Monday, August 21, 2006

Fury Of Dracula - Review


Fury of Dracula, like any game with one player playing the antagonist has its inherent strengths and weaknesses but its balance and intuitive game engine more then makes up for this.

The fun level of this experience is highly based on the players playing the game. The player playing Dracula must be cunning, using trickery to mislead the hunters, not afraid of loosing a few blood points to achieve the desirable ends. Hunters however needs to be cleaver, like detectives solving the mysteries of the whereabouts of the vampire, and intelligently spread their recourses in hunting the him down.

This is how the game should be if all the players are balanced.

Many complain that the game is unbalanced as hunters seems to have an advantage. The opposite is also true to others. This is the biggest weakness of games with one player playing the antagonists. If the antagonist is the one winning 4 other players are bored and if the hunters are winning, the antagonist usually the owner of the game would not want to bring the game to the table anymore.

The rules are simple and intuitive enough that players can easily take turns playing Dracula each game so that helps solves that problem.

Battles and Dracula phase may signal a long downtime for players. Although battles in the game are as simple as choosing a card, rolling a dice and checking the effects, but because of the consequences of battles players tend to take time to plan. This could easily be solved by planning ahead. Unlike the hunters phase where hunters may discuss and plan, Dracula's phase concerns only the Dracula player. This is another situation where forward planning could be the solution to.

Overall, I love this game. Some pre-game advice and player preparation could improve the game even more. I would bring this game out once every other gaming session. Play it twice per session and a different Dracula per session

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