Gloomhaven Jaws of the Lion

The first expansion to one of the most celebrated tabletop games ever brought to video game form, Gloomhaven - Jaws of the Lion offers returning players more exciting fantasy campaigns in the city of Gloomhaven. Prepare your party and gather your allies, as you confront 25 new scenarios in an all-new Gloomhaven storyline.

In a DLC that might as well be a continuation due to the sheer amount of new content on display, Jaws of the Lion is the game that players of the tabletop original always expected from the first Gloomhaven. That said, some strange design choices keep the game from reaching its full potential.

Wait And Play

The satisfying RPG card-based gameplay of Gloomhaven is back in full force with this expansion. The story follows a group of mercenaries that sees themselves involved in a disturbing conspiracy that surrounds the darkest corners of the city.

Jaws of the Lion includes four new mercenaries to choose from: Demolitionist, Hatchet, Red Guard, and Voidwarden. Each of these unlikely heroes excels using widely different playstyles, forcing the player to adapt to every new situation with a mix of cunning and experience. These characters have abilities that echo the ones they had in the tabletop game, so veteran Gloomhaven players will feel right at home while newcomers can easily pick up on their strengths and weaknesses.

If you’re aching to play the expansion right away, don’t get your hopes too high. For some reason, the developers force players to play through two of the base game’s scenarios before they can even touch the content introduced in Jaws of the Lion. These two campaigns can take hours to complete, which is unreasonable for returning players that only want to see the new content.

An approach similar to Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne, where the game lets you pick between the base experience and the DLC, would have been vastly better than this.

Share The Burden

Although Gloomhaven - Jaws of the Lion is an experience that can be perfectly enjoyable playing solo, the true spirit of the game emerges once you try the co-op multiplayer mode. Keep in mind that every player in the party must own both the base game and the expansion to play a Jaws of the Lion campaign. With new maps, classes, and more objectives than ever before, the scenarios in Jaws of the Lion are much more complex – and therefore, much more difficult – than they were in the base game. When dealing with these challenging situations, teamwork becomes essential and the need to communicate quickly and clearly becomes paramount.

Along the way, you’ll also face tough choices that could impact the status of the whole party. These decisions are somewhat interesting when playing the game solo, but they become infinitely more challenging if you’re sharing the journey with your friends. Perhaps the same could be said of the game as a whole: there’s frankly no denying that Gloomhaven - Jaws of the Lion is a much better game in multiplayer.

Overall, Jaws of the Lion is everything that an expansion should aim to be: it adds a fresh coat of paint to Gloomhaven’s base game, keeping most of the same satisfying RPG mechanics that made the first title such a hit with fans of the tabletop game.

Pros

• Four new characters to choose from
• Improved AI
• More complex campaign missions than those in the base game

Cons

• Unnecessary tutorial missions
• Awkward difficulty curve