If “meaningful decisions” are what you’re after, then you’d best look elsewhere. You even roll to cast the spell to defeat your opponents at the Crown of Command. You roll to move, to fight, to see what happens to you on most spots on the board . There’s almost nothing in this game that doesn’t involve rolling the dice at some point. As the kids say, there’s not a lot of “game” there. In a world where games are fussed over by nerds and armchair designers, Talisman seems positively primeval. I can certainly see why people wouldn’t like this. It resembles nothing so much as a combination of Dungeons & Dragons and Monopoly, which is not meant as a slight to anyone involved. If you managed to level the competition while sitting on the Crown, you win the game. And after that you can move to the inner region, where you seek the Crown of Command, which will allow you to destroy your opponents. Defeating monsters will let you boost your character’s stats, and when you’re tough enough you can venture into the middle region of the board, where the spaces are tougher and the stakes higher. You might get a back of gold, or you might fight a dragon. There’s not a lot of rhyme or reason to what could happen here. ![]() The card you draw could be a monster, or it could be treasure. Usually that means you draw a card, but it could also be an action tied to that spot on the board, or another player whom you can brawl with. You roll the die, move in either direction, and have an encounter where you land. You play an adventurer who travels around a fantasy land. I’ve read some positively venomous statements about the game, and I have to roll my eyes and think “They just don’t get it!” In no way do I mean that to be condescending. That uncompromising quality is a strength, but only if you’re buying what its selling. Whether or not you will like it is another story. We’d look at our shelves and wonder why a game like it had never been invented. If Talisman had never been released, we would feel its absence. Nothing in the game feels artificial or calculated. One doesn’t really “review” a game like Talisman, because it’s positively monolithic. Magical Athlete and Dungeonquest are two such games. Only a couple games I’ve played have really been able to swing for the fence of stupidity and succeed so wildly. While this might make a lesser game aggravating, if a game goes far enough, it comes back around to being terrific. ![]() I have a genre of games that I like to call “stupider like a fox.” These games are profoundly silly, filled with ways for your planning to be rendered moot by simple bad luck.
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