Blood Bowl 2: Legendary Edition – Review

Have you ever wanted to play a game that’s a combination of Mageknights, Dungeons and Dragons, and American Football? If you have, look no further than Blood Bowl 2! This game was initially released in September of 2015 as a goofy, fantasy take on american football. It’s a turn based, tactical strategy with elements of Dungeons and Dragons type game mechanics.

Today, Cyanide Studios released Blood Bowl 2: Legendary Edition, which boasts a great deal of added content to the game as either a standalone game, or an upgrade to the Legendary Edition for those who already own the base game. With the saturation of action sports games, Blood Bowl 2: Legendary Edition, provides a fun experience for gamers looking for a break from the norm.

What’s New?

The Legendary Edition of Blood Bowl 2 includes everything from the base game and the eight DLC playable races that Cyanide Studios have already released for the game. The legendary edition also includes two new single player game modes, lots of new modes and rule sets for multiplayer, eight more BRAND NEW playable races, and the ability to create teams comprised of players from multiple playable races. This is a lot of new content to cover, so we’re going to do our best to summarize the pros and cons of the new content briefly and directly.

Single Player

Two new single player game modes, Challenges and Eternal League, have been added to Blood Bowl 2 in the Legendary Edition. The Challenge mode is fairly self explanatory; the player has a pre-set scenario where they have a certain goal that they must achieve in a single turn. It is possible, and it seems that several of the challenges have multiple solutions, but all of them are quite fun and interesting.

The best thing about the challenge mode is that it requires the player to become familiar with a handful of skills, which will help the player in other game modes. The downside of the challenge mode is that it can feel a bit grindy when the player doesn’t immediately figure out the solution, since the player will have to try different combinations of skills over and over before they’re able to complete the challenge.

Eternal league is interesting – it is a compilation of different modes available in four seasons (Autumn, Spring, Summer, Winter) inside a full year of Blood Bowl. Allowing players to take on different “game types” keeps the game fresh, and forces them to change up their strategy from season to season. Eternal League gives players enough time to develop individual players skills and characteristics, which allows them to have much more interesting gameplay. Since the opposing teams also develop skills and characteristics, players are forced to learn the strengths and weaknesses of their team and create a play style around those.

New Races

In addition to the 16 races that have already been released, Blood Bowl 2: Legendary Edition adds eight new playable races: Amazons, Elven Union, Goblins, Halflings, Kislev, Ogres, Underworld, and Vampires. Each of these teams brings new star players (or “heroes”) as well as a number of sills exclusive to that team. These new skills allow players to implement new strategies and tactics that have never before been possible in Blood Bowl 2, opening up Blood Bowl’s carnage to totally new possibilities.

New Multiplayer Options, Teams, and More

Blood Bowl 2: Legendary Edition also allows a ton of new multiplayer options, including the ability to pause the game 3 times (functionally, they work as time outs), leagues that include both players and AI, and the ability to chat with other coaches in your league. There’s also been an AI overhaul for the Legendary Edition, making the AI a lot smarter and much more aware of the turn count in every match.

The Legendary Edition allows players tocreate mixed teams, combining characters from 4 – 6 races together into one team, creating endless possibilities for new, wacky, and sometimes super-effective team compositions. Unfortunately, with these options there’s a great deal of potential for players to be able to have extremely powerful teams with very “big” characters, making it nearly impossible to effectively block a running game.

Recommendations

Blood Bowl 2: Legendary Edition is an awesome take on a classic sports game. If you’re someone who enjoys turn based tactical strategy games, this game might be for you.

If you like playing weird versions of sports games (NBA Street, Mario Tennis, etc), this game may be for you.

If you’re someone who exclusively plays the Madden games, this game is probably not for you.

If you already own the Blood Bowl 2 base game, it only costs $25 to upgrade to the Legendary Edition. If you don’t already own the game, the standalone Legendary Edition costs $45.

Blood Bowl 2: Legendary Edition is releasing on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

If you’re looking for a change of pace, and a surprisingly deep gaming experience, give Blood Bowl 2: Legendary Edition a try!