Blood Bowl II Reviews
Fans of turn-based strategy and tabletop games will want to give Blood Bowl 2 a shot, but a muddled presentation limits the broader appeal among gamers and holds this game back from becoming a standout title.
It's hard to really pinpoint who will enjoy Blood Bowl 2 the most. Strategy, board game and American Football fans will all get something from it. Still, it's worth trying your hand at it even if you're not a fan of those genres. The main issue with the game is the steep learning curve and the length of the matches. If you're someone with limited time this probably isn't the game for you. If you do have the time for such a big commitment though, then you're in for a treat.
The storyline of the campaign mode is sort of fun and playing a season with all of the ups and downs that brings is also fun, but for me I think most of the joy comes from the nostalgia, I'm afraid.
Blood Bowl 2 has been well adapted from the tabletop game into a fun digital world. Even if you know little about football or Warhammer, anyone who likes the challenge of a complex strategy game will appreciate Blood Bowl 2 - especially in multiplayer.
A strategy game that offers little in the way of strategy, Blood Bowl 2 at least has dumb fun going for it.
What little Blood Bowl 2 does wrong is more a result of its unconventional mix-up than any technical shortcomings of the game. Combining sports and RPGs is a tricky thing at best, and while Blood Bowl 2 pulls it off well, to say the mix is perfect wouldn't be right. This is fun to play through and through, even if the audience might be limited.
Undoubtedly Blood Bowl 2 is a very unique game that really has no other similar games to compare it with, but it is a fantastic mashup of two games. The level of detail in the game is a great aspect that will have you admiring all the characters in the game including your opposition
With some deep mechanics and a level of micromanagement that would make even the most compulsive of table top gaming aficionados blush, it is quite easy to see how well Blood Bowl 2 would work as board game. It is for some of these very same reasons, however, that Blood Bowl 2 is somewhat less satisfying as a videogame. The random nature of the dice rolls can lead to some serious frustration and the action is so slow and plodding that it is definitely not the kind of game someone can just jump in and play. There is certainly going to be a target audience that appreciates what this offers, and what Blood Bowl 2 does well it does really well. Grab a six-sided die, then, and some extensive spreadsheets to keep track of stats, because everyone knows it isn't a real American Football game without either of those two items…
This game is giving a new meaning to "Fantasy Football"
A faithful recreation of the smash hit boardgame and a ton of fun to boot!
I think that the most shocking aspect of Blood Bowl is that it has been around since the mid-80's, with the first tabletop release being in 1986. I guess that goes to show how much I paid attention to it when walking into a GamesWorkshop retail store (when they still existed in abundance here in the States), though I was admittedly staring at the gorgeously painted models, so I had eyes for little else.