by BPowell85
Hello,This is my first review EVER for a board game and I will be covering Betrayal Legacy all the way from the Prologue to Chapter 13. There will be spoilers hidden in the tags. I will cover the good and bad encountered in each scenario and what we felt collectively as a group could make the game even better.
We started the campaign with four players - myself, my wife, my friend Simon, and my wife's friend Jenna. We played the Prologue to Chapter 4 with 4 players. At this point, my wife's cousin, Michelle, joined us for the remainder of the campaign. The game plays well with 4 or 5 players. We found that 5 players adds a further element of another player to potentially be the traitor as well as a hero to assist in the haunt.
For the sake of simplicity, we may have played a scenario or two incorrectly, at which point, I would like to know for future as I feel that there could be clarifications.
The Good - It's Betrayal and we enjoyed the entire campaign. The story was enticing and enjoyable with our group and the new events, items, omens, tiles and inhabitants made the game fresh from the original while keeping it's core alive. Few of us are sad to see the campaign end but others are glad it's over.
The Bad - The randomness of some haunts can cause them to feel one-sided in some circumstances. In addition, Simon played the entire campaign without being the traitor once. He was disappointed. My wife, on the other hand, hates being the traitor and was the traitor the most out of all of us. She had 3 haunts in a row where she was the traitor and was not happy about it. By Chapter 13, she was due to become traitor and refused so I ended up having to be the traitor instead.
Prologue - Haunt 1 - Witch Hunt
[o]In this scenario, we used every tile available as there weren't many at this point. Every player loved the scratch cards and the surviving person was Jenna, who was adamant she wasn't the witch even though Simon accused her of being one for killing him. My wife was the first to die and loved the fact that she knew there were no witches from the reaction card provided upon her character's death. Overall, we really enjoyed the hidden traitor aspect of using the scratch card and wish this was implemented further into the campaign. The idea of the Deed to the House was well utilised and the fact that it determined the first player going forward was well received.[/o]
Chapter 1 - Haunt 37 - Wrath of the Berserker
[o]In this scenario, I ended up as the traitor. I was very happy with the way this haunt played out as I won as the traitor, killing everyone else. The heroes tried to use traps on me but they weren't very effective. The only thing we'd point out is that the Omen Card for this haunt gives the Berserker player a further movement for having Ghosts on his tile from the previous haunt. I ended up having a massive amount of movement (playing as the Green family) and they couldn't escape my grasp and the fact that you get to attack twice in this scenario as the Berserker only made it go down one sided. The heroes felt underwhelmed with the fact that their traps didn't actually damage me or move the blood track down as a result. This was the first haunt that the heroes did not win and didn't mark the 1 on the back of the rulebook.[/o]
Chapter 2 - Haunt 11 - The Binding
[o]In this scenario, it introduced inhabitants and my wife's friend Jenna was the traitor. Overall, the mechanics for determining which Inhabitant was the traitor wasn't difficult by assigning numbers to the cards and having the heroes flip over the numbers by discovering information on them. I ended up killing the male inhabitant during this scenario and the heroes won. From the traitor's perspective, she didn't feel that the cultists were utilised very well and this was her first time being the traitor in Betrayal ever, so I think her understanding on how she should or could use them to her advantage wasn't grasped fully until mid-way through the haunt, at which point we had killed several cultists. It was the first haunt that the heroes won and marked the 2 on the back of the rulebook as well as me taking the Deed from Jenna.[/o]
Chapter 3 - Haunt 9 - A Growing Boy
[o]In this scenario, my wife was the traitor. She ended up having a hungry porcelain doll and she tried to make it eat the female inhabitant. She was unlucky with her rolls and the doll ended up getting attacked and sent to the nursery fairly early. We didn't struggle to end this chapter easily but we weren't sure if we were using the runes correctly either. From memory (and this was several weeks ago), the goal for the heroes was to use runes to create the Crib in the Nursery. Once the tiles with runes were discovered, you had to perform a search there. Now, we took this that the rune was automatically discovered. I wasn't sure if this was too easy as it could be the case in future haunts that it becomes easy. I had suggested that maybe we were supposed to put the rune tiles face down and draw two randomly to see if we got the one for the room we were in. Please correct me on this if you know for certain but we played it that you automatically got the rune. The heroes won this scenario (my wife's character was on critical traits after the doll took a bite out of her) and she felt that she couldn't do much to assist the doll in feeding off the heroes. I destroyed the doll and took the Deed. It was the second haunt that the heroes won and marked the 3 on the back of the rulebook.[/o]
Chapter 4 - Haunt 5 - Be Our Guest
[o]There were no traitors in this scenario and we ended up having to destroy random furniture in the house. From what I remember in this scenario, there was a lot of cooperation and it felt very much like teamwork to get rid of the items in the house without dying. Saying that, every single person died to furniture except my wife's hero and she took the Deed to the House at the end. We had to capitalise on the Deed's teleportation ability to get rid of one piece of furniture and had we not done so, we would've definitely lost. The furniture had a stupidly high might and we struggled to even beat the dice rolls against it. Not sure if it was too hard or we just had very unlucky rolls, but we proceeded to win regardless. It was the third haunt that the heroes won and marked the 4 on the back of the rulebook as well as my wife taking the Deed from me.[/o]
Chapter 5 - Haunt 35 - Forbidden Knowledge
[o]I'll be honest, this scenario eludes me so much as I can't remember it very well for some reason, must've been the alcohol or something or other. Anyways, in this scenario I believe it starts the traitor being the person who has the Deed and I think it was from the very beginning of the game. Please note that I could be getting this mixed up with Chapter 8 - Haunt 29 - Hell Breaks Loose. In this chapter it introduced Otherworlds and the heroes ended up sealing the portal in the Chasm. Simon took the Deed from my wife and the heroes added another mark on the back of the rulebook.[/o]
Chapter 6 - Haunt 19 - The Writhing Tide
[o]This scenario had a giant ant-like creature and we definitely had a bit of an issue slowing her down initially. We did manage to get lucky with the trap items and the house positioning determined she would have to backtrack a lot throughout the house to get to the tiles on her route. We won this scenario but my hero died in the Otherworlds exploring. Again, this scenario doesn't bring back many thoughts as I don't remember it as clearly as others.[/o]
Chapter 7 - Haunt 41 - A Pox on Thee
[o]This scenario is probably the most loved by our group and let me tell you why. This scenario starts with us all trying to obtain a cure for a virus we've been breathing in, or something like that. Anyways, we've all infected and have to work together to stop ourselves from dying. So we kept exploring and eventually we found everything required. Once we thought the Chapter was complete, we were in for a really cool surprise. Nice one Rob. Telling us to open the Traitor's Tome and start from there was a cool twist we didn't see coming with only one vial being able to cure one of us and the others could drink the blood of the cured person to then become the new cured person. Well, the initial turn, my wife had a speed of 6 and ran down the stairs, grabbed the vial, drank it and ran outside with her ranged weapon. Now, the majority of the group had a speed of 4 so we had no chance to catching up to her, let alone inflicting damage to her at range as none of us had a ranged weapon. For clarity, she had used the Helm and obtained the 3rd sticker bonus giving her 4 speed to her character card. She kept running away and shooting at us as we made any progress towards her. In the end, I was killed by another played trying to use my ghost to give her enough speed to get to my wife but in the end, my wife had killed us all or the virus did. [/o]
Chapter 8 - Haunt 29 - Hell Breaks Loose
[o]Okay, this haunt I get mixed up with Chapter 5 - Forbidden Knowledge, so if I have mixed these up, apologies. In this chapter, I'm pretty sure we had to find the Corners of Hell cards for the Otherworlds. In this scenario, we were all lost in Hell at the end as we managed to find the final corner fairly quickly (I cycled through the deck fairly early and managed to get one, Simon got 1, Jenna got 1, and Michelle found the final one). We did encounter one issue though. My wife, being the traitor as usual, complained that once I had found the Chalice, she couldn't catch me because I went to The Otherworlds. Now, I ran in there low on stats and had critical sanity. I decided on my turn, I didn't want to move so I stayed in The Otherworlds. She wasn't happy that I could just "camp" there and weren't sure you were forced to go out of the Otherworlds at this point or if I could effectively "skip" my turn. I'd appreciate some clarity on this point if anyone knows. I just waited it out until the Corners of Hell were out and we won the scenario. At this point, the destruction of the Deed was pretty cool as we thought we'd utilise that through the whole game, again, another sneaky move by Rob we liked.[/o]
Chapter 9 - Haunt 38 - Angels & Demons
[o]Ok, let me start with this - This haunt feels very one-sided. My wife, the traitor as always, couldn't inflict damage to us but could cure our sanity. So I made it my job to kill her hero asap and I did on my turn as I had a massive might attack in this scenario thanks to the helm. So she died and the orderly personnel tried to kill Jenna but each turn she was formulating a crazy plan and attacking them outside, killing one each turn. Here's where it got hectic, we killed all the orderlies and my wife's traitor, we search every outside tile and found that we were one tile short for runes outside (could've been event tiles outside) and effectively, we couldn't "win" the scenario nor could we "lose" so we deemded it a victory for the heroes. I think this came as a result that the Chapel is a Ground Floor and Outside Tile and it being placed in the house caused a bit of confusion on how we end this Chapter. The heroes felt bad for how it went down and felt like the traitor should be able to attack the heroes and bring their might or speed down while bringing their sanity up. This would prevent the "sane" heroes from attacking her again, thus giving the traitor a chance. The other alternative is that the "sane" heroes then join the traitor in trying to restrain the other traitors for curing. Just a thought on our part.[/o]
Chapter 10 - Haunt 24 - Woefully Outmatched
[o]In this scenario, we ended up having some random insect things appear (lice) and they attack as a group / swarm and turn you to stone. Jenna was turned to stone outside and if I remember correctly, Michelle was the traitor in this scenario. I lucked out as I was in the basement and managed to get 3 out of the 4 items for the Nest destroyer. My wife got the fire and gave it to me and I made a mad run to the upstairs corridor tile and destroyed the Nest using my re-roll. This scenario felt pretty good and enjoyable.[/o]
Chapter 11 - Haunt 3 - Malignant
[o]Okay, this was the second time I was traitor but it was a hidden traitor scenario. I enjoyed the mechanics of how the traitor was discovered and the players didn't know who to trust. I had such a good speed being the green family (6) I decided that I would inject myself with the serum in the basement to discover I had become the traitor. At this point, my smile turned more malicious and I killed one hero each turn from there on. The heroes felt it was a bit unfair as I also had the radio and they'd have to come to me, listen to determine where the serum was for them to be cured. I ended up killing the required heroes for the scenario to end and it was the second time the traitor won.[/o]
Chapter 12 - Haunt 12 - Roswell
[o]Okay, we didn't like this scenario and here's why, the haunt happened so early that we had to continue exploring with a lumbering alien slowing our speed down. We only had 2 tiles out with runes on it and the Stables, which is where the Car went. We went looking for rooms and the traitor did not want us to find rooms. My wife, again, the traitor, had to take the evidence from us and put it in the fire. She did with one bit from Jenna and she wasn't sure if she was allowed to take the evidence from the car or not so she decided she couldn't as it was effectively "locked" in the trunk, so to speak. We felt this was extremely one-sided as the traitor couldn't find evidence herself on the tiles with runes that weren't searched. Had she been able to, she might've been able to win this scenario. I ended up killing the traitor (sorry to my wife) and with my massive speed of 7 this game, I managed to run around and grab evidence without any issues. This also prompted me to question if we had to search using the face down rune tokens and drawing two to determine if we actually found evidence or not. Please can someone clarify if we had done this wrong? Either way, it's done now and the heroes managed to win this one too.[/o]
Chapter 13
[o]I don't have the name of his one written down as it was on a card you draw from the Purgatory Deck as you meet the Madman. Now, this haunt was fun for us all except my wife when she found out she was due to become the traitor. I ended up becoming the traitor after I helped find a Corner of Hell already. In turning, I found I was disappointed that I couldn't pick up the Reforged Spear without pretty much killing myself as I held onto 5 Omen Cards from killing Simon. I also killed Jenna but didn't manage to kill Michelle or my wife. They defeated Fenrir and won.[/o]
At the end of the game, we did the required updates to the deck and weren't sure if we should automatically upgrade certain cards (we didn't) and by going through it, I discovered two cards I shouldn't have read but hell, they're hilarious when you do read them.
I'm not sure if we'll be playing Betrayal Legacy non-campaign anytime so soon after finishing it but we have made some awesome memories as a result of playing it. My wife is happy to see it go but others of us aren't and would like another campaign of it. Jenna is even considering buying Seafall for the Legacy aspect. I've considered buying Betrayal Legacy again to play with my other board game group.
Overall, this game does Betrayal justice in the way it is played and handled. The haunts could use some refining as well as the way the runes are implemented. We also felt the family crest tokens should've been blackened on one side as per a haunt requirement we managed to find a workable solution for. I would happily play this game in a future campaign as either this version or a second season. Thank you for reading.