‘Resident Evil 3: The Board Game’ Review
It takes more than just an iconic intellectual property to elevate a board game these days, especially when that game is essentially a dungeon-crawler. Games like Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion have revolutionised the genre, bringing innovation and variation to their worlds, in addition to fantastic core gameplay. Resident Evil 3: The Board Game definitely has a fantastic IP to work from, but having played Resident Evil 2: The Board Game a few years ago, I was concerned that Steamforged Games had become somewhat restricted by the expectations of the videogame fan base. Thankfully, Resident Evil 3: The Board Game proves that I was wrong.
First off, Resident Evil 3: The Board Game is still a fairly traditional dungeon-crawling experience, albeit set in the Resident Evil 3 world of Raccoon City and featuring iconic characters such as Jill, Carlos and of course – Nemesis. Players will choose from four characters (I am reviewing the base game only, but be aware that there are tons and tons of Kickstarted expansions already available which might have more) and the game supports anything from true solo play up to four-player co-operative and then set up a map using modular board pieces and tiles.
The first interesting thing about Resident Evil 3: The Board Game is the fact that it is designed to be played like a video game, with a series of pre-defined scenarios that can be accessed using a campaign map. If players explore the scenario they are in fully, they will find new locations to discover and unlock, and there are several routes from the first scenario through to the final showdown. You may choose to push through the game relatively quickly (albeit still over multiple sessions or at the very least one very long afternoon) but if you do so, you’ll miss a number of key items and weapons that will likely be essential to defeating Nemesis.
I say this is an interesting thing and it is – but only just. Where Gloomhaven and other games these days use maps, stickers and other innovations to build out their campaign map, Resident Evil 3: The Board Game uses a flimsy paper sheet and a deck of cards showing locked/unlocked locations. It’s fine, and it works well for a long session, but if you have to pack up the game midway through, you’ll have no easy way of saving your progress in the box except by writing what items and locations you have onto a table. I really enjoyed the thematic elements of Resident Evil 3: The Board Game because I am a fan of the universe, but I think more effort could have gone into making the campaign more streamlined.
Regardless of which scenario you are playing, the setup is reasonably simple. The first time you look at the dizzying array of boards, tokens and decks you will likely feel a bit daunted, but the scenario book lays out the details very clearly. In short, each map has a set board layout (but the tiles you use only need to match the shape, not the exact tile) and then doors, hazard, corpse, item and barrel tokens are simply overlaid. Finally, any existing monsters are set up as are the players, and the game begins.
Each character starts the first mission with a few basic items – such as a handgun, a first aid spray and a knife. Items collected can carry over from one scenario to the next, so as mentioned above you may wish to upgrade and stockpile weapons or ammo. The starting weapons are quite weak and roll just one “blue” dice each – giving a 50% chance to hit. Weapons like the handgun often have special bonuses such as “rapid-fire” which allows more ammo to be spent to fire multiple shots and increase the chance of a hit. I should also mention that ammo is a thing here, just as it was in the video game, and you will find that trigger happy players run out fairly quickly. Thankfully, whilst still weak, the knife here is at least usable – where in the videogame it was hopeless.
Shotguns, assault rifles and grenade launchers up the ante considerably and in most cases more powerful weapons will roll red dice – which almost always hit. Some weapons also have further special abilities which trigger based on the die face, so you can take out multiple enemies with a single grenade, for example. As the first scenario teaches us, barrels can be shot to explode and affect neighbouring spaces too. Each character will also have one or two abilities – some passive and some active. Jill, for example, is more able to dodge than the other characters, so when she is attacked, she will roll two dice instead of one – increasing her chance to escape considerably.
All of this makes for good, solid stuff, to be honest – but it is unremarkable. Most scenarios play out in a fairly standard way with few massive deviations from what you’ll have seen elsewhere. The need to manage ammo (matched with the desire to save it for later) and the Tension Deck (which generally causes unexpected behaviour or adds additional baddies) are the two things that change the tempo in most scenarios, but we’ve seen those mechanics used elsewhere. I do like that in many campaign scenarios, players are forced to ask themselves whether they want to end a mission as soon as possible or press on to discover more – there’s a risk and reward element that is left very much in their hands.
Things do change considerably once Nemesis begins to make an appearance, however. Quickly jumping back to video games for a second – I recall playing Resident Evil 3: Nemesis on the PlayStation and at the time I marvelled at how dynamic it felt that Nemesis might appear at any time and in any place. Considering how “static” Resident Evil and to a lesser extent Resident Evil 2 had been, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was a revelation in terror. Resident Evil 3: The Board Game achieves a similar effect once Nemesis comes into play. I don’t want to spoil anything for players who are considering buying the game, but let me just say things really begin to heat up at that point.
When all is said and done, Resident Evil 3: The Board Game is mainly going to appeal to fans of the videogame series, and in my opinion it is a really strong, faithful representation of the source material converted into board game form. I feel the campaign elements – and in fact the gameplay in general – is fairly traditional and there’s not much here that we haven’t seen before, but it does come together well as a campaign experience, especially once Nemesis starts to make an appearance. Players who have no interest in Resident Evil in general might want to consider something a bit more innovative with less dependence on dice-rolls and random draws (Gloomhaven: Jaws of the Lion) but that’s not to say that there is actually anything wrong with Resident Evil 3: The Board Game‘s particular implementation of dungeon-crawling. Overall, it’s a solid game and a good use of the material.
***½ 3.5/5
Resident Evil 3: The Board Game is available online at 365Games.co.uk, or at your local games store. Don’t know where yours is? Try this handy games store locator
