So I’m lying there with a spear in my chest after tapping a big mounted knight on the shoulder and I realize the designers of Elden Ring: The Board Game – Realm of the Grafted King know exactly what they’re doing. Nobody stepped out onto the grassy plains of Limgrave in Elden Ring, the video game, and didn’t consider rushing the Tree Sentinel patrolling nearby. He’s practically asking for it, and now that I’ve faced him in the board game, I can report that it too will happily punish you for your worst impulses.
There’s nothing like getting your ass kicked by the same things in a different medium. Elden Ring: The Board Game is an almost one-to-one re-creation of the opening section of FromSoftware’s bizarre fantasy action RPG, including all the pain and suffering that comes along with it. It’s only “almost” a re-creation because you can’t really replicate a player’s path through an open world full of stuff to do, so to put it more accurately: Elden Ring: The Board Game channels the spirit of what Elden Ring is all about.
The Tree Sentinel, for example, is the tutorial boss. You learn how to set up the combat side of the game by pushing four books filled with gridded battle arenas together, learn how to position your Tarnished hero and the plastic enemy models on either side, and then learn just how fragile you really are when the first hit turns you into a kebab. I’ve played enough Dark Souls to appreciate a good early-game rug pull when I see one, and the board game doesn’t disappoint.
Also like the video game, combat seems to be much easier when multiple players can take turns smacking a monster. I played alone and had monsters taking turns smacking me — which the special solo player rules can only alleviate so much. That’s not to say Elden Ring: The Board Game is unfair, however. Mistakes just sting a little more when nobody is there to bail you out.
The difficulty spikes are what makes Elden Ring: The Board Game feel like the real thing. Its campaign is broken up into scenarios, and most of them start with a short narrative teaser and lead into an exploration phase. You begin on a single tile and fill in the world by placing down more tiles each turn. You never know if you’re going to find a site of grace to rest at or a cave filled with wolves. Some tiles send you straight into combat, and others have you draw cards to gain passive bonuses or punishments that can last a few turns. In one scenario, I limped out of a battle gone wrong with only a few health points left. The nearest site of grace was only a few tiles away, but the sun set and forced me to draw an event card that cursed me with a blindness to — you guessed it — sites of grace.
Another time, during one of the Choose Your Own Adventure narrative sequences, I met a frightened merchant and a group of Demi-Humans stalking him. I did the heroic thing and tried to defend him and got myself killed. In the world of Elden Ring, death isn’t the end of your story, but it has a cost. In the video game, you lose all your runes, which serve as both currency and experience points to level up. In the board game, you lose a Stake of Marika card that you can’t replace without taking more risks. You never know when you’ll be ambushed by knights or tricked by Patches, though, so those cards become just as precious as runes.
I lost three lives in a fight against the Beastman of Farum Azula, a boss the video game throws at you in one of its first dungeons. The board game version emulates what it’s like to encounter them as a new player. They’re the first enemy who can take several turns before you get a chance to make a move. Turn order is decided by whoever comes up first in a shuffled deck of attack cards. The Beastman of Farum Azula leaps around the damp cave you find them in, lunging forward a few spaces and slamming their sword down to hit big chunks of the playing field. You can’t survive more than a hit or two and have to find tiny openings in their attack patterns to get some damage in. It’s just as tense as the boss fight in the video game as you try not to get caught in its dance. This is where I learned how fast you can have your extra lives taken away, and the futility in trying to set up the perfect attack.
Making peace with the inevitability of failure is core to FromSoftware’s work, and it translates nicely into the board game. As you play, you’ll encounter map tiles with landmarks, NPCs, or other points of interest that always have a chance at making things worse. But if you avoid peeking around every corner, you’ll never find the things that can change the course of your journey for the better. I explored deep caves and found the ghosts of soldiers I could summon as Spirit Ashes in combat, helped a downtrodden tailor who gave me hope in the form of being able to negate the effects of Hardship cards, and impressed a sorceress enough to teach me powerful spells. Even though Elden Ring: The Board Game is more structured than wandering around in the video game, it prompts you with just as many opportunities to stumble into the unknown.
Playing solo was a fittingly lonely and vulnerable experience. It would ask me if I wanted to investigate a noise in the distance, and I’d contemplate it like I’d contemplate whether or not I really wanted to rush into a seemingly empty room in the video game. I swiped moss off of rock walls and looted anything that looked like it could give me something to help me in the next fight because I knew nobody would have my back. Every victory came with a bit of luck, and I got used to gambling with my life just to see how far I could push it.
That said, it’s clear Elden Ring: The Board Game is designed for multiple players. If there’s any meaningless friction in the solo experience, it’s all the deck shuffling and score-keeping you have to do for things that would just be easier with other people at the table. A group would make everything go faster and the punishments less devastating. It would change the vibe, too, just as it does in the video game. Players enter combat encounters on their own, but their allies can jump to specific map tiles to join the fight. One player could build themself like a tank, while the others could support them with damage and healing from behind. For people who want a lighter, more traditional RPG experience — especially if they didn’t play Elden Ring — this $200 package (with a handful of expansions available) is an excellent way to introduce them to the world.
But playing Elden Ring: The Board Game solo proved it’s capable of balancing risk and reward in a sometimes comically hostile world. Once I could play without having to double-check the rulebook, I wasn’t placing tiles and moving little figures around, I was in the Lands Between, cresting rocky mountains and creeping through crumbling ruins. Several times I almost went and turned the video game soundtrack on while I played so I could hear it a little better than the version I heard in my head. Elden Ring is one of my favorite games of all time, and Elden Ring: The Board Game feels like it was made by people who love it for all the same reasons I do, who found a way to channel its particular brand of misery in a refreshingly new format.
Elden Ring: The Board Game – Realm of the Grafted King Core Box is available for pre-order until March 31. The game was reviewed using a retail copy provided by Steamforged Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships, but not with Steamforged Games. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.
Source：https://www.polygon.com/gaming/534491/elden-ring-the-board-game-realm-of-the-grafted-king-core-box-review
