Pathfinder Adventure Card Game Review – with Tom Vasel
The Dice Tower
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Tom Vasel takes a look at this new card game from Paizo
00:00 – Introduction
01:39 – Game Overview
13:33 – Final Thoughts
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10.01.2022
123 Comments
Sure, you're wrong. The box doesn't say Pathfinder Adventure Role Playing Game. It says Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. The rulebook does not say this is an RPG or an RPG wanna be. In fact, the rule actually says "This isn't an RPG." And that is the only instance of the term "RPG" to even be found in the rulebook.
Oh dude, I wish that he would stop that. I nearly cried once, I can't remember which game it was but I do remember that the FLGS wanted $80 for it and he just dropped all over the table. My one escape is that I enjoy picking out components that I recognize and I'm genuinely happy when the cards land in packs lengthwise so as not to scratch or scuff. Otherwise, yeah, Tom needs to stop doing that.
Jeez, come on, have some common sense – players dont want to write on their components, you'd think the publisher would be familiar with their audience by now. This looks like a great game but the art puts me off. The cards just dont look so great compared with the LOTR LCG… guess I got spoiled, but with a card game you have to step up your game artwise nowadays.
This could be my Christmas present, as long as my girlfriend can identify which game I would like out of those five on the Christmas Shopping Guide for Thematic Games Dice Tower video I sent to her earlier today. Hope she knows me enough to choose this one! 🙂 By the way, component drop is cool! You get to see all what's in the box and I'm sure Tom does it very carefully. There was a video about it on the Dice Tower, go and watch it, Glenn!
It is a great game that I love playing but it is a big stretch from a role-playing game. You do not really assume the role of your character and speak in-character to other players to help tell the story of the fantasy setting. It is a fun adventure game where you get to choose a unique avatar to represent you. You also gain in power over time and encounter progressively more interesting challenges. So it shares many features with an RPG but lacks the Role-playing that defines the genre.
When you learn the terms in Pathfinder it's not to bad, card quality could have been a little higher. If you play alot you would probably want to sleeve them. I thought it was a slighly better then average game, but I like Thunderstone better.
If you want to play an RPG that is easy and not a huge time suck play Dungeon World. It's awesome and as a long time board gamer is my RPG of choice do it's great narrative nature. I often find RPGs for me fall apart at the combat. I usually think why not just play a board or minis game with a better combat system. DW does not suffer from this.
There are two things with the game I personally don't like. 1) I wish each location had cards that fit that location. No matter where you go the monsters are completely random and therefore a bit loose story-wise. Lord of the Rings LCG solves this by putting symbols on their cards and the quest uses those symbols to tell you wish cards to include in it. Something similar could be done. There are some variant rules out there trying to do just this. 2) I'd like to see each scenario be a bit unique. Usually for each expansion there's only one scenario of the five that come with it that's different from the normal grind. One thing I'd like to suggest to make the game more fun. Look into the Linear Movement Variant which is on the Board Game Geek site. It'll give you more of a feel that you're exploring the area.
Do NOT throw the card packages away. You need them in the future for storing cards that won't be used in future decks. Also, when you start a new adventure, it's nice to store everything in their respective decks.
This is if you do not sleeve your cards. I purchased a 1600 card box to store my sleeved cards. Ultradeck (I think) is coming out with a new storage container for sleeved cards.
We play this game a lot, but the idea of marking up the cards made everyone twitchy and makes it hard to re-use them in other campaigns, so we just typed up some simple, one-page character sheets for each character.
Just played my first game of pathfinder adventure card game and really enjoyed it. The instructions manual isn't that great at covering the basics though. I was at fist very confused about the Blessing Deck and how to handle battle. A quick trip to BGG and all was well. I highly recommend watching some of the walkthrough or session videos to learn the mechanics.
between automatic success of recharging and blessings and buffs certain characters seem never to fail. I actually thought this game was pretty bad. Repetitive and unbalanced characters plus good amount of errors in the game. Lots of good points but the gameplay failed. I hope this see better games based on this solo adventure card game.
I sold my copy. But I saw a few player created variants that seemed to add more to the theme and help the game out. Wished I tried those out first. Weird how I see tons of negative comments about this game but not many bad reviews. Guess people who hate a game will never bother taking the time to do a review.
I don't think I've ever disagreed more with Tom's opinion on a game. This is not even remotely like a RPG. It must have been a long time since he last played one if he seriously thinks so.
This game is also a snoozefest. There's no story at all; you're just flipping random cards and then roll a bunch of dice. Rinse, repeat.
The only saving grace is the character development which is kind of neat, even if it's way too slow. Unfortunately, you have to play a bazillion of boring scenarios to get that sense of achievement when a character is finally noticably better than at the beginning.
Im gonna get hate for this but the truth is its hard to find people to play and even harder to find a decent dm.(very few people want to play this for 7 hours and sometimes it would be nice of you could play with 2-4 players this game isnt perfect but its a start.)
As much as I loved playing this with a group of friends about 4-5 times, I've been researching some other co-op card games in a box such as Marvel Legendary and Thunderstone… and those are far more simple and accessible… I'm getting tired of the dice rolling, dice combining, etc… something where you just add up numbers and know you win would flow much much quicker.
I may not keep moving forward with this game, but I'll definitely keep it in my collection as a nice middle ground between D&D box game and card only game.
Here's the thing about this game: it's been alluded to by several commenters correctly that the game can become very dry; rolling dice, flipping cards, etc. It is NOT an RPG. There is no roleplaying element in the game. I have found that creating a homebrewed roleplaying component really, really adds to the replayability and fun, and SIGNIFICANTLY improves the experience. I won't go into details, but for example: Allow players to take random boons from the box in exchange for good roleplaying. You can do this once a scenario at the end, but you can also do it immediately if consensus is that a player is roleplaying extremely well.
The point is: think outside the box here. This isn't an RPG, but it could be with just a little imagination — something that RPG players should have in ample supply! Be creative and come up with your own ways to add tangible rewards to the game in exchange for roleplaying!
I think this game would be more immersive if it had better artwork and overall card layout. Artwork has that "penciled" look, and the font and card layout looks so standard like a book report or something. Fantasy Flight did great work on their Call of Cthulhu LCG. Having said that though, Pathfinder ACG still has better gameplay. Well, can't win 'em all.
Not sure if it's typical of deck building games, but setup is ridiculously long and complex and game play is mediocre. After the game was finished, I was faced with the daunting task of putting all the cards back in their respective bins, then decided the orange bin marked "paper/cardboard" was a much better place. Off to the recycling center it went.
I tried this game at home. This game is luck plus strategy plus skill checks, skill checks, skill checks!!!!! I like games with luck and strategy to mitigate the luck. However, without playing the game before and without knowing what the next draw will be, there was no way to strategize about what cards to keep in my hand and what to discard during the first playthrough. That left the whole first game being just, "Roll the dice. See if you win. Repeat several dozen times…" I don't think I'll be buying anymore skill check games.
Thanks for the in-depth play-by-play review! I love to know how a game works before I start playing it and with your review I almost don't need to read the rulebook 🙂
At 3:30 when the video actually starts I already was so bored I wanted to click away because the first 3 minutes are mostly about the box the game comes in and at 5 min so far all I know that is useful is "This is what a character card looks like"
Sure, you're wrong. The box doesn't say Pathfinder Adventure Role Playing Game. It says Pathfinder Adventure Card Game. The rulebook does not say this is an RPG or an RPG wanna be. In fact, the rule actually says "This isn't an RPG." And that is the only instance of the term "RPG" to even be found in the rulebook.
I guess after playing a normal pen and paper rpg, this just don't scratch the itch.
Oh dude, I wish that he would stop that. I nearly cried once, I can't remember which game it was but I do remember that the FLGS wanted $80 for it and he just dropped all over the table. My one escape is that I enjoy picking out components that I recognize and I'm genuinely happy when the cards land in packs lengthwise so as not to scratch or scuff. Otherwise, yeah, Tom needs to stop doing that.
I love the component drop, and seeing/knowing how squeamish it makes other people only increases that enjoyment.
Jeez, come on, have some common sense – players dont want to write on their components, you'd think the publisher would be familiar with their audience by now. This looks like a great game but the art puts me off. The cards just dont look so great compared with the LOTR LCG… guess I got spoiled, but with a card game you have to step up your game artwise nowadays.
Great production value on this video! This game looks like a lot of fun, going to buy the next chance I get.
Nicely done
This could be my Christmas present, as long as my girlfriend can identify which game I would like out of those five on the Christmas Shopping Guide for Thematic Games Dice Tower video I sent to her earlier today. Hope she knows me enough to choose this one! 🙂
By the way, component drop is cool! You get to see all what's in the box and I'm sure Tom does it very carefully. There was a video about it on the Dice Tower, go and watch it, Glenn!
It is a great game that I love playing but it is a big stretch from a role-playing game. You do not really assume the role of your character and speak in-character to other players to help tell the story of the fantasy setting. It is a fun adventure game where you get to choose a unique avatar to represent you. You also gain in power over time and encounter progressively more interesting challenges. So it shares many features with an RPG but lacks the Role-playing that defines the genre.
I love these videos. I just hate when he dumps all the stuff out.
At the beginning of the video I was like "Is Tom gonna do that thing where he- WAIT. Tom! Nooooooooo~ D:
When you learn the terms in Pathfinder it's not to bad, card quality could have been a little higher. If you play alot you would probably want to sleeve them. I thought it was a slighly better then average game, but I like Thunderstone better.
If you want to play an RPG that is easy and not a huge time suck play Dungeon World. It's awesome and as a long time board gamer is my RPG of choice do it's great narrative nature. I often find RPGs for me fall apart at the combat. I usually think why not just play a board or minis game with a better combat system. DW does not suffer from this.
i love the component drop, i believe the people who like it don't bother commenting more about it
There are two things with the game I personally don't like. 1) I wish each location had cards that fit that location. No matter where you go the monsters are completely random and therefore a bit loose story-wise. Lord of the Rings LCG solves this by putting symbols on their cards and the quest uses those symbols to tell you wish cards to include in it. Something similar could be done. There are some variant rules out there trying to do just this. 2) I'd like to see each scenario be a bit unique. Usually for each expansion there's only one scenario of the five that come with it that's different from the normal grind.
One thing I'd like to suggest to make the game more fun. Look into the Linear Movement Variant which is on the Board Game Geek site. It'll give you more of a feel that you're exploring the area.
Boring, repetitive, and un-thematic.
Do NOT throw the card packages away. You need them in the future for storing cards that won't be used in future decks. Also, when you start a new adventure, it's nice to store everything in their respective decks.
This is if you do not sleeve your cards. I purchased a 1600 card box to store my sleeved cards. Ultradeck (I think) is coming out with a new storage container for sleeved cards.
We play this game a lot, but the idea of marking up the cards made everyone twitchy and makes it hard to re-use them in other campaigns, so we just typed up some simple, one-page character sheets for each character.
It's serious Munchkin!
I've got it on order. I hope I like it. Should I laminate the cards?
Nice review!
Just played my first game of pathfinder adventure card game and really enjoyed it. The instructions manual isn't that great at covering the basics though. I was at fist very confused about the Blessing Deck and how to handle battle. A quick trip to BGG and all was well. I highly recommend watching some of the walkthrough or session videos to learn the mechanics.
between automatic success of recharging and blessings and buffs certain characters seem never to fail. I actually thought this game was pretty bad.
Repetitive and unbalanced characters plus good amount of errors in the game. Lots of good points but the gameplay failed. I hope this see better games based on this solo adventure card game.
I sold my copy. But I saw a few player created variants that seemed to add more to the theme and help the game out. Wished I tried those out first. Weird how I see tons of negative comments about this game but not many bad reviews. Guess people who hate a game will never bother taking the time to do a review.
I don't really feel the hype. Seems like too much
Is this game fun for 2 players?
is this easy to run?
Just got his for 2 bucks at my local thrift store and it was almost in perfect condition.
Can't wait o star playing!
I don't think I've ever disagreed more with Tom's opinion on a game. This is not even remotely like a RPG. It must have been a long time since he last played one if he seriously thinks so.
This game is also a snoozefest. There's no story at all; you're just flipping random cards and then roll a bunch of dice. Rinse, repeat.
The only saving grace is the character development which is kind of neat, even if it's way too slow. Unfortunately, you have to play a bazillion of boring scenarios to get that sense of achievement when a character is finally noticably better than at the beginning.
I cannot seriously recommend this game to anyone.
Got a LOT of play out of this game, but it gets really boring after a while.
Im gonna get hate for this but the truth is its hard to find people to play and even harder to find a decent dm.(very few people want to play this for 7 hours and sometimes it would be nice of you could play with 2-4 players this game isnt perfect but its a start.)
tom said this is a excellent game , therefore , it is probably bad..
As much as I loved playing this with a group of friends about 4-5 times, I've been researching some other co-op card games in a box such as Marvel Legendary and Thunderstone… and those are far more simple and accessible… I'm getting tired of the dice rolling, dice combining, etc… something where you just add up numbers and know you win would flow much much quicker.
I may not keep moving forward with this game, but I'll definitely keep it in my collection as a nice middle ground between D&D box game and card only game.
AHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH, is this real life?
Here's the thing about this game: it's been alluded to by several commenters correctly that the game can become very dry; rolling dice, flipping cards, etc. It is NOT an RPG. There is no roleplaying element in the game. I have found that creating a homebrewed roleplaying component really, really adds to the replayability and fun, and SIGNIFICANTLY improves the experience. I won't go into details, but for example: Allow players to take random boons from the box in exchange for good roleplaying. You can do this once a scenario at the end, but you can also do it immediately if consensus is that a player is roleplaying extremely well.
The point is: think outside the box here. This isn't an RPG, but it could be with just a little imagination — something that RPG players should have in ample supply! Be creative and come up with your own ways to add tangible rewards to the game in exchange for roleplaying!
I think this game would be more immersive if it had better artwork and overall card layout. Artwork has that "penciled" look, and the font and card layout looks so standard like a book report or something. Fantasy Flight did great work on their Call of Cthulhu LCG. Having said that though, Pathfinder ACG still has better gameplay. Well, can't win 'em all.
Very fun game!!
Not sure if it's typical of deck building games, but setup is ridiculously long and complex and game play is mediocre. After the game was finished, I was faced with the daunting task of putting all the cards back in their respective bins, then decided the orange bin marked "paper/cardboard" was a much better place. Off to the recycling center it went.
Wow the cards sound "heavy" when hitting the floor/table.
I tried this game at home. This game is luck plus strategy plus skill checks, skill checks, skill checks!!!!! I like games with luck and strategy to mitigate the luck. However, without playing the game before and without knowing what the next draw will be, there was no way to strategize about what cards to keep in my hand and what to discard during the first playthrough. That left the whole first game being just, "Roll the dice. See if you win. Repeat several dozen times…" I don't think I'll be buying anymore skill check games.
What are the games he mentioned, when he says "In fact this is kind of, in my sense, a sister game to the …. systems"?
Thanks for the in-depth play-by-play review! I love to know how a game works before I start playing it and with your review I almost don't need to read the rulebook 🙂
10th-most-watched Dice Tower review (as of November 28, 2016).
great review thanks 🙂
It's been a long time since I watched a Tom Vassel video.
At 3:30 when the video actually starts I already was so bored I wanted to click away because the first 3 minutes are mostly about the box the game comes in and at 5 min so far all I know that is useful is "This is what a character card looks like"
Thank you for this very informative video.
Watch the dice falling into the tower on .25x speed and tell me you don't feel HORRIBLE for the 'lil guy.
I got 2 of each dice with my box 🙂
paizo (παίζω) in greek means "i play".
Tom will redo PTACG with the newest Mummy set its expansions? Do you still feel the same about this game years later?
When are you guys going to get together, and make a boardgame?