Talisman: Digital 5th Edition Review

Talisman is one of those iconic board games that always seems to be around in one form or another. I remember spending a day playing through it with friends gathered around the table, only for the obvious winner to falter and lose at the last stretch! Outside of the physical edition, the GameGrin staff has spent a fair amount of evenings battling it out in Talisman: Digital Edition, though I’m pretty sure we’ve yet to finish a game. There was a short span of time where I thought this elder of a franchise would finally be going away as the games disappeared from shelves and the digital edition stopped receiving updates… but no! Instead, it came back with a vengeance (and a new coat of paint) in the form of Talisman: Digital 5th Edition!

If you’re unfamiliar with how Talisman works, here’s the rundown: you play on a board that is divided into three rings with gameplay starting in the outermost one. Players choose a character and set off in pursuit of magical items, increased stats, and the Talisman, with the ultimate goal of making it to the final square of the inner ring. Each character, such as the Warrior, the Dwarf, and The Prophetess have unique abilities that help them on the trip, in addition to differing stats and alignments. The players use dice throws to move around the map and each space has an event, usually in the form of a random encounter.

In terms of stats, the characters have Strength and Craft — representing physical and mental might respectively — Life, Fate, and Gold. Life and Gold are what one may expect: the latter being the amount of currency the character has, whereas Fate can be used to reroll a dice one per encounter. As the players adventure through the land, events, items, and trading in defeated monsters can increase these stats. They can also be reduced, though never below the original value. One of the iconic maladies of the Talisman world is being turned into a Toad for a number of turns, during which the player cannot move more than one space, must drop everything they have, and have an effective Strength and Craft value of one. The Toad had its own miniature.

So, that's Talisman in a nutshell. But what's new in the 5th edition? First and foremost, the game mirrors its physical version in that it has had a graphical facelift. Every card now features new art with a slight animation to give it a bit of life. The map itself has also received some care, with glowing effects and running streams. Though some may miss the old art style (I totally get that), I found the art to still keep in line with the original to the point where I was unsure what was and wasn’t new.

In terms of gameplay, Talisman: Digital 5th Edition has made efforts to reduce the game’s infamously long playtime by tweaking some mechanics. For example, when a player’s health hits zero, they’d normally be out of the game for a round (if no one was vying for the final square) and would have to start from scratch, dropping all their money, items, and followers on the space they died in. In the 5th edition, however, players instead come back with all of their gear and health points based on the amount of gold they have. With this change, the game no longer seemed to start over and over on a loop for hours, until someone was powerful or lucky enough to make the trip to the centre!

The many spaces and events of the game have also gone through a similar change, as now players have more options to progress into the middle ring, in addition to having noticeably fewer ways to lose stat points. Even the iconic Toad transformation is less harsh, with the toadified character not losing their items and returning to their own form after enjoying a round of the toad life. The Fate points have also gained a new use: after throwing the die for movement, a character can then choose to use a Fate point to move any number of squares instead, making hitting that one square you desperately need much easier.

The biggest change to the way the game is played, however, is the new final square. In the earlier version, once a character reached the final space, the Crown of Command, they would be unable to do anything other than cast the Command spell. When successfully cast, the spell would deal damage to another player and this would continue until either all other players were slain or another player forced the crownbearer to relinquish their prize. You can imagine how doing nothing but rolling a single die round to round may become bothersome. In the 5th edition, this has been removed completely, instead having the lucky player take on an Elder Dragon. If they beat the aged reptile, they win. If not, they take damage and try again next round or run back to the middle circle to gain more power.

Playing Talisman: Digital 5th Edition is a fun time, with the art and animations adding a needed bit of levity and movement to the otherwise still board. By moving the instructional text from the cards onto the space below, the game also manages to make the text easily legible and also make the cards themselves pop.

At the time of writing, only the base game has been implemented in the Digital 5th Edition, though the Reaper expansion is hot on its heels! The bad news is that most of the other DLC will be some ways away, as they all need to be converted to respect the new rules. The good news, however, is that players who own the DLC in the previous edition will receive each free of charge, so there is no need to re-purchase.

Talisman: Digital 5th Edition is very much like its predecessor with an impressive graphical overhaul and a more streamlined ruleset. If you enjoyed the classic, you’ll be right at home here! And hey, if you think the new mechanics concerning player death and toadification are dumb, you can always turn them back to the earlier rules from the options. You can even edit the event deck in use with the handy Deck Editor!