Root Video Game Review

Posted bytherealgmanreviewsPosted inVideo Game Reviews
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I would like to start that this will be a review of the video game version of the game Root and not the board game, but I believe they are the same game. I have never actually played the board game of root, but I have watched videos on how it is played, and it seems to work exactly the same (or at least as close to a digital video game as we can get).

Root is an asymmetrical strategy game (which basically just means each of the factions is different as opposed to a symmetrical strategy game where the factions are the exact same like in chess) where while there are rules common to each of the factions they are vastly different in how they play.

In fact, learning how to play each of the factions is like learning to play a completely brand-new game, and strategies that work for one faction will not work for another without some adaption anyway and in some cases not at all.

The producer of this game Leder Games has a reputation for creating games where the factions are really unique from each other, and this adds a perfect layer of replayability as once you get bored with one faction you can switch to another. There is a lot of fun working out how each faction plays.

Now normally when I write these reviews, I start out with the good, the bad and the summary (as opposed to the ugly).

That being said I really don’t have anything bad to say about this game and the one gripe that I thought I had about this game it turns out that it is just that way in the rules for the board game also, so it’s not really a gripe anymore.

Basically, the way to win is to score 30 victory points before the other players do, which is sometimes easier said than done.

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The Good

There are a lot of good things about this game which are:

  • The game is relatively short (lasting about 20 mins to an hour)
  • The factions are really different from each other
  • The game is accessible and its basic rules easy to understand
  • The AI is excellent in this game

The game is short

This game is relatively short as normally a game against the AI lasts for about 20 mins and against human players can last for up to an hour.

This means if you just want to relax and play a game but only have an hour max like sometimes, I do (not enough time to really play Baldur’s Gate 3 for instance) this is a great game to play.

The factions are really different to each other

The four base factions that come with the game are very different in terms of how they play and have unique rules.

Some are also easier to play than others as well. The four factions are:

  1. The Marquise De Cat
  2. The Eyrie Dynasties
  3. The Woodland Alliance
  4. The Vagabond
Root | Image | BoardGameGeek
The Marquise De Cat

The cats are the easiest of the factions to learn and so if you are just starting out you should play with them.

They are like an army of industrialist cats who have invaded the forest. They start with the most warriors on the table and have the largest number of total warriors that can be put on the board at 25 warriors total, but they also start with a keep which you place in any of the corners of the board at the beginning of the game.

One of their special powers is that if they have their keep and they lose warriors in a fight, they have an ability to play a card from their hand to get back those warriors to their keep. This ability works quite well to give them the overall feel of a swarm faction.

They are also easy to learn because unlike the other factions they always have the same number of actions a turn which is 3 and they can choose to use any of their three actions to do anything they want and in any order that they want except recruiting which they can only do once a turn.

They can get more actions, but it requires them to get special cards to do so. This is why cards in the game which get you extra actions are handy as the more actions they get, the better.

Root - Dire Wolf Digital

The Eyrie Dynasties

Now this faction, in my opinion, is the hardest to learn play but very powerful in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing. It’s kind of hard to explain why if you haven’t played the game, but I will do my best.

Now the eyrie dynasty is a bird empire that is dedicated to getting back control of the forest. They have the second-largest number of warriors they can put on the table with 20, and they start with one building in the opposite corner to which the cats put their keep, and they start with 6 warriors.

Now what makes them unique is that rather than having a set number of actions per turn like the cats the birds have a decree and they add at least one card from the decree to their hand every turn.

They also have four leaders, and you start the game with one in power and depending on which leader you start with will also determine what you decree is at the beginning of your turn.

What this means is that as the game goes by the birds will have more and more actions to take. Still, the catch is if they cannot perform an action in their decree, they go into turmoil which means you lose all the cards in your decree, you lose points based on how many wild cards you have in your decree and you now have to pick a new leader from the remaining leaders.

 The decree has four parts that will consist:

  1. Recruit
  2. Move
  3. Battle
  4. Build

For example, if you have a build card for a fox clearing in your decree, but you can’t build in any fox clearing in your turn then you go into turmoil.

This means that you really have to be paying attention to your turn and when you play your cards as you normally want to go into turmoil maybe once during the game, but no more than that and not paying attention during your turn can be extremely costly.

Even the AI on hard with the birds at times can be a complete pushover, but other times once they pick up steam, they can be impossible to stop.

Root - Dire Wolf Digital

The Woodland Alliance

The woodland alliance is an alliance of animals determined to protect their beloved wood. They have basically two different phases of the game with the daylight phase and the evening phase, which doesn’t come into effect until they have a base on the table.

The alliance has something they call sympathy, and they use sympathy to spread sympathy tokens into clearing on the board. By spreading sympathy, they score points depending on how much sympathy tokens are on the table, and these can be used to revolt.

Now a revolt can’t occur on the same turn you spread sympathy to an area, and this is why when playing against the alliance you must remove this sympathy token from your space with buildings on them if your play the cats or birds for instance.

When a revolt occurs, all enemy warriors and buildings in that area are destroyed, and the alliance puts up a base in that area as well as a warrior and an officer. This starts the evening phase of your game where you will have several actions based on the number of officers you have but the more officers you have, the fewer warriors you can put on the board so normally you will have 6 warriors on the board and 3 officers at max.

The alliance can actually score points very fast in the late game as the more bases they put down the more cards they get to spread sympathy.

This means that attacking the enemy is not necessarily the best strategy to use as they are far better at defending their bases and spreading sympathy on the board to score points than by attacking unless an easy target presents itself. It is also critical you do not lose a base.

Also since when they are attacked, they get the highest dice as opposed to the lowest with the highest normally going to the attacker they are very good at defending themselves against a larger number of attackers though always try to have at least two warriors defending each base.

The Vagabond

Unlike the other factions, the vagabond has one warrior piece and only one warrior piece and is the most flexible in how they can score points. The player who plays the vagabond will be almost like playing an RPG within the board.

They will be going around and exploring ruins which removes the ruin from the board so those spaces can be built on but also it makes the Vagabond more powerful and score a point for doing so.

The vagabond is actually quite complicated in what they do. Still, essentially as the game goes on, they become more powerful, able to get more movement, more attacks and they have a unique ability called the crossbow which can be used to take out one warrior per crossbow allowing them to get easy points by attacking lightly defended areas of the board.

They can also do quests to score points as well as give cards to a player to get points as well.

The game is accessible and its basic rules easy to understand

This game is fairly accessible thanks to the tutorial and the full rules on how each faction work that being said it’s probably best to have the experienced player using the Eyrie as they are in my opinion the most punishing to learn with if playing multiplayer.

The AI is really good in this game

The AI is great in this game. Even on hard, I only win about 50% of the time. It is always close, so even if you can’t find someone to play with in multiplayer the AI on hard should be more of a challenge, but you will have to build up to playing on hard like I did as on hard the AI is punishing with all four factions playing.

The Bad

Well, there really isn’t anything bad about this game all I would say is that finding an open multiplayer game is really difficult but hopefully with more people start playing this will change.

Summary

The video game version of Root is a really great game and implementation of the board game. It’s also insanely replayable and with the release of the Clockwork DLC if the game wasn’t hard enough you can make it way harder. (I have only won once against a clockwork faction and have been crushed every other time)