The Hunters A.D. 2114

I started The Hunters A.D. 2114 as the ideal solution for our weekday campaign nights and, first of all, it is a proper eater of tables: a mountain of cards in different sizes, dozens of miniatures, and token sheets overflowing from the box. Despite my initial skepticism toward such complex campaign constructions—especially after experiences with games whose ambitious ideas never quite came together—the first contact was impressive. It also earns a personal bonus because it does not need an app to narrate the story from my phone while I want to roll dice and hunt machines.

Its core reminded me of FFG's Fallout, but instead of a conventional map, the world opens up through location and sub-location cards. These determine what is available in each phase, while additional cards placed above and below them introduce events and special situations. At the same time, the players' base develops through new rooms and abilities, in a very recognizable XCOM 2 fashion: the campaign is not only about missions, but also about how you build the options you will have later.

On missions, the heroes fight, gain levels, and craft equipment, but the real point is the pressure of time and resources. There is no room for roguelike grinding until you become excessively strong, so the choices around the base and crafting carry real weight. Our cooperation changed radically, however, when we learned the hard way that several side missions do not scale enemies properly for a low player count. With two characters, a large part of the resource management is lost; we rewound and continued with four heroes, two for each of us. It increases the bookkeeping and makes combat more of a management exercise, but it is clearly “a different game.”

The great strength remains the storytelling. There is plenty of text, but it never felt like generic filler to me; it is thematic and good enough to remind me of a serious computer RPG, on the level of Wasteland 2/3. Despite our wipes and the scaling flaw, the overall experience remains very positive: a bold attempt to deliver a sandbox feeling in a co-op campaign, without making me feel that I regretted the purchase.

Updated session

Around the midpoint of the main campaign, after 18–20 hours, my initially enthusiastic view has become more restrained. The story continues to hold my interest, but the crafting and especially the combat are starting to tire me; the game is almost the opposite of sword and sorcery, with more lukewarm combat and very strong story development. I have mentally lowered it by a point, without changing the central conclusion: it is an ambitious and enjoyable campaign that I would still like to revisit someday as an RPG, using all those cards as its world and different combat rules.