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Campaign Rating: Tier 3, kinda but also kinda not
Since this is just a three-part mini-campaign instead of a full thing, this is hard or even impossible to rate against the others. Am i likely to return to playing this as a campaign anytime soon? No, not at all. And no, the Return To doesn’t change anything about that either. That being said, i can’t just slap a Tier 5 on there because of that either, i feel like that’s unfair towards how good Gathering and Masks are.
So, I’ll just put a Tier 3 on there. That’s somewhat of a mix of rating is for its scenarios, as a campaign and as an introduction to the game.
I don’t have much more to say about Night of the Zealot, to be honest. For my gaming experience with Arkham today, it’s a non-entity.
The Gathering
Rating: Tier 2-
Highlights: A terrifying final boss and surprisingly tough Elite enemies make combat a lot more deadly than it often is in the rest of the game. Lita Chantler is a great introduction to story allies.
Low points: It starts basic and slow… but come on, it’s the tutorial. Hard to fault it for that.
Yapping: Simply a very well made scenario with high stakes and only little hand holding. The notoriously brutal encounter sets from the Core make sure this scenario is challenging even on replays. It’s a cool self-contained story the likes you’d expect to see at the start of a Call of Cthulhu campaign. Some weirdness in the story about disappearing doors and force fields that i don’t really vibe with, but overall The Gathering is just very well done. And with the Return, it even has enough to offer to hold a veteran player’s interest.
The Midnight Masks
Rating: Tier 2+
Highlights: Introduction of the “do as much as you can” style of objective. Of how doom on enemies works. And of the concept that there’s a surprise on the back of an agenda or act. A focused encounter deck that specializes in stalling and delaying the players while trying to accelerate the doom clock. A variety of location effects as the players move around Arkham. An extra side deck with the cultists. Actually, there’s a lot going on here.
Low points: Barely any. There’s a reason it’s the template for many other scenarios down the product line.
Yapping: Realistically, the only thing stopping Midnight Masks from breaking into Tier 1 is the existence of other scenarios that follow the same template. Also, it’s let down slightly by being tied to the generic Core encounter sets, leading to things like random Nightgaunts being around. Make no mistake though, this is the best scenario in the Core campaign and for good reason the one that many people still replay a lot to test and benchmark decks.
The Devourer Below
Rating: Tier 5+
Highlights: Suitably spooky vibes and a very dangerous campaign boss that you will be unlikely to avoid. Having the option to yeet Lita at the Old One for an alternate ending is excellent.
Low points: This scenario is let down by two things for the most part. One, difficulty. Not of the kind that challenges you, but of the kind that just feels non-interactive and unfun. Failing a test is something you have to live with in this game, but here there are many situations where it can wreck you with little recourse and it just feels cheap when it happens. The other thing is that most of the encounter cards feel very disconnected. This is the scenario that most suffers from having little in terms of scenario specific cards available and having to make due with what can be cobbled together from the Core encounters. It tries to lean into this fact by randomizing the different “Agents of…” sets, but considering that we have a ghoul cult summoning Umôrdhoth here, the token appearance of a Deep One or Dark Young only feels even more random than the Nightgaunts in Midnight Masks.
Yapping: A disappointing third part to the Core campaign. I understand that much of what happened here was born out of necessity. Having encounter sets end up completely unused during the Core campaign would have been unsatisfying. And it does make some sense to make Umôrdhoth difficult to defeat, to steer players towards the Lita sacrifice as the most likely ending to their first campaign and make a point about things not always having a happy ending in a Lovecraft-inspired world. But at the end of the day, this scenario is just not fun to play. It’s a grueling slog, especially on the Core Set card pool, and all too often finds its end at the hand of some encounter card or another that wipes out a hand of cards or deals oodles of damage/horror at the drop of a hat.
I’ve rated this scenario a Tier 5 in the past and I’ll do so again. That lowest tier is reserved for the few scenarios that i am actively dreading to play. Not a lot of those around, but Devourer makes that list.