Charterstone: Digital Edition

I'm going to split this review into two parts - A review of the board game itself, and a review of this digital version of it. Read whichever ones you care about. But please note - I've watched a lot of videos about the physical version but I've never played it myself. Also, I'm not going to give a complete run down on how the game is played. There are already tons of YouTube videos that do that much better than I can. BOARD GAME: Charterstone is, at its core, a very simple worker placement game (simple enough that my seven year old beat me the other day). Turns go very quickly. After a few game plays we've decided that while there is a lot of different ways to get points, some are easier than others and can result in one player running away with the game while others struggle to get any sort of engine going. The end of the game can feel abrupt as anyone can intentionally force the game to speed up (similar to Clank! if you've played that). But end game scoring feels generally straight forward. DIGITAL VERSION: You'll immediately notice the game looks great, and the board animations are a nice touch. The music is also well done and soothing. The game responds well enough although we have run into some bugs with placing workers even months after release. I even had it crash my game completely yesterday. My biggest issue with the digital version is with the display of information. In the board game there are several pieces of information that are readily available at a glance - the Progress track, the reputation track, the Market board, your hand, and the possible achievements. In the digital version all of these are hidden behind clickable items at the top of the screen. I feel like this design decision was a mistake. I wonder if it was done to keep from having to redesign the UI for smaller screens (e.g., mobile, Switch), but it makes the game feel lacking as it's easy to forget you were going for a specific item in the Market or wanted to build a card from your hand or how far away you are on the Progress track from getting a reputation gain. CONCLUSION: Our first game was very interesting and we looked forward to game 2. After game 3 though I couldn't get my family to return to it, and I have resorted to playing solo to try to finish the campaign which I'm not even sure I'll bother doing. Even if you like the Charterstone board game, I can't recommend the digital version due to the lack of information. 2/5

Fun implementation. I had not played the board game but watched Rodney's (Watch it Played) How to video and was able to pick it up. Legacy format seems to fit Computer based delivery model as I hate the concept of ruining a physical copy of anything to show progress.

Just don't buy it if you want to play with friends online. Six of us tried for three hours to get an online game going and couldn't make it past the first turn. The game would stop updating for some players, then if they left the game they couldn't return (thanks to a save file error?!). This happened with some on PC and some on Switch, as well as with everyone on the PC version. Maybe Valve getting six refund requests at once sent a message...

Got several points to make with this review. 1) I could have gotten this game a year ago, but the system requirements stated it needed 8 GB ram in order to play. I recently bought a cheap game on Steam that required 8 GB ram thinking it wouldn't work, and it did. I checked my system, yep, it says my computer has 4 GB ram. So yesterday, I revisited Charterstone, all the other requirements seemed okay, so I bought the game (which was on special). And surprise, surprise, it works perfectly...no lag, no 1 FPS...kind of ticked off about it actually. I could have been playing this game a year ago, if only the system requirements stated 4GB instead of 8GB. 2) Before I bought the game, I checked the other reviews of the game and noticed a lot of negative comments, mostly about the interface. Not sure if those issues have been addressed since those negative comments were made, or if those reviewers are just off base, because I haven't had any issues with the interface, the rules or gameplay at all. So take that for what its worth. 3) The game has no tutorial, but they suggest first time players play the local/single game as their first game. I did this, having never played the board game before (though I had seen it played)...and I was completely lost. Overwhelmed by the choices, and not knowing how anything worked. I backed out and started a new Campaign game instead...so much easier to learn. In the Campaign mode, the board is mostly empty, each player has a small pool of options available, and as the game progresses, new mechanics are introduced...much, much easier to learn the game playing the campaign. Just my take. If you have played the board game previously, maybe the other game mode works better for you. I have played the first two games of the campaign and am loving it (playing solo, controlling all six factions). I can't speak to multiplayer mode or online play. But so far, I am LOVING this game. Highly recommend it. I play on an older computer that runs Windows 7 and it runs so smoothly. So if you aren't running System 10 or don't have 8-16GB of ram, don't be afraid to download this game!

I bought this to play Charterstone asynchronously with friends. Unfortunately, I think it's terrible for asynchronous play. It's pretty, and crossplay (across different kinds of devices) works fine. The problem is that this is a legacy game and all of the story events and rules changes are really hard to track. You do see the contents of boxes that are opened in game, but there is no log of past events. We have a discord on which we discuss the games we play (we play many async) and most of the players on the discord are pretty lost as to what's happening in this game. And it's the fault of the implementation; we don't have this problem in other games we play async. I think if you played this realtime it would probably be fine - it does look good and plays smoothly - but I would discourage this for async. One other small grumble: Because it's a board game, there are often times when you have no action to take, such as when all you can do is recall workers, or when you just have to confirm an event but there is no decision to be made (only one mandatory option). In async play the game makes you log in to confirm these non-choices before the game moves on to the next player. It would have been better if they included an option to skip turns in which you make no decisions.

不针对游戏，贵公司的游戏我还是非常喜欢得。针对对于CONCORDIA得定价，我搞不懂为什么国区定价会高于美区定价，V社建议定价是76，然后你们得定价是150?我觉得大批量得调整所谓低价区得定价本身也是一种歧视，在这种歧视面前我很难给出好评。 Not specifically for games, I still really like your company's games. Regarding the pricing of CONCORDIA, I don't understand why the pricing in China is higher than that in the United States. Valve suggests price is 76, and then you have a pricing of 150? I think adjusting the pricing of so-called low price zones in large quantities is also a form of discrimination, and I find it difficult to give positive feedback in the face of such discrimination.

Game is fine overall, but when you sink 12 hours getting through the campaign only to lose because of poorly worded / poorly explained cards, abilities and such it immediately ruins it and makes you frustrated. I wouldn't mind losing if it was because of my own mistakes or my opponent being better, but losing because of poorly explained game elements is a different story. And because of this experience I don't even want to keep playing to try learning why poorly worded elements work the way they do. You need to spend extra time and effort carefully reading and understanding effects, sometimes even test to confirm how it works which immediately sets you back significantly if it doesn't go the way you would expect based on wording and understanding. In the round before last for example the flavor text tells you something along the lines that "You must sacrifice a persona you just gained" and on the next screen if you don't pay attention, you end up keeping the one you wanted to sacrifice because the prompt actually tells you which to keep, not sacrifice. Another example is the last round of the campaign where said persona cards are not clear on how their effect is triggered. One would assume the moment it activates the ability works. No, you have to have it active and trigger the ability manually during your turn. But why would you even take this persona if you don't understand how it triggers? And then the friend cards that say "Use X charter to gain Y". I used X charter multiple times and only on occasion I gained Y. Apparently it only works on specific buildings in the charter. So the wording is not the actual full effect, it should have a fine print. So overall this game is not for those who want to clearly understand mechanics based on description and rules before going into it. This game is trial and error 10% of the time rather than clearly illustrating what would happen if you do something. The campaign itself can gradually handicap you by half way significantly if you don't know the long term effects of buildings, personas and etc you invest in. I've played a lot of board games, my friend even more and sometimes even he struggled to understand how some effects would work without trial and error.

This implementation is very buggy for multiplayer. Our group had to restart a campaign because the game is stuck and no one can make it proceed. Luckily, that was only on game 2 or so. Now we're much further in and I can't join the game even though it shows up on the lobby list. I will agree that the game rules appear to be implemented well, but randomly being forced to lose progress in incredibly frustrating. Edit: Big hours played number is leaving the game running in the background waiting for others turns. Actual time interacting with the game is about 10 games worth.