Blood Bowl 2 Review

One of the things that I fear the most about sequels is the phrase "more of the same". Some people enjoy titles that bring nothing more than the same gameplay with a few add-ons and updated graphics, but I'm not one of them. I reluctantly replaced my old copy of Blood Bowl with Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition because the latter had many more teams to choose from, even if it was the very definition of “more of the same”. Blood Bowl 2, the long awaited sequel, at least has the distinction of dodging that shady category. It's more like a redux of the delicious peanut butter and jelly: a classic given fancy artisan bread, a thick layer of smooth n' creamy organic peanut butter, and a miserly film of grape spread.

Blood Bowl, as the name implies, is a football-meets-Warhammer spoof of both high fantasy and America's most concussive pastime. I fell in love with the tabletop game early in my college years and still thoroughly enjoy it today. While it is a tabletop classic, Blood Bowl is governed by a notoriously complex set of rules. Fortunately, Blood Bowl 2 provides new players with a campaign that helps to teach the basics. The game also sports a very informative UI that displays the percent chance of an action failing or succeeding and the tackle zones of opposing players. Despite the developers' drive for a softer learning curve, the chaotic gameplay and hardcore strategy are well translated. All of the essential rules are enforced and visually represented on the pitch. Bone crunching blocks and infuriating interceptions are animated well and accompanied by appropriate sound effects. My favorite creative flair is the VHS rewind effect that plays when a re-roll is used to retry a failed action. However, the developers have taken some liberties.

Certain player attributes have been altered and extra rules (such as player aging) added, much to the chagrin of Blood Bowl purists. While they aren't game breaking, they can be frustrating - knowing that my favorite players will eventually retire makes for a rather anticlimactic end to their struggles to survive on the pitch. I also found it impossible to chat with other coaches outside of matches, an absence that failed to take advantage of the wonderful community that Blood Bowl has fostered. I couldn't even type "GG" to my opponents at the end of a match as I was kicked out of the game and back into the polished, but lonely, multiplayer lobby. As I stared at the new league formats and community creation tools, I felt confused by the lack of a chat option and wondered exactly how Cyanide could overlook an essential facet of community building. That feeling of incompleteness haunted my feelings on the rest of the game.

Part of the long term appeal of Blood Bowl (both tabletop and digital) is the sheer number of strategies there are to play around with. From tough as nails Dwarves who slowly grind the opposition into the dirt to speedy and soft Skaven who run the ball into the endzone and drop like flies in a fight, there is a great diversity to the unforgiving pitch. The last iteration of the beloved fantasy football game, Blood Bowl: Chaos Edition, had twenty three playable teams, which was almost as many as in the Games Workshop tabletop. Cyanide's latest effort has a paltry eight. While this doesn't have any direct impact on the gameplay, it shows as time goes on. The set of teams that I was presented do a good job at representing the simpler strategies for the game, but I soon craved the more niche specialty teams that were missing. No catapulting chainsaw wielding goblins across the pitch, no bloodthirsty vampires, and no crazy werewolves clawing opponents to death. Compounded with a handful of aggravating bugs and a few recycled models and animations from the first game, and the unwholesome tang of an unfinished product unveiled itself.

That's not to say that Blood Bowl 2 isn't enjoyable. The gameplay is as solid as it was in its last incarnation and announcers Jim and Bob are funnier than ever, but for forty-five dollars I want at least as much content as the previous game and sadly, Blood Bowl 2 doesn't deliver.