Of all the games I own, I feel confident in saying that Masters of the Universe – Fields of Eternia creates the best first impression. The artwork on the box is absolutely incredible, with He-Man and Skeletor caught in mid-battle. The front covers of both the rule book and mission book continues in this vein and, if like me, you were a young child in the 80’s, pretty much every nostalgia neuron in my brain is firing constantly. That, sadly, makes what comes next all the more disappointing as the actual game itself never reaches these heights again.
On opening the box, there are a number of miniatures, a particularly large and colourful game board and decks of cards and player mats. Finally, there are 2 more boards for ‘hero vs hero’ combat.
Of all the games I own, I feel confident in saying that Masters of the Universe – Fields of Eternia creates the best first impression. The artwork on the box is absolutely incredible, with He-Man and Skeletor caught in mid-battle. The front covers of both the rule book and mission book continues in this vein and, if like me, you were a young child in the 80’s, pretty much every nostalgia neuron in my brain is firing constantly. That, sadly, makes what comes next all the more disappointing as the actual game itself never reaches these heights again.
On opening the box, there are a number of miniatures, a particularly large and colourful game board and decks of cards and player mats. Finally, there are 2 more boards for ‘hero vs hero’ combat.
The rulebook is far from the easiest to read and the mission book continues in this vein, but they are, in fairness, well laid out.
The game board, once fully unfolded and placed on the table, is surprisingly large…if I’m completely honest with myself, too large, especially when the other components are placed out as directed. Despite this and the generally decent and very colourful artwork on the board, I found it difficult to differentiate between the different areas and the types of the boundaries between them, a particular issue considering how this directly affects gameplay.
The cards that come with the game are, in contrast to the rest of the artwork involved, very dull, characterless and boring, which struck me as something of a missed opportunity.
The miniatures are divided between the two sides and are, on the whole, of a high quality and possess plenty of character. Unfortunately, one team is coloured a heavy purple, which robs them, of all visual clarity and leaves them looking like blobs of plastic when viewed from even a short distance away.
As for the game itself, on the whole, it is an acceptable example of the area control genre, coupled with a basic and rudimentary quest and exploration system. This basic system is executed in a manner that ends up being a little more complex than it really needs to be, but, unfortunately, that is the highlight of this game, since what comes next is something I found nothing short of baffling.
I imagine the ‘hero vs hero’ combat was intended the be the marque moment of Fields of Eternia, a feature that was promised so beautifully by the box’s artwork ends up being a huge disappointment. It appears to have been heavily inspired by ‘Gloomhaven’ and ‘Oathsworn’, but unlike them, feels slow, sluggish and deeply uninvolving. I dearly wish I could say otherwise, but, as is advised in a number of YouTube videos on the game, the best thing to do with this ‘epic combat’ is to just ignore it completely and rely on the simple rolling of dice that other in game combat utilise. It is unfortunate that the best way to deal with a game’s core mechanic and, arguably, it’s main selling point, is to quite literally ignore it, but that really did turn out to be the most effective solution to it.
Having spoken already of the game’s artwork already, the next point to cover is its complexity. Whilst far from being the most extreme example in this regard, it constantly felt that the complexity of the various systems and their interactions added nothing to the experience, at times even making the whole thing feel unwieldy. More importantly though, it actually detracted from the enjoyment of the game.
Replayability is another area where this game suffers quite heavily, especially for the cost. It only comes with 2 ‘missions’ and a small number of skirmish scenarios, with little to motivate playing any of them repeatedly. I think it was this more than anything else that struck me as a missed opportunity for this game. Even a rudimentary campaign, or specific missions for individual heroes would have made such a huge difference.
There really isn’t much that can be said for player interaction, which appeared quite standard for the genre, but the previous comments regarding the ‘hero vs hero combat’ do weigh down on this element very heavil.
Component quality, as mentioned above, seems quite standard for the genre, but is done no favours by the choice of colour obscuring the details of some of the miniatures as mentioned already.
When the artwork in this game is good, it is truly exceptional, but it is not consistent and sadly, the rest of the experience simply cannot match it. However, with judicious use of ‘house rules’ this game can be made playable and even enjoyable, but sadly, it still feels like more of a missed opportunity than anything else. A shame really, because I really wish I had enjoyed this game more than I did. Still, that artwork on the box and the front covers of the rules and mission booklets really is quite fantastic.
