Resident Evil 2: The Board Game Review

Video games making a transition to tabletop games is as old as the games themselves, dating all the way back to the Pac Man board game.  With enough effort into the design, some of them work really well, like the Doom board game (both the old one and the one based on the remake from Fantasy Flight Games) or the Exceed system putting Street Fighter and Shovel Knight characters in the game.

Being a Resident Evil fan, I’m fond of the Resident Evil Deck Building Game, a highly customizable card game about inventory management featuring screenshots, characters and monsters spanning all the Resident Evil games up to 5.  I have 4 of the 5 sets available and it’s a great game I never run out of new ways to play with.

After seeing how well Resident Evil could be made into a deck builder, I was really intrigued about the Resident Evil 2 board game by Steamforged Games, who previously made the Dark Souls board game.  I haven’t played that one, in fact I haven’t played any of the Dark Souls video games either, but from what I can tell audience reactions were mixed.  Looking past that, the developer’s blog detailing the way the RE2 board game translates the video game as well as how they balanced and tested it really drew me in with the level of detail and thought they were putting into the board game.

I wanted to contribute to the Kickstarter, but was only one week late for the deadline by the time I even found out it existed so I ended up getting the core game and the “B-files” expansion at retail prices online because it doesn’t seem like any game stores are selling it yet.  Being a highly detailed board game, it costs a premium.  In total those two boxes cost me $130 dollars and that was after I found lower prices and got some shipping and tax off.  How much it’s really worth will vary from person to person, but even if it’s a bad game, it might be worth it for the collector’s value.  It’s a good thing then that it’s a great game as well.

The Resident Evil 2 board game is a cooperative campaign-based game (sometimes called a "legacy game") that retells events of the titular video game, but with up to four characters.  Leon, Claire and Ada are obvious choices, but for the fourth player they went with Robert Kendo, the gun shop owner who doesn’t die in this version.  Just like the game, players move through different objectives, exploring rooms and hallways and shooting monsters while managing limited ammo.

The game’s core rules are similar to games like Arcadia Quest with a little bit of Zombicide, where on each turn the player gets 4 actions to move, shoot, pick up an item, open/close a door and whatnot.  Like those games, each weapon has a number of dice to roll for attacks, the results of which determine what effect the shot has, but instead of the dice determining the numerical damage, weapons have specific effects for the “hit” and “double hit” sides of the dice.  For example, the handgun pushes an enemy back on single hit result and does 1 damage on a double hit whereas the shotgun does 1 damage for either.  It also has an inventory system for keys, healing items, key items and, more unique to this game, ammunition.

In keeping with the pre-Resident Evil 4 style in which shooting your way through the whole game is probably not going to happen, all weapons except the knife have an ammunition dial counter.  Each time you use up ammo, you lower the counter by the amount used and ammo pack items can replenish it.  Rather than feel frustrating, it gives weapons and ammo the same kind of value they did in the games so it’s more rewarding when picking up items that can potentially have them.  Even though the video game version’s hallway-filled map structure with little room for maneuvering is faithfully retained, there is enough in the combat and methods of maneuvering that allow for some flexibility in the situations players can be in.

For example, when an enemy is pushed, such as when they do damage to you while on the same square, the push can be in any direction.  It’s a very useful tactic to push an enemy through an open door and then close it.  As long as there are no players on the same tile or a tile connected by open doors, enemies are completely frozen.  If it was a room you know you’re not going back to, that just saved you from any more grief.

It’s almost like the game doesn’t have the memory capacity to process the actions going on in every room at once.

You can double team a large group with another player, wait at the end of a hall until the enemy is in your line of sight and keep a safe distance for a while or just go for it and try to evade them with an evasive roll system that’s harder to pull off the more enemies there are around.  Being a co-op game also gives it the feel of the more modern games like Resident Evil 5 or 6.  There are a lot of options open and players are forced to think on their feet with the unpredictability of dice rolls and the game’s unique tension deck system.

Every scenario has its own specially-made tension deck players have to draw from each turn.  It serves two purposes: random events and a timer.  Most of the cards in the tension deck are green cards that do nothing, but a few will cause an event like making enemies do more damage, summoning a monster or making an enemy do their special attack listed on their reference card.  If the tension deck runs out, you lose, but it can be reset if a player uses their limited supply of ink ribbons on typewriters on the maps.  Not only is it impressive that they worked in Resident Evil typewriters in a way that doesn’t feel forced, but it adds a further layer of strategy on using them efficiently.

Everything I explained is pretty much the core of the game and never really changes, but the game is impressively elaborate on how it uses all these aspects to make each scenario wholly unique.  A few tension cards are only in the tension decks of specific scenarios, there are some points where a specific card is shuffled in mid-game and in one scenario there must be two players, each with their own smaller tension deck, separated by an electronic lock and after the power is turned on using the fuse case item, the decks are combined.

This is all coupled with these unique scenarios being based on the games almost to the letter.  The police station has its card suit keys that need to be found to unlock new areas and get new items, lickers turn into evolved lickers in the Umbrella labs, G’s third form mutates into the fourth form after you reduce his health to 0 if you have the expansion and I’ve only read this secondhand, but apparently in the Retro Style expansion featuring new art for the cards, the 50^th card is a picture of Rebecca, referencing how you could find it in the original game by searching Wesker’s deck 50 times.  The T-103 in particular has a long series of details regarding its name, use of the rocket launcher and how it’s implemented as a recurring enemy before being fought as a boss.  Its correct name is also used and it is never referred to as “Mr. X.”  That is not its name.  People need to stop calling it that.  The attention to detail is excellent all around.  I recommend reading Steamforged’s blog to see how they went about translating everything into a board game format, especially the bosses.

Double team!

In most board games of this kind, bosses, if there are any in the first place, typically amount to either a minigame of some sort or a stronger enemy with some abilities that are otherwise the same as any other.  In the Resident Evil 2 board game they’re very specifically made as a boss battle and have completely different methods and behaviors to them thanks to the behavior deck.

When you enter a boss arena room (the biggest ones), you stop drawing from the tension deck and instead draw from the boss behavior deck, which lists what attack they do, its range, its evasion level required to avoid it and its effect if it hits.  On their character card each boss has its own rules and methods of moving and reacting.  For example, G’s third form’s rule is that if he draws a behavior card and no one is in range for it, he uses the reflex slash move instead, where he jumps right over to the next player to go and does a difficult to avoid basic hit, replicating how if you run too far away from him in the original game he’ll zero in on you with a jump.

The T-103 in the final battle of the B scenario has no such ability so if you keep your distance he might miss, provided he doesn’t use his sprinting slash, but every time he’s attacked he makes a move toward his attacker.

The final boss, G's final form in one of the expansions, is even made into a boss breaking the convention of the other ones, where in the game it was little more than an advancing wall to unload on.  It does keep that aspect with the stage being made up of tiles 2 squares wide and its slow advance being a threat, but it's made into more of a fight.  Instead of tracking health remaining, it's health counter goes up and if specified values on the action cards have been reached by that number, they're removed from its deck after they resolve until there are none left.  That the figure is a gigantic mass taking up 6 spaces only makes it even more intimidating.

The bosses are a lot of fun to play against and a highlight of the game.  The problem is that I wish there were more included.

Apparently due to the expense of the miniatures, the core game only has two boss creatures: the G embryo mutant and G’s third form.  If they had to choose one of G’s forms I’m glad they went with the third because it’s my favorite and the figure is awesome, but it still feels like a good chunk of the game is left out.  G’s other forms are in the Malformations of G expansions.  One more boss in the core set might’ve felt just a little bit more complete.  The two forms of the T-103 in the B files set only helps a little bit.

Enemies such as Ivies, spiders, crows and moths are also sold separately, but those aren’t that important and the game builds their presence through the tension deck.

Even without the expansions this is a large game.  The core game has 8 scenarios based on the A side of Resident Evil 2, starting with a tutorial of going to the police station from the streets after the truck crash at the beginning of the game and ending with the fight with G’s third form (again, unless you buy the expansion that adds the fourth).

The B files adds another 6 scenarios based on the B side, culminating in the final battle with the T-103’s final form.  They weren’t strict on which character’s A and B scenarios they were basing it on, but it’s mostly Leon A and Claire B, since you fight the embryo mutant in the cess pool in the core game and in the B files one mission is clearing the wreckage to the chief’s office.  One of the rules in the book for the final B files scenario is also titled "you lose, big guy", which is Claire's line.  The B files does take a bit from Leon’s stories, however, with one mission having a player suffer from the “mortally wounded” condition while everyone else has to find a medical kit, meet up with the wounded player and treat them before they die, which is based on Ada treating Leon after he’s shot.

All these scenarios can be played on their own with specified starting equipment for each one, but there’s a more in-depth experience to be had playing it as part of the campaign mode.  In campaign mode, weapons and health carry over with a few provisions in between levels.  Not only does that make playing the whole game a more adventurous-feeling experience, but it’s also the only way to use certain items found in the game.  Some items don’t have a use until a later level so it’s useless if you aren’t playing campaign mode.  Some even affect the B files scenarios.

A good example is the armory, which is used exactly like in the original game.  In one scenario you can find a card key to open the armory in a later level where there’s a side pack to increase your inventory and a submachine gun that takes up an extra inventory space.  Whichever one you take, you have to take the other if you get to the armory in the B files scenario.

To add on to that sense of consistency, the map layouts are designed to be consistent throughout the game.  Rooms to access may be added or removed, but when you play a scenario that is supposed to be taking place in the same place as another scenario, it is laid out so that it is still that place.  Their structure in the first place is largely taken directly from the game’s maps too, give or take some changes for balance.  The attention to detail all over this board game makes me light up smiling when playing it.  This is the antithesis of board games with a franchise name slapped on.  They made damn sure that this is as Resident Evil 2 as it gets and fans of the franchise will love it.

I think I'm just going to make a run for it now.

The only downsides aren’t so much downsides as they are things to be aware of.  While the core gameplay is fast-paced and almost never slows down, setup can take about half an hour or more because of how elaborate the scenarios are.  That’s even longer than Arcadia Quest because here there are more tiles to arrange, two item decks to set up and the tension deck.  I don’t mind because I love how detailed it is, but for players that just want to take out a game and get straight to playing, that’s not going to happen.

Some people recommend using environment figures from other games.

I’ve also seen a lot of complaints about the game’s components.  Other than the cards, playable characters and enemies, everything is printed on cardboard unless you buy the 3D terrain pack and many of them are very dark.  The doors and corpse tokens in particular are on black backgrounds when some of the doors are a dark brown and the corpses are a bit small for the size of the tokens they’re on.  Many have complained that it makes them hard to distinguish, which is a problem when you need to know whether a door is in the open or closed position.  I don’t know if I got an alternate printing where the brown doors were made brighter or if I just have good eyesight because I never had that problem.  My only disappointment is in some of the art decisions.

The room tiles themselves, apart from the boss rooms, are a series of copy/paste environments with two sides depicting a different area just vague enough to be used in multiple settings.  They’re nicely drawn with just enough detail to set the mood, but there still should’ve been more to choose from among them.  With only two 9-tile indoor room designs available it means there’s a lot of repeated environments within the same scenario.  The board game is well-designed enough in setup to make them feel like different rooms despite the identical looks, but they could’ve gone further with it.  I also don’t get why there are so many tiles depicting the streets of Raccoon City when only the very first scenario actually depicts them.  The video games wouldn’t show the street side of things until the next game.

The character artwork isn’t my favorite either.  Good on Steamforged for opting to use their own art instead of lifting assets like most licensed board games, but I almost wish they’d have gone with that for the playable characters because they look like a poor man’s drawing, and this is coming from someone who has the Code Veronica Hong Kong comic.  I get the feeling the artist specialized more in drawing monsters than humans because the art for the bosses and monsters make up for the human character’s shortcomings.  The monster art is so detailed and finely colored you’d almost swear it was some lost portrait from the original game’s release.

Finally, I know this is typically petty to complain about, but the box art on the game and its expansions are awful.  They use the image of the peeking zombie from the original game’s box and slapped the title on.  The rest is a white featureless void with some scratches on it in a game where people are complaining about it being too dark.  The B files expansion box just flipped the T-103 art around, making it dextrocardiac.  Look at the boxes for the deck building game near the start of this article.  Look at how each one has a dedicated color scheme and depicts the characters and monsters in them to indicate how it’s jam-packed with Resident Evil excitement.  I’m not an art expert, but when I look at the deck building game I know at a glance THAT is a Resident Evil game.  The simple Resident Evil 2 cover worked on a PS1 case because it was about a fourth the size and took up most of the space.  It’s not like there wasn’t any exciting content Steamforged could’ve put on that white space.

Box art can be deceiving though as there is a lot of effort and detail contained within.  The miniatures range from looking good, like the player characters and zombies, to looking fantastic like the lickers and bosses.  The bosses are clearly where a lot of their attention went because they have the most fine, chiseled features down to every last tooth and scale.  The other figures look good enough, but the boss figures are more like premium collector’s items and figure painters will want their hands on them.

The Resident Evil fan in me loves the Resident Evil 2 board game.  It feels like Resident Evil, moves at a good pace, always keeps things interesting and has a lot of depth built into the core game mechanics so it’s always kept interesting.  It’s clear Steamforged Games put a lot of work into it and are rightfully proud of it.  However, my cynical side knows that even if this is a great game, it’s hard to justify the cost.

I know huge board games like this typically cost a lot, and it may be even less of an issue for the Resident Evil collectors that probably spend 300 dollars on statues of Chris Redfield, but 80-100 dollars for a game that feels like some content is missing pushes that leeway.  The expansions costing between 25-50 dollars each only exacerbates the problem, even if the core game does have a good amount of content on its own.  I get too distracted by the fun I have playing to regret my purchases, but if you’re not a fan, don’t think this is a game you’ll be bringing out at game nights a lot or won’t play on your own, it’s almost certainly not worth it.

If you can drop that money though, Resident Evil 2: the Board Game is a shining example of how to utilize a video game license.  At the time of this writing I’ve gotten to play it with others a few times and everyone thus far has loved it or at least commend it for being competently made, both from people who have played the source material and people that haven’t.  While it’s definitely made for the fans, it’s also a strong strategic co-op game in its own right and a lot of fun to play both solo and with others, especially when you play with me and I give someone the acid rounds for their grenade launcher by telling them that it’s REALLY powerful, especially against living things.  I give Resident Evil 2: The Board Game an 8 out of 10.