Skeptical is underselling how I felt going in. The whole premise is that you can actually shoot a Great Old One in the face with enough firepower and enough investigators willing to lose their minds trying, and that felt like it was going to cheapen the cosmic horror of it all rather than honor it. I was wrong, mostly. The sanity mechanic is the thing that saves it: losing your grip gets you stronger, real power boosts as you edge toward madness, but madness is also just death wearing a different hat, so every choice to push for one more level up is a real bet against yourself. That tension carries scenarios that would otherwise be a fairly standard co-op dungeon crawl.

Components are genuinely the best I’ve seen in this genre, the miniatures alone justify a chunk of the price, and the game is quick to teach, a full scenario runs under two hours even at five players, which matters a lot to me since half my group has limited weeknight patience for setup. I’ll say the base combat itself is more dice-forward than tactical, roll pools, resolve results, repeat, and if you’re coming from something like Zombicide Black Plague where positioning matters more, this will feel a little flatter in the moment to moment.

One small thing that bugged me until I fixed it: the character sliders that track health and sanity are tiny cardboard pieces that get knocked around constantly on the base player boards, and it wasn’t until I picked up the stretch goal boards from a later printing that the problem actually went away. Worth hunting down if you can. Four stars, not five, mostly because the scenario variety depends heavily on which Great Old One and character combination you draw, and the first couple plays before you’ve unlocked more content can feel a little same-y. Still, my group’s already asking when we’re doing the next one.