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Hi all! My gaming channel has recently got its hands on the Dark Souls Board Game. We've done an unboxing video (see below) and we've had a single game - which lasted nearly 7 hours and drove us mad trying to find the rules for certain things! How are other people finding it? We're going to be reviewing it soon but I have to say, my initial impressions were very mixed and I'd love to hear some second opinions before we get it on the table again. Thanks everyone!

I've no idea how you managed to make a single game last 7 hours. I've soloed my way through the Boreal knight to Ormstein and Smough in 2 and that took nearly all the available sparks. Playing with a full set of 4 people slows things down while you debate on the best tactics and who to level up/what to buy but the reduction in sparks inherently shortens the game to compensate for that. I've heard people comment that the rulebook is the worst thing ever put into print (clearly rubbish - that award goes to Tomorrow's War) but my group and I have had no problems with any of the rules and hardly needed to look up anything. It isn't a game that has a lot of rules anyway.

The grind for souls seems to be the biggest source of complaint (though it's Dark Souls so it was always going to be a feature). I don't find the inherent repetition to be the main issue there (if it is a problem then just choose new encounter cards each reset) but that it is possible to level your gear up to a point where the normal encounters aren't really any threat to you and a Dark Souls game should put you in constant fear of death. At that point the encounters become more of an irritation than a challenge while you get to the boss fight. I'm actually considering replacing the dice with a set which has a blank face on every colour just so there are no guaranteed results with higher level gear.

I'm still enjoying it but I'm also thinking of various ways to tinker with it (such as having terrain that actually makes a difference).

Halfway through painting it all.

In all honesty, it felt like the poor mans Kingdom Death. Now that's not a bad thing (especially going by KDM's price), but that was the general feeling I got from it.

Thanks for the replies! I'm hoping that seven hours was an anomaly, due to a) us having to have a 24 hour break in the middle (so the game was spread over 2 days) and b) us all learning what the hell we were meant to be doing. It bodes well that you can get the game in quicker though. Once we worked out what was going on everything kind of clicked, but there was much rifling of pages and gnashing of teeth beforehand.

I find it kinda funny that a £100 game is a poor man's game! I'd love to play KDM but I don't want to take a loan out for a single game. How good is it, if you don't mind me asking?