The long awaited and much anticipated sequel to the digital board game is finally here. It certainly took its time enough that the original has cemented itself as a cult classic with a die hard fan base. Although I used to play Warhammer I never actually jumped to the miniature game of Blood Bowl. As such I may show some ignorance but I’m reviewing BB2 as a video game and not as something that reminds me of a board game I once loved. So lets done some armour and find excuses to beat each other with our bare hands and spiky shoulder plates.
If you don’t know what Blood Bowl is think American Football meets Warhammer. There’s a game to be played according to rules but there’s also another game that follows a more combat oriented approach – basically smashing each other in the face. This all takes place in the form of a turn based strategy game with each turn comprising the entire teams movement and actions and each half lasting 8 turns. Pacing is actually kept reasonably high considering the amount of thought you will need to put behind each move. The only time pacing drops is when the AI takes a turn and you can be sat there for literally minutes before they jolt into action. It’s quite strange and I suspect the PS4 is capable of working out turns much faster than this so I can only assume it’s a bug or intentional. Hopefully it will be fixed in time.
Playing through the campaign is a fantastic way to get started in BB2. The first chunk serves as an amazing tutorial introducing a new concept every game until you are finally playing the full game with all its intricacies. I’ve never played BB before but after the first few games I felt competent enough to get playing and apply strategies to win. Or so I thought. Once the tutorial levels have finished there is a significant difficulty spike when all the rules are enabled. The most obvious one is the turnover rule which is by far the biggest problem you will need to overcome in BB.
Whenever you role the dice you will have the opportunity to fail in some way and fall over or somehow smack yourself in the face. If you do this your turn ends instantly for your entire team and your opponent gets their turn. It may be faithful to the board game but frankly it’s bloody annoying. The idea is that your strategy must adapt and have you take risky moves near the end of your turn so that a turnover isn’t such an issue. Which is all fine but the only things you can do in Blood Bowl that don’t regularly see you on your arse are run, if there are no enemies to block you and you don’t use the extra ‘going for it’ tiles, and stand up if you were previously knocked down.
As an example I spent a few turns marking enemy players to stop them interfering, moved my catchers into position and had my thrower grab the ball; risky enough at 67% chance. The pass failed and my turn ended. My opponent broke free from my defenders, not one of the AI’s roles a fail, and ended their turn. I then went to pick up the ball and failed my 67%. End turn. My opponent grabs the ball successfully and I move 5 of my team mates to mark the ball carrier. Now, when you move if you’re in range of an enemy player you have a chance to dodge and this chance goes down the more players are blocking you. In this scenario the first tile alone is a 17% chance to dodge followed by a load more low odds. No problem for the AI who scores a touchdown on turn 6 leaving me 2 turns to waste before half time. Both of my next to turns ended on my very first move because of turnover. I actually rage quit and turned the game off. It’s very rare that a game irritates me to the point were I actually turn it off.
All the strategy and tactics just seem completely wasted to me at times in Blood Bowl and it’s so frustrating. I am not a stranger to strategy games and low odds but the turnover rule means that low chance moves result in a game were you sit and watch the AI score hit after hit over and over. If your opponent had the same level of problems the games would work much smoother but they just don’t. Even when attacking you often get the ‘attacker down’ option on the dice which results in you getting hit! How did that happen? The ‘both down’ roll isn’t so bad and can be used strategically especially at the end of a turn or if your character has an ability called ‘block’ but attacking an enemy only to fall down is really just, well, lame. And then to have it end your entire turn is just insulting. In the example above my opponent literally didn’t fail a single roll. And I missed four entire turns in a row because of turnover. Not much fun there.
Turnovers aside the strategy and huge satisfaction from scoring a touchdown are strong throughout each match in BB2. Setting up your players in the right positions and having a plan actually work is extremely rewarding. There is a strange element at the start of the game when player abilities aren’t activated and you wonder what it is exactly that makes someone a catcher or a throwing especially considering it doesn’t alter the odds of throwing or catching at all. After the turnover rule is introduced (really bad idea to do it this way) you find that your catchers have an ability were they re-roll a catch so essentially get two chances. Ensuring you use the correct players suddenly becomes key to success and helps reduce the irritation of the turnover to some degree. I still didn’t feel all that in control of the strategy though.
Online and outside of the campaign you can create a custom team quickly and match making is fast and effective. Of course the level of play against real opponents is high and not for the faint of heart although I did have a pretty good time online. I also didn’t get the feeling that the odds were stacked against me like I did during the campaign, even when getting completely thrashed which happened a lot.
The UI and just about everything are a pleasure to use and look at in BB2 and have clearly received a lot of attention. The crowds are 3D and I never struggled to get a player to do what I wanted to or accidentally selected the wrong action. Characters have a cool, bubbly, model-like appearance that remains faithful to the Games Workshop world.
And Blood Bowl is certainly faithful to the board game from what I can see and for fans of the original this will be a welcome feature. For those used to strategy games looking for a video game to play Blood Bowl is not so accommodating. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, so many games and films are unfaithful to their origins, but it does mean that BB2 can be a frustrating experience were victory is based entirely on dice rolls. Too much of the strategy can be snatched away from the player which doesn’t make for an entertaining time.
It’s still fun though and addictive enough that I keep going back for more. The hilarious commentary and general chaos of the game definitely make for plenty of fun between the frustration. A good step forward from the first Blood Bowl but still room for some refinement – like perhaps a game mode for fans of the board game and another for strategy gamers. Still I’m happy that Blood Bowl 2 is the sequel it should have been.
