One review put the comparison better than I could, everything Gloomhaven was and more, and while I don’t think it’s quite that simple, I understand the impulse. I struggled with Gloomhaven’s euro elements, they felt immersion busting in a game so committed to atmosphere everywhere else, and Oathsworn largely avoids that trap, the crunchy encounter system feels tactical without dropping you into resource management that breaks the mood the story just built.
The companion app is doing a huge amount of work here, and I don’t say that as a knock, the voice acting alone builds more atmosphere than most campaign boxes’ printed rulebooks manage, and it changes the story chapters from a text-reading exercise into something closer to a produced audio drama with you rolling dice in it. The battle flow system, where turn order shifts fluidly based on speed and action choice rather than a fixed sequence, was new to me and I genuinely love it, it keeps every fight tense in a way a rigid initiative order rarely does.
Not everything survives contact with reality. The push-fit miniatures are a legitimate mess, brittle, squeaky, feels like some cheap 90s toy plastic, and I’ve had pieces fall apart from being looked at wrong, gluing them helps but voids the point of the modular armory expansion. Loot management is the other real complaint, gear breaks constantly after fights, and with a genuinely small pool of unique items in circulation you’ll see the same equipment repeat more than a game this expensive should ask you to tolerate. A few people called the rulebook shockingly bad, and while I got through it fine, I understand why that language showed up more than once.
The city-and-story phase between fights is a slog for some players, a step some reviews said actively unfun compared to the combat they bought the box for, and I get it, that’s real setup and real reading time between the parts that pop. I don’t mind it, personally, the writing earns the patience it asks for. But know that going in, this is a big box that wants a real evening, not a filler night.