When comparing Gloomhaven vs Forbidden Island, the Slant community recommends Gloomhaven for most people. In the question“What are the best co-op board games?” Gloomhaven is ranked 5th while Forbidden Island is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Gloomhaven is:
Each and every class represented in-game has their own deck of cards. These cards feature skills and abilities that are entirely unique to that specific class. Whether you're attacking, moving, or looting - each class carries out these actions with their own distinct style. Thanks to the sheer amount of variety offered between the classes, no two ever feel alike, and you're guaranteed to get a unique game experience based on the class you select.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Character classes are distinctly unique
Each and every class represented in-game has their own deck of cards. These cards feature skills and abilities that are entirely unique to that specific class. Whether you're attacking, moving, or looting - each class carries out these actions with their own distinct style. Thanks to the sheer amount of variety offered between the classes, no two ever feel alike, and you're guaranteed to get a unique game experience based on the class you select.
Pro Intense card management
Cards in Gloomhaven represent all of your attacks and movements, as well as determine the order these actions will take place. Furthermore, every class in the game has their own unique deck of cards.
Most of the cards have unique and complex mechanics, but they all follow a simple rule when brought into play: you must choose whether to play the top action (attack) or the bottom action (movement). Once a card is played, it goes into a discard pile. However, by "resting" a few turns and sitting out of the action, you can put them back in your hand.
Managing your cards each round and trying to get a victory in every scenario can be a very intense experience. Knowing when and how to use an card in your hand results in some really tense play where some tough, on-the-fly decisions have to be made. Do you attack or move? Do you save this attack for a tougher enemy later? Is this card worth playing now? Is it worth resting to retrieve cards?, etc.
Pro Exciting enemy encounter variations
There are a whopping 45 different enemies and 12 bosses. Each enemy in the game has their own unique stats along with combat modifiers such as additional damage. As such, each enemy acts and performs differently. Additionally, monsters can be set to various difficulty levels and scale based on how many players are in the encounter. All of this combined allows for a huge amount of variation, and keeps each encounter feeling fresh and exciting throughout numerous game sessions.
Pro Heavy immersion in the world thanks to events
Outside of the dungeon crawling, there are Road Events and City Events that can occur. Road Events take place when traveling to a new location, whereas City Events happen when you visit the city of Gloomhaven.
These events present players with unique and interesting situations and choices, such as meeting a traveler, running into monsters, or finding a new quest. The choices you make during events also influence the course of the story and may provide you with a buff (or debuff) for your upcoming dungeon crawl.
These additional story elements help the world-building along, as they take place during what would be otherwise mundane things (such as traveling a road, or visiting town) and make it easy to stay connected and feel like you're a part of the game world at all times.
Pro Easy to understand
Although the sheer size of the board, tons of cards, and numerous game pieces/tokens make the game appear intimidating, it is quite easy to understand the basics after a short amount of time spent playing. This is due to its clearly defined rules, detailed cards/iconography, and the clean visual presentation of the game board.
Pro Players can join and leave at will
A game can still run at maximum efficiency, even with a "revolving door" of players.
Monsters can be set to scale based on the number of players, so if your friend suddenly has to leave mid-game, it won't be a huge detriment to the group. Players can also drop in or leave the game at any point, as it's easy to add or subtract players to the party between scenarios.
It's all the little details like this that make it a great game to play with a group of friends who all have varying amounts of availability.
Pro Can play solo
Even if you can't find anyone to play with, the game is able to be played solo. You can still tackle events and dungeons solo, progress your character, and enjoy the story without the need for a game master or even a group to play with. This makes it a great choice when the the urge to dungeon crawl strikes, but nobody is available for a long play session.
Pro Very accessible
Forbidden Island can be taught within a few minutes to absolutely anyone. It starts off slow and progressively leads into more complicated situations, so there’s time to get into the feel of the game. You only need to know how to do four actions, and the result of them is instantly visible, there’s pretty much nothing to micromanage.
Pro Cheap
The game retails for around $15, which is very cheap for the replay value and quality of the components that this game packs.
Pro Great physical components
The components of Forbidden Island are not only visually beautiful, but also durable, so they should hold up to wear and tear just fine. The game comes in a high-quality tin box and is full of thick and sturdy island tiles, durable cardstock cards, and eight treasure figures made of soft plastic.
Pro Beautiful artwork
The game looks amazing, it’s full of colorful high-quality artwork that really enhances the theme of treasure hunting on a mysterious island. The game’s box already gives a great first impression, featuring a big copy of the “Lighthouse” location tile. These locations that form the island have a huge variety of detailed and great-looking art on them.
On a design note, it is also very well done in the sense that it’s easy to distinguish which tiles are sinking, even in the blue-ish looking locations.
Pro Uncomplicated
The rules of Forbidden Island are straightforward. After setting up the map and choosing the difficulty, you are randomly assigned one of the six different classes. During your turn you can take up to three actions in total. All actions cost 1 point, you can move, shore up a drowning tile, give a treasure card to another player on the same tile, or collect a treasure. After that you draw two cards from the treasure card deck and take a number of flood cards equivalent to the water level.
The game is won when you play a “Helicopter lift” card on the “Fool’s Landing” tile while you have all players on it and you’ve uncovered all the treasures. There are many lose conditions – you can lose if the water level reaches the highest mark, if both the tiles housing the same treasure drown before you manage to get it, if the “Fool’s Landing” tile drowns, or if a player drowns.
Pro Varying difficulty
Forbidden Island lets you adjust the difficulty, which is great because you can adjust to the group you’re playing, be it a group of experienced gamers or your family. This is done by moving the slider on the water level meter to one of the four sections. Basically, you start with a higher initial water level.
Pro Good replayability
There are many variables to Forbidden Island that keeps it replayable. The cards you draw and the map you create will always vary and the fact that you get a random class makes the game feel different every time.
The six classes have highly different abilities, for example, the pilot can use an action point to fly to any tile on the island, the messenger can give treasure cards to another player anywhere on the map, and the engineer can shore up two tiles on the same turn for one action point.
Cons
Con Takes a long time to set up
Setting up the board between each scenario is very time consuming as pieces have to be carefully arranged according to diagrams, cards have to be shuffled and placed into multiple piles, and character boards have to be configured. This process tends to take much longer than other similar board games.
Con Cumbersome game box
The game box is huge and all the pieces don't always fit neatly back inside. This could make transporting the game a hassle. It's heavy, large, and has many various parts and pieces.
Con Expensive due to being out of print
This game, while popular, is no longer in print. If you're looking to add it to your collection, you should be able to find it on Amazon or various board game hobby sites, but it normally carries a high price tag.
Con Not good for short gaming sessions
While it's possible to play one scenario at a time, the story and encounters are best appreciated and experienced as a full campaign which will play out over several long sessions. Additionally, the board takes quite a while to set up between scenarios, which isn't great when you only have limited time to play.
Con Quarterbacking / alpha-gamer issue
Forbidden Island suffers from the same issue as many cooperative games – a dominant player might make decisions for everyone. Table talk is absolutely necessary in this game to win, and the fact that everyone’s cards are visible, and the discard pile can be looked through doesn’t help the problem.
Con Many luck elements
Pretty much everything that happens in this game revolves around the cards that are drawn. The map itself is set up by drawing tiles, so you can get very unlucky with the placement of the “Fool’s Landing” tile and the distance to the treasure locations you need to reach in order to win. You can also get unlucky with the treasure card deck that has some “Water Rising” cards shuffled in between – if you draw a few of these in quick succession, you might make important locations sink and lose straightaway.
Con Possibly too light for experienced gamers
The game is very similar to Pandemic, but much easier in the sense that it sacrifices many concepts in favor of accessibility. Due to this Forbidden Island might feel repetitive, simplistic, and not very complex to a more experienced gamer because there are not as many strategic possibilities.
