Sunday, August 26, 2018

"Jack Burton, You!" - Big Trouble In Little China The Game, Reviewed

Last June, I jumped on a boardgame Kickstarter that was originally going to be shipped before Christmas; two weeks ago, my copy of Big Trouble in Little China finally arrived, and three of us played it last night. Was it worth the wait or was it instead a crushing disappointment?


Well, no one could complain about the components: a lavishly illustrated, double-sided gameboard, cards and player boards with similarly stunning artwork, custom made dice, and best of all, 40 well-sculpted plastic miniatures depicting the heroes and adversaries from one of 1986's best cult films.


It takes a pretty big box to hold that much stuff, but also some forethought to keep the contents organized, so I was extremely pleased that the top plastic tray include slotting for the various decks of cards and such...

...and the bottom tray not only had vacu-formed spaces for each and every miniature, but came with a photo of the layout, like those maps in the box of assorted chocolates, to prevent you from inadvertently pushing a model into the wrong spot and risking damage! Bravo, Everything Epic!


Physically, BTILC leaves almost nothing to be desired (although some ziplocs for the extraordinary amount of counters wouldn't have gone astray!), but what about gameplay? For me, any cooperative game comes with two major criteria: ease of play and co-op effectiveness. 

This game takes a little while to wrap your head around, with a couple of unique mechanics, but thankfully the publishers have created a set of video tutorials you can watch on YouTube. I got most of the game setup before the other players arrived, and then we were able to watch the videos and compare them to the layout before us.

The heart of the game is an intriguing dice system, where the symbols you throw dictate not what you can do, but how well you can do it. Each dice has two each of symbols representing Body, Mind and Soul. As you move, fight, heal and attempt other tasks within the game, you slot these dice into the player board for your character. Each slot will normally provide you with a dice for fighting, or the ability to move two spaces, for instance. But the highlighted, or "Epic" slots give you a little more oomph, so you would get a dice with a better spread of results, or move three spaces instead of two.


Every character's board layout is a little different, with Jack Burton's favouring Body, and Egg Chen's having more Epic slots for the Mind, for instance. The order you do things in becomes critically important, but since you roll the dice at the start of your turn, you are freed from trying to come up with a detailed plan before your turn comes around.


You start the game with a number of quests in play: tow major or character quests, and three side quests. Completing the quests gives you the opportunity to combat the minions of Lo-Pan, from the lowly Lords of Death to the hardened killers of the Wing Kong. Along the way you will read entries from a Quest Book in a 'choose your own adventure' fashion, leveling up and gaining rewards that will enable you to eventually face the Godfather of Chinatown in his subterranean lair on the other side of the board.

Combat is simple but challenging, especially in the early stages when you only have three action dice. Looking back on our first game, we didn't take nearly enough advantage of ranged combat and running away from certain fights. Levelling up not only garners you additional dice, but upgrades for your character which can themselves be upgraded to Epic status later on. For instance, Wang Chi's Dragon of the Black Pool jacket (a highly covetable item of wardrobe in its own right) gives him an additional defense dice initially, which can later on be upgraded to an Epic dice, plus one automatic success.


Finishing quests on the streets of Chinatown in Act I  will give the players additional Audacity, measured on a track at the top of the board. It is a race to the center against the opposing Threat Meter, which advances 1-3 spaces every turn and an additional space every time a player dies. Death is not the end, however; deceased players simply draw a Hell card and return to the fight languishing under its effects, which can range from annoying (only speaking in questions) to the dangerous (causing damage to other players with demonic halitosis). As said in the movie, "Chines have a lot of hells."

Once either the Threat Meter or Audacity track reach the centre of the board, play stops immediately, the board is cleared, flipped, and Act II begins in Lo-Pan's underground sanctum. A new track counts down every turn and with every death, giving players a limited amount of time to reach and vanquish Lo-Pan, as well as whichever of the Three Storms have been able to join him. To make matters worse, you have to fight him twice: once as a ghost and again once he has become flesh!


The ticking clock feels a bit relentless, to be honest, which is either a knock against the game's balance or our inexperience. Having played a solo game this morning, I am inclined to say it's the latter, but even entering Act II with Jack Burton at level 6 and full health, I was barely able to beat Lo-Pan before time ran out. And this was even after using intrepid reporter Margo Litzenberger's special ability to move the tracker back one space!


We had not gotten very far in our first game when the Threat Meter reached its end and flipped us into Act II relatively unprepared, and not having completed a single Major Quest, so we thought we were doomed right away. With a bit of planning though, we actually made it to the final showdown with Lo-Pan, who unfortunately killed the lot of us when we bunched up upon arrival. (Bad dice, that's all!)

In terms of co-op play, however, Big Trouble gets big props. Its unique dice system, character upgrades and personalized quests make it almost impossible for an aggressive player to 'quarterback' the game, although there are plenty of opportunities for collaboration. The player's get to choose which of them goes first, allowing them to apply at least a little strategy before their turn even begins.

There are also a set of six shared Fate Dice which can be used by any players to improve their odds, but only once apiece, and with a fifty-fifty chance of some ill effects befalling them or their fellow players when they do, requiring a bit of faith from all involved.

Big Trouble in Little China succeeds in all three areas then: physical components, game design and mechanics, and co-op effectiveness. There is a fourth box they can tick as well: faithfulness to the source material.

From the artwork to the sculpts, to the names and types of rules, it is clear that this has been a labour of love by fans who are as enamoured of the movie as I am. There is a reverence and understanding of the source material unmatched in similar efforts for other properties, but the designers have also broadened the mythology and widened the story. This gives fans a chance to experience something new and different but with a very similar flavour instead of following familiar story beats through a repetitive narrative. 

If we are being honest though, Wang Chi deserves a better profile than Jack Burton, don't you think?


I'm not sure how accurate the professed 120 minute playing time is; even my solo game this morning took more time than that. But coming away from the game once I had packed everything away felt like coming away from John Carpenter's film the first time: I wasn't entirely sure what had happened, but I'd had a great time, and I wanted more of it. Pretty good benchmark for any game - no horseshit.

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