I want to open with the thing everyone who’s played this agrees on, the production is genuinely stunning, Red Raven’s art direction and the sheer size of the map book are the kind of thing that gets a “whoa” out of people the first time it hits the table, and the writing carries a lot of that same care through every quest you pick up. My wife and I went through the whole campaign together and came away with basically the same read, fun, but not the outright best-in-class rating the community consensus suggests, which surprised me a little going in.

The ship and crew maintenance loop is where my feelings split hardest, keeping the crew fed and the vessel repaired between fights is meant to add texture and for me mostly added friction, losing a fight means facing an even tougher monster next time rather than a clean retry, which some players find tense and I mostly found punishing in a way that didn’t teach me anything new. The combat puzzle itself, assigning damage across specific spots on an enemy’s card to either finish it fast or just weaken it, is genuinely clever and held my attention start to finish even when the surrounding upkeep didn’t.

Managing nine possible characters across a party is a lot to track and I never felt like I bonded with most of them individually, the story and quest structure occasionally felt more disconnected than woven together, small self-contained beats rather than one accumulating arc. Setup stays out on the table for the whole campaign, which is a real ask of shelf space and a stretch of dedicated table if you don’t have a spare room for it.

Four stars. This is a game I respect more than I unreservedly love, and I think that’s a fair place to land on it.