Talisman 5e Review - Fast Paced High Fantasy Adventures

Talisman is one of those board games that has stood the test of time. Since it's release in the 1980s it has continued to make a name for itself and is just as relevant to the board game market with the release of Talisman 5th Edition this year. While being aware of Talisman this was my first time playing the game and as a fan of magic and quests I was delighted with what I got to experience.

If traditional high-fantasy adventures aren't for you but you're interested in Talisman you can check out our review of Talisman: Kingdom Hearts.

In Talisman 4-6 players get to take on the role of one of the twelve high-fantasy archetypes, travel the board facing monsters and becoming more powerful, and race to defeat the Elder Dragon and collect the Crown of Command. The premise sounds simple, and honestly it really is.

Opening the box for the first time you'll find the Gameboard, miniatures and characters cards for each of the 12 characters, three six-sided dice, a collection of different cards, tokens, gold coins, and counters representative of your characters strength, craft, and life values. After punching out all of the tokens each has a specific place to live inside the box and as always that's an incredibly satisfying feeling.

Talisman 5th Edition Gameplay

Setting up the gameboard is as easy as making sure every card is shuffled into their own decks and that each player is set up with their characters starting items. All characters have starting values for their Strength, Craft, Life, Fate, and Gold. On top of that the character cards also clearly outline any special abilities your character has, as well as their default alignment.

In my first game I played as a Monk, this would allow me to add my starting Craft value to my Strength if engaging a physically attacking enemy. While believing this was a strategic play to start more powerful than the other players it was quickly clear how much the dice and cards can turn against you.

On your turn you roll the dice and move that number of spaces clockwise or counter clockwise around the board. Wherever you land you simply need to read the text on the space and follow the instructions to roll dice or draw a card from the adventure deck.

The adventure deck is what will propel the encounters as well as how the board will change. At its most simple you might draw a creature, fight and kill it, and move on to the next turn. You can also draw cards that are equipment and followers that might bestow different positive (or negative effects) on you, or have a Stranger take up permanent residence on the board.

Simple and Fast Paced

After two or three rounds around the table the previously clean board was now filled with a ghost in the graveyard, a healer and a spell shop set up at neighboring fields, and one of the players had been cursed to only be able to move one space a turn.

It was incredibly impressive to me how quickly so many unique elements to our specific came immediately came into play, that's before you add the chaos of the players like our Ghoul realizing his best course of action was to try to attack other players as quickly as possible.

I was also impressed that with so much going on across the board the base gameplay loop was also so simple and easy to understand. We were getting through all six players turns in only a minute or two. This speed of play didn't just enhance the experience of keeping a momentum of game events, but it was also making sure that all players were engaged.

While many players were exploring the Outer and Inner rings on the game board one of our players had luck on his side, pulling items and followers that propelled his Craft stat to one where he was confident in his ability to fight the Chaos Dragon. This led to a strange point in the gameplay of Talisman.

Talisman Is A Race Until It Isn't

As the player passed through the Mines, a skill check space verifying the height of your Craft skill, it felt very much like there was only one player truly in the race for the Crown of Command. There wasn't anything that anyone else at the table could do but play out their own turns while we waiting for him to make his way through the Inner Region.

The player definitely deserved the victory, but it still felt a bit strange going about our turns waiting for the slight chance that one of the subsequent skill check spaces would hinder him.

Other times I played the game there were differences in the distance between those still circling the board and those heading to the Crown of Command, it just seems like it would be harder to orchestrate games that remain truly competitive throughout the whole experience.

While the core gameplay loop was simple and fast paced there were a number of slowdowns when needing to look up some complicated rules. There's a lot that the rulebook does very well, but there's also some important information that gets buried in text and difficult to find.

Rules Need Some Work

The first thing that the rulebook does that's helpful, before you even open the booklet, is to provide players with a QR code that leads to the store page and a ~9 minute video that teaches you how to play the game.

This video isn't extensive, opting to refer players to the booklet for certain processes or the minutia of individual spaces in the Inner Region, but as a 9 minute video you can send players ahead of time so everyone at least has a base knowledge of the game it's excellent.

As with any new board game I fight to get through teaching it succinctly, but with the video sent to my players we all sat down, could pick characters and go over some basic ground rules, and then get to player. It was a very pleasant experience to have a player ask a question that another could answer instead of having to be the keeper of all knowledge.

Those 'minutia' rules and experiences are mostly laid out clearly, but each section is layed out for you to be reading them in their entirety. If you're hunting for specific info though it can sometimes get lost in the text.

The first time I had a player cast a spell and we needed to verify if it stayed with the character or went into a discard it took time to locate the answer because on the two page spread of "Gaining and Casting Spells" it's the final bullet point on the second page.

Another rule that was lost, and that I even had difficulty locating again while was writing this review, is what you can do with Trophies. Obtaining Trophies is detailed within the section about defeating a monster, but if you want to know what they're used for you need to re-read the section about Enemy Adventure Cards. A simple bolded "Trophy" header somewhere in the mix would have been appreciated.

Talisman 5e New Features
If you've played Talisman before a lot will be the same but new things are denoted in the rulebook with a wheel icon. Some of these differences include changes to what happens when you die, how you can use Fate tokens to alter your movement, rewards for defeating a creature or player in battle, and how becoming a Toad functions

While there was a fair bit of frustration about the rules these are obviously only pains that will be experienced on fresh plays. As I played the game a few more times, needing to reference the rules less and less, I just got to enjoy the speed and experience of playing Talisman.

Talisman 5e | Final Thoughts

Playing new games for the first time can sometimes be a bit of a rough experience, with each subsequent experience becoming smoother both as the person who teaches the game as well as a player. I was elated when sitting down to Talisman and it being a fun game from the very first diceroll.

The core engine of the game, rolling dice and moving around the board before heading towards the Elder Dragon, is incredibly simple to learn and repeat but features so many permutations every game gets a brand new energy.

Permutations begin as soon as players pick each of the twelve playable characters and possibilities continue to explode outward as Adventure Cards are revealed and the board comes to life.

Having never played Talisman before the look of it seemed intimidating, now that I've experienced it I can see it becoming a game that I frequently pull out for my experienced tabletop friends, as well as for family and new tabletop players.

All Talisman products in this review were provided by the publisher. All screenshots were taken by the author during the process of review.