ARKHAM HORROR – or – Losing Everything Forever and Loving It

Arkham Horror is a vile, wicked slog through the demon-infested streets of Arkham, Massachusetts — a favorite haunt of the most wretched beasties imaginable. The game is cruel, unrelenting, wildly unfair, and will probably murder you and your friends in a manner not unlike being slowly flayed alive while shreds of your sanity catch fire and ooze away. And yes, it’s one of my favorites.

If you don’t know the works of Howard Philips Lovecraft, he’s the mad genius that scribed the mythos of the legendary Cthulhu. And if you’ve never heard of Cthulhu, it’s worth a quick search, but be advised: that rabbit hole is deep, dark, and thoroughly tentacular.

A warning about Arkham Horror: This game and its ilk is what some might call “way too fracking complex,” and they’re absolutely correct. If you have a sherpa playing with you it’s somewhat less troubling. However, if you’re considering getting this game and learning it on your own, please take careful note that your first attempt will last about 4-5 hours, roughly 75 minutes of which will be doing the initial setup and combing through the rules. Also, you’re probably going to lose. It’s not for the faint of heart, but don’t let that scare you. That’s what the elder gods are for.

Arkham Horror is fully co-op. Everyone is in it together, and that’s the way it should be for a game this evil. Gameplay is heavily reliant on dice rolls, so bring your favorite set of d6s and get ready to roll them a buuuuuunch. Each player controls an Investigator, who has unique abilities and traits, which you must leverage to prevent the city of Arkham from being rapidly overtaken by the forces of an elder god, which is trying to wake from a deathlike slumber by opening dimensional gates to other realms. Simple enough, right?

Elder gods are horrible, ultra-powerful demon-things that want to enslave the mortal realm, or perhaps devour it entirely depending on their mood. If they DO wake up… well that’s pretty bad. Some gods are more active than others and have greater in-game effects, like buffing random monsters. Others wait patiently, with fewer in-game effects and more utter, unbeatable hopelessness IF they awake. Regardless, you’ll need to do everything in your meager power to close those gates as fast as you can and, with any luck, seal them forever.

The gates spawn enemies into the streets and locales of Arkham, which is certainly a problem. In addition to being annoyingly difficult to sneak past, monsters slowly whittle away your sanity and health. Sometimes not so slowly. The monsters, though, are ultimately a distraction from your primary goal: those pesky, wretched gates. You’ll start the game with Clue tokens and pick up more as you explore the city’s prime real estate (The Black Cave, Arkham Asylum, The Graveyard). These clues let you reroll dice, which is important, but even more vital is their ability to seal gates forever. Unless you seal a gate, it could easily reopen, and that means the elder god is one step closer to waking from their slumber and utterly annihilating you and all humanity. Like ya do.

In Arkham, planning ahead is critical, and each player truly needs to be involved in those decisions, so if you have a control freak in the game, you’re gonna have a bad time. Yes, the apocalypse is nigh, but that’s no excuse to try to take away your friends’ agency. Now behave yourself and let them make their own decisions. I mean… you’re all going to die anyway. Oh, yes. You’re all. Going. To die.

Arkham Horror expertly treads the line between too nasty to have any fun and just barely forgiving enough to cling desperately, tragically, inadvisably to Hope. Good luck with that.

4.5 out of 5

(Would be 5, but damn is it ever complicated.)
NOTE: This review is ONLY for the base game, not the expansions.