Prophecy

Started by Nefaro, July 03, 2015, 12:07:28 AM

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Nefaro

Played this solo, with two characters, the first time earlier this year. 

It's an older adventure game from Vlaada Chvatil, the guy who also created the Mage Knight Board Game

Reminiscent of Talisman, but with some better and more interesting mechanics.  Unlike Talisman, there is no annoying roll-to-move mechanic where you spend lots of time hoping to roll specific numbers to get where you wanna go (and thus extending gameplay time).  It has a few set movement options, with the various higher rates costing gold (renting a horse, boat ride, magic gate). 

It also has various "guild" spaces where random Ability and Spell Cards are offered for XP points, plus gold if it's not one of your character's two specialty classes.  So not only are there more varied special abilities and spells, you can also mix & match them along with having different sets available every game.  Varied Player Powers are the shit in adventure games, and the variety & flexibility of them, available in this game, makes it much more enjoyable than Talisman.

I was surprised at the lack of "buzz" about Prophecy when I discovered it sometime last year.  I know it originally came out around 2004, so was rather old news by now.  But I was surprised that I couldn't find a good playthrough vid on the 'Tube for it so after reading some vague mechanics impressions I bought it.  Didn't regret the purchase as I greatly enjoyed my first game. 

Swiftly picked up the Dragon Realm expansion after playing it, mainly because it has dedicated solitaire play (as in one character solitaire!) along with the addition of varied player races (the core game is only humans).  I've not yet played the actual solitaire version. It isn't much different than the original so it should still be fun.  My next game may be multi-player so we'll see how that goes.  I expect it will be just as fun as solo; you can attack other characters and there is much opportunity for characters racing to get/conquer various face-up card encounters/monsters/equipment/skills they each covet.

The artwork is some of the lower quality stuff of the old school fantasy style and some complain about it, but it doesn't bother me much.  The art actually lends a nostalgic feel of old fantasy RPGs and adventure games, for me.




TL;DR-

jPlay just started a new Let's Play series on Prophecy.  I think it's a fun Talisman-like game, but with much better mechanics:





I know Z-Man reprinted the core game, along with one or both of the expansions, somewhat recently.