Talisman 5th Edition – App Review

I’ve always enjoyed the Talisman app from Nomad Games. They’ve done a brilliant job not only bringing this game to computers and mobile devices, but also including all of the expansions for it, including a digital-only expansion!

The game of Talisman itself is a tabletop classic, though after playing the app, I know there is no way I would ever play it on the table.

It’s a roll-and-move fantasy game where you are moving around the board, drawing adventure cards, meeting strangers or events or possibly fighting monsters, and perhaps dying because you meet a 10-strength dragon when your character only has 2 strength.

Now Nomad Games has released a vaunted 5th edition of this classic game. Avalon Hill is releasing the tabletop version of it. The digital edition, I have to say, is quite good.

And it also reminds me why I will never play this live online or on the table.

Because this game is long.

And not the most exciting thing if you’re going to be playing for 4+ hours!

As an app, though?

Brilliant.

And I love the changes the 5th edition makes.

More after the jump.

I never reviewed the game, though I did play it with all of the expansions that were released with the original digital edition (my hint to you? Don’t do that…).

I also reviewed a few of the Talisman Origins games based on this.

Just as a bit of a summary, this is a game where there are three regions that you are moving your character around, and you are trying to to reach the Crown of Command and fight the Elder Dragon.

On your turn, you’ll roll a die and move that many spaces around the board in whatever region you’re in.

One of the 5th edition changes is that, instead of just spending a Fate point to reroll your die, you can spend a Fate point to move any direction from 1-6 hexes.

You essentially will control where you go!

As long as you have the Fate point to spend.

Most spaces, you will draw one or more adventure cards, encountering whatever monster, event, or place that you end up drawing.

Sometimes that’s bad, if you meet a monster that you have no hope of defeating.

Sometimes it’s good, like when you meet an easily defeatable opponent, or even some really cool event that’s going to give you stuff!

Ultimately, you’re trying to build up your Strength and Craft (or at least one of them) enough to rival the Elder Dragon at the center of the board. You’re going to need (for the most part) at least 10 of one of those abilities, and probably more.

Most characters start with a total of 7 in both abilities, maybe 5 Strength and 2 Craft, or maybe 3 and 4, or whatever.

So it’s going to take a while to get up there.

You’re wandering around the board encountering things, trying to defeat monsters which will let you trade them in for increasing a stat.

In another change from previous, they’ve made the “trading trophies” mechanism more interesting.

Instead of a straight “Trade 6 (or was it 7? I forget) Strength/Craft worth of defeated monsters in for a point in that stat” thing, it now costs Strength/Craft worth of trophies equal to the amount you’re currently at.

So if you have 2 Craft, then it only costs 2 Craft worth of monsters to increase it to 3!

But if you’re at 10 Craft, you’re going to need a bunch more.

I haven’t decided yet whether that slows things down or speeds things up, but I think it kind of evens out.

The early game, you’ll be improving quickly but then later, it will be a lot slower.

That being said, improving quickly means you’ll be able to take on tougher monsters earlier in the game, so maybe a little faster?

One of the most annoying things that could happen in previous versions of this game, and which made it really risky to try some things that could otherwise be very cool, was getting turned into a Toad.

When that happened, you could only move one space per turn for 3 turns, and you dropped all of your stuff.

It was just waiting there for others to pick up if they landed on that space before you did.

And at 3 moves of 1 space each, you could never end up on the space you left when you finally became normal again.

Now, you turn into a Toad for 1 turn and you don’t lose your stuff!

One fitting thing in the app is, if you are a masochist and liked the original Toad settings, you can actually revert the game to the 4th edition Toad rule.

Why anybody would do that, I don’t know.

But they must be out there!

Another meaningful change is the character vs character combat if you land on another player’s space.

The winner of the combat can still either take one of your items or can cause you to lose a life, but now the loser of the fight gets a Fate point, which can be invaluable during the game.

It still can hurt, especially if they take something you’ve been relying on, but it’s mitigated at least.

That picture brings to mind one other great changes in the game.

Previously, if you died by losing your last Life point, you would have to start over with a completely different character. You’d drop all of your stuff in that space and you would have nothing except what that new character started with.

All of your abilities would be that character’s starting abilities.

You were starting from scratch again.

Now when you die, you go back to a space and are given at least one Life point (you spend gold that you have to get more, up to your character normal starting Life) and maintain all of your stuff.

This can really quicken the game.

When you reach the Crown of Command, though, you will fight the Elder Dragon (future DLC will have other endgame monsters) and if you defeat him, you win!

There have been a few other minor changes in the game, mainly to do with the Tavern (you can literally pay 2 gold to be ferried across the river rather than trying to roll a 6) and you can choose your alignment at the beginning of the game (though each character does have a default starting alignment if you don’t want to do that).

The rules changes are for the better, almost universally.

They make a game that really dragged into a game that’s not quite as long and potentially boring.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s still long and can be boring if you’re playing with multiple human players. The app lets you “skip” to the next human player if you want to speed things along.

Even with these rules changes, I doubt I would ever play it on the table.

But as an app?

Nomad Games has done a phenomenal job with this.

The artwork has been updated and you can see in the pictures how good it is.

The AI can do some…questionable things sometimes, but that’s not always a bad thing. I did have the Ghoul, multiple times, spend a Fate point to just go to the Graveyard and get that Fate point back.

I was starting to question its sanity.

You know what makes the app something I may very well play a lot even though I wouldn’t touch this on the table or with real people online (other than maybe as a 2-player game)?

You can save your game!

Play for an hour or two, and when you haven’t made a whole lot of progress, save it. Go do something else. Come back to it tomorrow.

That’s what makes Talisman a great game to play on the computer.

The updates make this even more bearable. Every rule change works to players’ advantage, removing some of the most annoying aspects of the previous editions.

Getting killed isn’t so punishing. Becoming a Toad isn’t horrific.

Rolling every number but the one you need to land on the space you want to land on isn’t crippling (as long as you can get a Fate point).

Talisman 5th Edition is a much more streamlined, and thus more interesting, version of the game.

And I love it.

You know what’s even better?

Nomad has said they will be remastering all of the DLC and releasing it periodically. If you previously purchased it, you will get it for free.

Wow, that is amazing.

Thank you, Nomad!

(Though, again, don’t play with all of them at the same time)

If you ever thought it might be fun to try Talisman and see what you think of it, you can’t go wrong with the app version of the 5th Edition.

Whether you want to play it on the table, or real-time online (which the app offers) with real players?

You’ll have to make that decision for yourself.

But as a solo app, I can definitely see a lot of plays in my future.

(Talisman 5th Edition is available on Steam right now!)