving numerous side plots and complex relationships with other space races, you should look elsewhere. Mass Effect: The Board Game offers a brief adventure comprising a few missions. The game consists of five scenarios, which mainly involve combat and completing objectives. It’s more like DLC than a full-fledged campaign game. In my opinion, though, that’s a good thing. Recently, there have been a lot of story-driven games that seem to have no end in sight. It took us two weeks to complete the campaign, but we could have finished everything in one day if we had really wanted to. I also played a few other scenarios to see what else I might encounter. There are several story choices here, which is definitely a plus for a board game. However, I found the ending itself and the way it was presented a bit disappointing.
Dice Effect
In terms of mechanics, we use dice to trigger the abilities of our team members. The results enable us to attack enemies, open doors (which is surprisingly important), heal team members and use biotic abilities. The fun part is that the first player rolls a large pool of dice, which then decreases in size according to the order of play. In order to use these skills, we need to count on specific results. However, it’s not as if we’re at the mercy of blind luck. We have renegade tokens that allow us to change the result to whatever we want. Shepard also improves our exclamations, and most importantly, we have the ability to block the previous player’s result without rolling. As a rule, we’ll do whatever we want. Mostly.
Managing this pool of dice is enjoyable, but it’s not quite enough for me. After all, we shouldn’t expect any epic combos or combined plays like in the game. Simply placing an exclamation mark deals 2 damage, whereas if it were more complete, it would deal 4 damage. That’s the gist of it, but of course it also depends on the hero we’re playing.
Companion Effect
Our loyal companions will help us to defeat the enemy forces. Garrus likes to shoot from a distance and take out bosses with a single shot. Then there’s Wrex, who loves explosions and close encounters with his shotgun. Then there’s Liara, a biotic with whom I had a romance in the first part of the game. Then there’s Tali, an engineer who flies a drone and is only good at opening doors. Shots got fired.
In terms of characters, I think Wrex is a must-have. He packs a powerful punch and excels in close combat. This is especially useful since enemies like to get close to us, and this Krogan is not a fan of that. Unfortunately, Tali is the worst companion. Her drone is so weak that it usually has no effect. We have to keep moving it and take into account that the enemies will stay in place. Even when we manage to do that, the damage she deals only grazes the enemies’ armour.
Our team members will unlock new abilities by defeating opponents. However, this is quite limited. We can only level up once per scenario, which happens when we shoot three mobs. This means that subsequent kills are ineffective, and we waste bullets. On the other hand, levelling up characters gives us new passive abilities, as well as abilities that require the use of dice. Fans of the computer game will definitely recognise the skills, which have been transferred to the board game quite well. Although biotics don’t lift enemies in such a funny way. It only reduces their damage.
Enemy Effect
The first issue I have concerns the basic enemies. To me, there’s hardly any difference between fighting Cerberus forces and Reapers. The enemies behave too similarly. They differ slightly in stats or passive abilities, but these do not really affect their behaviour.
Bosses, on the other hand, are a whole other ball game. They each have several health bars and their own special abilities. You can certainly tell when you’re fighting these elite colossi. Battles with them are challenging and require some strategy. Often, they are introduced to the game with an atmospheric interlude in the storybook. It’s like watching a cutscene. Plus 10 for atmosphere!
The difficulty level of this game is quite unusual, too. In some battles, we mowed down everyone in sight and waited for the enemies to respawn. Then there were scenarios where we were unlucky and triggered several enemy activations, resulting in Shepard’s death. It was difficult to predict. That’s why I started leaving him behind, to prevent him from looting too quickly.
Speed Effect
Preparing for the game is quick and easy. We just need to unfold the map book and we’re almost ready to play. However, placing and sorting the enemy tokens into bags does take a little time. The tried-and-tested string bag system definitely helps with this. The gameplay itself is also fast; we completed most missions in an hour.
The solo game involved controlling four characters simultaneously. Given the game’s simple rules, I found that easy enough. However, as you know, I prefer co-op games because I like talking about our plans and deciding the order of actions.
Door Effect
There is definitely a problem with opening doors in Mass Effect. Shepard and Tali possess this ability. If we didn’t include an engineer in our team, we would sometimes have to wait the entire round doing nothing because nobody else could open the door. It was very dumb. This was especially frustrating when we had killed all the enemies and were just waiting for the commander to make a move.
Marker Effect
In my opinion, the marker solution is definitely an advantage. However, when we put the components back in the box, the information on the character boards would often rub off. We had to correct them to know what we had developed. I’m also not a fan of flat enemy tokens because I prefer standees for their 3D look. As they were so close to the ground, they blended in with the map somewhat, making it difficult to see if we had missed someone in the activation. The hero figures themselves are great for a board game.
Search effect
Although the game instructions introduce us to the gameplay in a fairly user-friendly way, finding specific information in them is not so easy. There are several micro-rules, and locating them can be time-consuming.
Summary
The Mass Effect board game has a few problematic aspects, such as overly similar opponents and the fact that Shepard is mainly the one who can open doors. Additionally, the game’s mechanics are not very complex, and the storyline resembles temporary DLC that can be completed in one afternoon. However, I enjoyed playing the game. I really immersed myself in the Mass Effect atmosphere and liked every moment spent with this map book. The varied scenarios, boss fights and small story interludes helped with that.
Final verdict: In my opinion, this game is better suited to fans of the Mass Effect series than seasoned co-op players expecting innovative mechanics. Nevertheless, we still have that Mass Effect here.
[Game provided by Portal Games]
