kai2: Yeah, I understand it's niche...
... but...
... the sheer amount of dlc turns me off.
Yet, here I am watching videos on what dlc seems most necessary! ha
TerriblePurpose: If you come to any conclusions on that, I'd be interested to hear. This game looks interesting to me, but that truckload of DLC... it's worse than a Paradox title. :P
Probably too late for this sale [especially by the time I finished writing what follows...], but here's my two bucks (since two cents can't buy anything anymore):
The base game is fine on its own, and that is arguably the most balanced experience (to the extent that anything about
Talisman can be considered balanced). It's also recommended to play the base game by itself a time or two, just to learn the ropes, before adding one (at most, two) expansions in at a time for subsequent games to get familiar with them in turn. In fact, the game has a weeklong free trial of each medium and large expansion, one at a time in order of digital release, changing each Monday, so it's quite possible to try most of them before buying. (None of the smaller DLC, such as character packs or the smallest expansion, seem to go free-to-try, though.)
The most basic "medium" expansions are
The Reaper,
The Frostmarch and
The Sacred Pool. None of these changes the game drastically, though each makes at least one small-to-middling mechanical addition or change. They mostly just add new cards to existing base-game decks, make more characters available to play as, and add alternative win conditions. (The cards added to the Adventure and Spell decks will help keep you from seeing the same hundred-odd cards over and over again when adventuring on the main board.)
Then there are the larger expansions that add or replace sections of board. The most straightforward of these are
The Dungeon and
The Highland, with
The City following close behind. Each of these adds a new region to a corner of the main board. The first of these is the toughest, but is my favorite of the three. The Highland is a somewhat more forgiving region, but I find it a bit boring, thematically.
The City is something a bit different, and while it can be fun sometimes, I find it changes the focus of gameplay too much to want to play with it too often (it tends to reward some rather grindy, un-fun strategies, and can sometimes lead to some characters becoming overpowered rather quickly). Still, it's one of the more popular early(-ish) expansions.
The rest of the paid expansions tend to change the game a bit more drastically. Most of these are probably best left for later. That being said:
Lots of people seem to recommend
The Blood Moon as another medium-size, early-game "card pack"-type expansion, but I disagree, since the mechanical additions can't just be ignored or entirely disabled -- unlike those from the first three expansions I mentioned above -- and can be kind of tedious and "fiddly". Also, I found a lot of the included Adventure Cards to be dull or annoying compared to those from the earlier expansions I've mentioned. But, to be fair, I've only played through one game with that expansion. YMMV, anyway.
Then there's
The Clockwork Kingdom, which introduces a crafting element to the game. It's arguably one of the simplest of the later expansions, and it doesn't really increase the lethality of the game (unlike, say,
The Firelands or
The Harbinger seem to*) -- in fact, it's kind of like
The City in that it gives players another way to power up their characters (though this way still mostly involves "adventuring" and random card draws to get the materials for inventing, unlike
The City's "acquire gold, buy shiny thing" method). It's another one I wouldn't want to play with all the time, but I found it interesting.
*
Going by the impressions I've got from others, as I've not yet tried either of these. The
Legendary Decks are "add-on to an expansion" DLC, but rather than actually adding content, they swap out select cards of the relevant modules for more dickish versions. These DLC seem to be for tryhards, masochists/sadists, and certain veteran players who are extremely bored of the original experiences those base modules provide. I would avoid them until and unless you fall into one of the above categories.
The
Complete Runestone Deck is, as the product page says, completely unlockable through gameplay, given enough games. These cards can be enabled when starting a game, and provide buffs to your character for the entirety of that game, rather than adding cards to be (usually randomly) encountered in some way via gameplay like with most other expansions and card packs. Only buy it if you want (or need) a handicap against other players, and don't want to wait.
The
Character Packs are all unnecessary, given that the base game contains 17 selectable characters (14 standard and 3 free pack-in "DLC" that were released as free updates) and most of the proper expansions add at least 3 more (and sometimes as many as 6). If you see one of the sold-separately characters that sounds really cool, and/or you feel like tipping the devs, then by all means, go for it. But realistically, it'll probably be months before you're bored of all the characters that came with the base game and whatever expansions you opted to buy.
It should also be noted that, as of right now, the offline installers for Windows are out of date compared to those for macOS, and have been for a couple weeks. Presumably both versions are up to date if delivered via Galaxy, and since Galaxy is required for online multiplayer anyway, that's probably more of an annoyance than a dealbreaker for most. But still, fair warning.
I don't own
Talisman: Origins yet, but AFAIK, it's pretty much single-player
Talisman, with some story and lore, and lots of quests and optional challenges. Probably a better option if you mostly wanna play single-player, but IDK. (Too bad the top-rated GOG review for it seems to actually be reviewing
Talisman: Digital Edition.)
(Oh, look, I wound up writing another page-long essay about
Talisman. Nomad might as well put me on their payroll at this point.)
