*COVID disclaimer - all games were played previous to COVID quarantines or follow COVID quarantine safety protocols*
Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate is essentially a re-skin of the widely popular Betrayal at House on the Hill, a tabletop tile-based roleplaying game. Whereas the original game focused specifically on fantasy horror scenarios, this new installment is based on Dungeons and Dragons fantasy, specifically the Baldur’s Gate campaigns. it’s not surprising, considering all of these games are made by the same company.
Number of Players:
Overall, I’d say the game is great fun to play with a bigger group (I recommend 4-5 players for optimum play). If you’re the kind of playgroup that enjoys both the co-op and competitive aspects of games, then I’d also say this is a great choice - one person gets to be pitted against the rest, who are forced to work together in order to win. As a person who loves co-op games in a play group of competitive players, this game offers a bit of both worlds that makes all of us happy.
Gameplay and Design:
Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate follows the same mechanics as its predecessor. The only difference between the games is the skin (or its flavor) - the design, imagery, and scenarios are all based in the universe of Baldur’s Gate. The characters you choose, while still being double sided, are now based on D&D stats and race/background choices, where each color tends to be a specific race/class, giving you two options to choose from. Your character choice is no longer just flavor-based, like with the original game of House on the Hill, each character has a different ability that can affect the game, particularly after the haunt has started.
So far, despite the characters and their abilities being great D&D flavor, I haven’t found much use for many of them. The abilities are so specific, and the haunts are so random, that it’s not always possible to use your character’s ability effectively. Torskar Stonecleaver (seen in the photo) is one of the more playable characters. However, since the haunts are randomized, it means that picking your player is a little pointless - you don’t know which abilities are going to be favored in the scenario, so it levels the playing field. This is great if you’re playing with the type of person that tends to favor a character or player due to superior abilities (which kinda takes the fun out of it). I personally love the randomness of it all, but it’s easy to see more competitive players get a bit salty over it.
In terms of gameplay, everything is the same as the original Betrayal game. You take turns exploring the map, flipping over tiles and triggering an event, an item, or an omen. Instead of exploring an old house, you are exploring the town of Baldur’s Gate, flipping over a catacomb, building, or street tile (color-coded doors tell you what to flip). The designs of the tiles are cute, featuring various well-known spots and background designs in the D&D universe. One thing I really appreciated about the tiles in this game is their attention to detail - you can really stare at these tiles and take in all the little details and backgrounds items in each space, building the flavor and world of Baldur’s Gate as you play.
In truth, I’ve only played Betrayal at Baldur’s Gate a handful of times, and therefore have only played a handful of the haunts. I didn’t want to flip through the booklets and spoil the surprise for myself for future plays, so bear in mind that there may be haunts and scenarios that don’t match my current review of the game.
Each time a play reveals an omen in a new room, a haunt roll is made, where the number of the dice must be equal to or lower than the number of total omens revealed so far. If that roll is successful, the haunt begins and the scenario starts, where one person (or more) is revealed to be the traitor, and the other players are the heroes. You each respectively read your half of the scenario, learning what your team’s objective is, before playing it out.
I found that the haunts I played so far were a little lackluster - they focused less on world-building and functionally using the spaces, and more just on achieving a basic goal (get to this space, collect this number of tokens). Yes, each scenario has a little paragraph of flavor text to set the scene, but ultimately I found that the scenarios were very similar to each other without any of that flavor actually seeping in to the gameplay itself. I found that a lot of the conflict in the game simple came from the combat between players/monsters, and if the city is built big enough, everyone can easily avoid each other and its just a race to the end. I remember in the original game, several haunts would create scenarios to force players to interact, or force situations where certain items need to be used for something to be successful.
Again, I haven’t played all haunts, so maybe I’ve just been unlucky with a few of the more simple and repetitive ones.
Additionally, there is no mystic elevator tile! This tile, that previously allowed players to travel/teleport all over the map, was a huge gamechanger once the haunt was revealed. That elevator would make or break games - and it was always an absolute riot if the elevator got revealed mid-haunt, since it changed everything for the heroes who now had one extra way to escape, and for the traitor to literally just teleport wherever they needed. The elevator was always easily one of my favorite tiles.
There were also several secret passages/slides/walls that allowed players to move non-conventionally, adding a layer of randomness and unpredictability to the game that Baldur’s Gate just doesn’t seem to have. The tiles had colored doors that have to match up when you place the tile, but the restriction makes the game a little more uniform and boring - in the previous game, it was fun to just play tiles in any direction, and build this crazy, unruly maze of a house.
Hopefully, I’ll get a future opportunity to continue playing the game and see if other haunts are more enjoyable. Apart from the aesthetic of the tiles and the character abilities (which are so specific they don’t always get used), the original Betrayal at House on the Hill is a far superior and more enjoyable game. I realize that my review features very heavily on the reader being familiar with the original game, and that I essentially just compare Baldur’s Gate to House on the Hill, but when an original and frankly, better, game already exists within the franchise, it’s hard not to. Yes, if this game was the first of it’s kind and House on the Hill didn’t already exist, then I’d probably rate this game much higher. As it stands, the first one was the best one.