Arcadia Quest: Inferno Review – When Tabletop Hype Turns Toxic

Everyone is susceptible to Kickstarter hype. Especially when it’s CMON (Cool Mini Or Not) who are overly generous with their stretch goals. Often giving away boxes and boxes of additional exclusive minis. Having missed out on the original game’s campaign, there wasn’t a chance I was missing out on its standalone expansion Arcadia Quest Inferno.

Unfortunately, we can’t talk about Arcadia Quest Inferno without covering CMON’s Kickstarter strategy. You see, they’re excellent at luring you in with shiny exclusive toys during their campaign. But at the expense of Johnny Bigfeet buying at retail.

Arcadia Quest Inferno is the perfect example of this, where the retail version has 12 heroes, while my Kickstarter version has 41. In a game where that kind of customisation adds so much to the gameplay. It’s hard to equate what I played, with what you’ll get if you buy it from stores today.

With that in mind, the Underlord has risen! The town is on fire! The guilds are on fire! You are on fire!

It falls to you and others at your table to journey into the Underworld and tell the Underlord to bugger off. He’s messing up the place. However, before you set off, you must first put together your team.

Cue montage music.

It’s a lot of fun as you go through the wonderful chibi art and examine all of the characters you can play. This art plays up the loud personalities of each of the heroes, so they all feel unique and fit within the world they’ve created. Additionally, there’s no shortage of pop culture references, making this selection even more fun.

After you’ve picked your team of three heroes, you get a handful of the most basic adventuring items possible and set off on your campaign.

During this adventure, players take turns either resting their guild, resurrecting their slain heroes and refreshing their actions, or activating a hero. Mostly you’ll be activating your heroes. Letting them perform one attack, and several movements.

Outside of that, you’ll be rolling dice – a lot of dice. Attacking, defending, and pretty much everything else you can do is resolved with dice. As you’d expect the details of how you attack and defend are determined by the equipment your hero wears.

Throughout each level, you’ll race to complete scenario objectives which may include getting to a specific location, collecting an item, defeating monsters, or killing a player’s heroes. It is, after all, every adventurer for themselves.

Dice rolling is still the king of fun!

It’s no surprise, but dice rolling is fun and Arcadia Quest Inferno makes the most of it. As you’re rolling handfuls of dice every turn. Outside of the giddy tactility of these handfuls, it also brings chaos to the gameplay. In a way that you can’t take the outcome of the rolls too seriously.

That sums up how Arcadia Quest Inferno feels to play. It’s not your award-winning Cannes Film Festival premiere. It’s your comfortable action flick that you put on a Friday night after a long week of work. It gets to the fun quickly and doesn’t ask you to think too much.

However, like the popcorn you want to eat alongside this movie, you need to give Arcadia Quest Inferno time to cook. This enjoyable dice-chucking action is deeply tied to the equipment your characters own. So the first 2-3 scenarios where they’re only wearing the most basic of items are slow, and a little boring. Although they do introduce the core concepts of the game.

Now, for some controversy.

The scenario objectives are broken into player vs environment (PvE) and player vs player (PvP). To win the scenario you must take part in at least some PvP during the game. This is where things get a bit blurry in terms of how you play. Because you need to decide whether or not you’re going to be doing PvP or PvE during your turn. And even if you decide to do one, other players may not reciprocate your actions.

For instance, if someone is killing a boss and then you attack them. Well, that kind of makes you a jerk. Likewise, if you want to complete a PvE objective and someone starts attacking you. Then that can be extremely frustrating as well.

Even though the Arcadia Quest Inferno handles these situations well from a rules perspective. My group couldn’t handle them from a human perspective.

While I did everything I could to focus on winning the scenario. One player thought it was fun to hunt down my heroes every chance they got. While the other two worked together, with one sacrificing their success for the other.

It got so bad that the group broke out into an argument. Now, in Arcadia Quest Inferno’s defence, there are incentives to curb these behaviours. But obviously, they weren’t strong enough. Additionally, while I take most of the criticism for the situation, the fact this happened at all was because of the board game.

The rich get richer

Outside of our poor group dynamics, there’s an issue around the snowbally nature of gaining items. Players who win one scenario are more likely to get better items than everyone else. Leading to them having an easier time in the next scenario. Whereas losers like me, are left buffless on the streets of Arcadia begging for scraps like a pre-genie Aladdin.

Making matters worse is having your heroes die – which happens often if you end up with little to no items. In itself, it isn’t too bad, as you can revive them through resting. But in doing so, you accumulate death tokens.

These force you to take curse cards at the end of the scenario, and will debuff you for the next scenario. So now instead of getting no items, you get no items and a debuff. You can see how things get out of hand pretty quickly after a couple of games.

Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way about Arcadia Quest Inferno is just how lifeless everything felt. The monsters are set up symmetrically (to create a fair battleground) but stand motionless until provoked.

In that respect, they’re like the British Royal Guard, where you can get right in their face and they won’t move an inch. This makes them feel more like punching bags or statues rather than living, breathing creatures. Given how joyful and full of life the artwork is, it makes their stillness even more pronounced.

So yeah, I didn’t have a great time with this board game. Even with its stellar production and the insane amount of gorgeous-looking minis, it couldn’t save the game from its flaws. Beyond my awful gaming group, there are concerns about how the game plays. And when you’re spending a mint on Arcadia Quest Inferno, you want it to be a sure thing.