Let’s get the setup logistics out of the way because they matter more than most reviews admit, this game with a custom insert can still run you forty five minutes to get to the table, and I know people who bounce off it purely on that friction, not the rules, the setup. I’ve made peace with it. I keep a running note of where the campaign left off so I’m not relearning the state of the world every session, and once that ritual’s in place the actual game earns every minute it costs you.
The card-driven combat is the real hook, no dice, you’re choosing two cards each round, one for initiative and top action, one for bottom, and the tension isn’t luck, it’s information, you’re planning around what your allies might do without knowing for sure, and monsters draw their own cards so their behavior isn’t fixed either. It’s a genuinely different kind of tension than a lot of co-ops manage, less “hope the die is kind” and more “did I read this room correctly.” That atmosphere of controlled uncertainty is what kept me coming back scenario after scenario even when a specific fight went sideways.
The one real crack I noticed, and other people flagged the same thing, some classes clearly play better solo than social, the voidwarden in particular got called out as feeling less rewarding once you’re actually piloting it compared to how it looks on paper, and when a character’s kit turns you into four people quietly optimizing your own turn instead of a party actually talking through a plan, that’s the multiplayer-solitaire trap, and Gloomhaven doesn’t fully dodge it in every group composition. Bring people who like to talk through a plan out loud, not just execute their own hand in silence.
The legacy destruction stuff, stickers, torn cards, splits people hard, and I get both sides, I bought the sticker-removal alternative and don’t regret it. A hundred thirty hours in for some people and zero regrets is a real quote I found in the reviews, and honestly, same.