Review of Arkham Horror: Final Hour

Blurb from the publisher: 'Five minutes to midnight, time to save the world!

Gather your friends for a last stand in Arkham Horror: Final Hour, a fully cooperative, fast-paced boardgame for one to four players. An endless tide of monsters sweeps across the Miskatonic University campus, and you must hold them back, all while searching desperately for the ritual components you need to put an end to this insanity. Playable in under 60 minutes, your fate depends on cooperation between you and your fellow investigators. The odds against you are astronomical, but if you don't succeed, this will indeed be the final hour for Arkham... and the world.'

What you get: Your USD 39,95 or equivalent will buy you the Lovecraftian-themed, cooperative Arkham Horror: Final Hour, a one to four player cooperative game that lasts around an hour and which was published a mere month ago. Even though the game bears the Arkham Horror moniker, it is an autonomous game and not a part of either the Arkham Horror Third Edition game line or the Arkham Horror Card Game.

In addition to the 24-page English rulebook that can be found on the publisher's website free of charge, the game also contains the following: one Game Board, 3 Ancient One sheets, 60 Action cards (10 per Investigator) 4 Reference cards, 30 Priority cards, 9 Item cards, 13 Clue tokens, 6 Investigator tokens and 6 plastic stands, 40 Standard Monster tokens, 15 Special Monster tokens, 12 Gate tokens, 18 Damage tokens, one Ritual Location token, 12 Health tokens, 8 Seal tokens, and one Lead Investigator token.

Gameplay: Final Hour takes place in the 15 locations of the Arkham University campus. Each location contains a number of monster spaces (from 2 to 4) as well as a coloured zone tag. Locations are connected by walkways, which designate how monsters move.

At the beginning of the game one out of the three Ancient Ones (Cthulhu, Umôrdhoth, Shudde M'ell) is chosen as the antagonist. Each of them can be played at three different levels of difficulty, and determines where the ritual location and the three gate locations are placed. Players choose an Investigator each (two if you play solo), and get four Priority cards. Investigators have anything from 3 to 5 health depending on the number of players. In contrast to both Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror the Investigators do not have character sheets with special powers. Their Action cards is what distinguishes one from another. Each Investigator has 5 sets of identically named cards, with similar, yet not necessarily identical results. Each Action card has two effects. The upper effect is overall stronger and more beneficial to the Investigators than the lower one. These include moving an Investigator, attacking or destroying a monster outright, investigating (which can lead the players closer to the resolution of the final puzzle or award them with items), seal locations, recover health, repair locations etc. Effects also help spawn new monsters, activate them, and move them to new locations.

The game is played in eight rounds. The Investigators must reverse the ritual in time without losing an Investigator and without the Ritual location becoming overrun with monsters.

In the Action Phase the Investigators draw the top card of their respective Action decks, read it secretly, play it face down and play one Priority card from their hand on top of the Action card face up. Priority cards are numbered from 1 to 30, with the number indicating the likelihood that the top effect of the Priority card will be resolved. Lower numbers are better than higher ones. At this point Investigators are prohibited from discussing strategy or sharing information; what they play is the only available information they pass on to their comrades. Once everybody has played his cards, the Investigators resolve them. Action cards are revealed and resolved in ascending order of the Priority cards played on them. For the first two Action cards resolved, the investigator resolves the top effect of the card, while for the last two the bottom effect is resolved. An Investigator can only start discussing strategy after his card can be revealed; not before.

Once the Investigators have finished resolving their cards, the Ancient One Phase takes place. Priority cards have Omen symbols on them. The cards that were just played activate all sorts of events according to the Ancient One present in the game. These include spawning baddies, damaging locations, draining health from the Investigators etc. In addition to that, existing Gates get semi-randomly enlarged, spawning even more monsters onto the board.

To win the game the Investigators must reverse the ritual by investigating clues, so that they can match up the clues that have been secretly reserved at the start of the game. Taking into account the limited number and types of Clue tokens (5 sets of two), revealing the first of each type reduces the chances that one is needed to win the game. Revealing two of the same type means that this type is not needed at all. The players can attempt to reverse the ritual at any time by committing three priority cards from their hand each. Each card shows a different ritual icon. If the players field the appropriate symbols in a quantity equal to double the number of players, they win the game. Otherwise they lose outright. You only get one chance at this!

The strong points: I was wondering when Fantasy Flight Games would publish an Arkham Horror game that plays at least as fast as a Pandemic. Well, here we are, and this fact alone is a very strong selling point. Just to be clear, the game is not similar to any Pandemic, and even more so Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu with which it obviously shares the theme. It is a stripped down version of the Arkham Horror series of games, with numerous design twists and new mechanics.

The tension is built through the continuous lack of information. In many ways the players bring it to themselves by semi-chaotically deciding what is important in that round and what isn't. This would have been ok if you had a million rounds to spare, yet you don't. Worse, the ritual is not your only problem, seeing how systematically the game sabotages your efforts. If all that were not enough, you have only one attempt to guess how the ritual can be defeated. In an ideal game, the players try hard to reveal the Clues so that they can play the best possible cards to end the ritual the soonest possible. Yet, even if everybody knows what the hidden tokens are, they might still not have the right cards to play. That is the beauty (or horror) of Final Hour, a game of projection, analysis, and an all-or-nothing guesstimation while the baddies swarm on the board from all sides. I had vibes of Res Publica while playtesting it, not because the games are similar in any way, but because of how easy it is for players to misunderstand intention and play something completely irrelevant. In the competitive Res Publica this only stops a trade. Here it may lose you the game.

There are many interesting things about the design itself. Some monsters move clockwise and some counter clockwise on the map. It falls upon the players to identify which points should work as road blocks so that the monsters don't overrun you. Randomness is a serious factor to consider. The players have rather limited control on where monsters are spawned, they must play a thoughtful game in order to stay alive and reverse the ritual. Remember, it is not mandatory to wait until the last moment in order to resolve the final puzzle. Prolonging the game when you feel confident that you know the solution and have the cards to resolve it (always without communicating this to everybody else) might not always be the best course of action.

I enjoyed both the game's modularity and its asymmetry. Take it easy with the baddies at first, and you will find yourself playing the harder levels after minimal exposure. The characters are different to one another, not however to the extent of the game's spiritual predecessors. Each is only defined by a deck of cards and no stats after all. The same is valid for the three different baddies and the monsters that accompany them. If you consider the permutations, the game has a very strong replay value.

I was surprised by how good the solo game came out to be. It is an obviously different experience than the multiplayer version; how can you possibly hide information from yourself? The adrenaline in the solo game comes out of it being more of a puzzle than the multiplayer. You are solely responsible for what is going on; can you plan well enough in order to keep at bay the chaos around you until you reverse the ritual?

Just like every other game with the Arkham Horror logo on it, the components are of a very high quality. The art is appropriate, even though some of it has seen previous use. The insert is once again semi-pointless, and especially if Fantasy Flight releases expansions for Final Hour. I admit however that I have resigned from expecting custom-made inserts that make sense from this publisher.

The weak points: If Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror are known about something this would be their ability to create memorable stories. Final Hour doesn't go that way at all; it doesn't even try. This is about the mechanics, about the difficulty of identifying and resolving the puzzle, of beating a limited-information game through analysis and sometimes sheer dumb luck. In that sense, I am a bit perplexed by Fantasy Flight making it a part of the Arkham Horror family. It is not a bad decision per se, it is however likely to alienate some of the fans of the line(s) and confound others as to the game's nature. If you thrust yourself into it make sure that you do so for the right reasons and not just for the name.

Limited information games tend to pass as chaotic to those who don't enjoy their calculations, projections, analysis, and ultimate deduction which will either win or lose you the game. The black and white aspect of the final choice is gripping for some (and I count myself amongst them) and off-putting for others. If you belong to the latter group, or if you want to talk to your heart's desire about what to do at any point in the game, Final Hour is definitely not for you.

I am not at all convinced about the link between the priority cards mechanic and the priority cards that will be ultimately played in order to end the ritual. In most cases luck is likely to decide how soon players understand which symbols they search for, while luck will also partially decide what cards they have in their hands during crunch time. That's too much luck right there, and it cannot be easily mitigated by consciously playing priority cards which are not fit for purpose. After all, to win the game you need to survive to the point that you will make an educated guess with strong chances of winning. If you can't do that, and this is due to luck no matter your choices, you don't really play the game; it plays you.

I am uncertain about the game's theme, and that is not because it does not produce a story. It is because the limited information aspect of the game isn't properly explained. It feels precarious and partially forced into the role even though it does not actively detract. Maybe I am overreacting due to the previous AH/EH games' mechanics being so wrapped up into the theme.

Some of the art pieces have been used in previous AH/EH products. Meh.

Conclusion: Arkham Horror: Final Hour delivers as a shortish, limited information game with deduction elements; bonus points for the fast pace which at times becomes frantic. Use it as a filler, a warm up or a solo, accept its luck-based element, and you will not be disappointed. Its name might throw people off, seeing how it doesn't have many of the elements that made its Arkham Horror and Eldritch Horror forefathers famous. Buy it for what it is, not for what you believe it might be.

For more info on Arkham Horror: Final Hour visit Fantasy Flight Games at https://www.fantasyflightgames.com.

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