I think I posted some detailed thoughts in this thread quite a while back, and search might dig them up, but mostly I agree with Affeinvasion after beating the whole game.
The one thing I somewhat disagree on is game length. Although more bosses do get added every time, the heroes also gain extra powers to an extent, plus the possibility of better cards. Essentially you can end up with higher dps which balances the length. However for the rest, basically yeah.
The good:
- Production values are quite nice. The heavy metal skulls are neat, cards are solid, dice are unique, and graphic design is good.
- Having heroes that improve after going through school is a nice idea, complete with changing art. Likewise, seeing what new bosses and characters show up in each year is neat.
- There are some really powerful cards and/or powers. Saving your teammate or finding yourself with a massively overpowered deck feels like a breath of fresh air when contrasted with the BS you get hit with sometimes.
The bad:
- As mentioned, you can't trim your deck so it ends up padded with junk, kind of the opposite of what you want from a deckbuilder.
- Likewise, you can't trim what's in the 6-card store. Every game you have a bigger store deck, but only 6 cards in the store! If you can't afford anything in the store, tough luck! It always stays the same. If you don't WANT to buy what's in the store because it's junk and you want the latest year cards, tough luck! You have to. I know at least one group who houseruled that the store cards are wiped if it's impossible to buy for a whole round, which should help a bit.
- New bosses getting added is nice thematically. Having to defeat the same OLD bosses every single year is really weird thematically, and it does extend the game to an extent.
- More importantly for game balance, boss order is random! You could start with a useless boss and a strong boss, and cruise to victory by letting the useless boss survive. Or, you could start with a nasty endgame boss combination while you have no cards, and everyone dies horribly.
- As with bosses, store order is random. As mentioned above, this can mean you have great store opportunities and get to see cool new cards, or you end up with the same old junk year 1 cards in a year 6 game while dementors eat your face or something.
- There's an odd difficulty scaling issue where 4-player games can be way harder than 2-player games. In a 2-player game, let's say it takes 3 rounds to cycle your deck and get the new card you bought. That's 6 boss attacks and 6+ evil event cards. With 4 players, that's 12 boss attacks and 12+ evil event cards. Some of those can affect all players! Many of those can also make you lose cards, and if you get exhausted you lose even more cards, so you have the lovely experience of starting your turn with 1-2 cards. Good luck buying anything!
- The previous item ties into another balance problem. Games tend to go one way or the other. Either you have nice store/boss scaling and you cruise to victory while staying on the first location card, or you have bad luck initially and can never come back because of the escalating location penalties combined with starting your turn with only 1-2 cards.
In conclusion: This may sound odd given all my negatives, but I think it's still probably worth it if you or a loved one are BIG Harry Potter fans. There's some strategy and nice production. Mechanically, it's just not very good unless someone comes up with some solid houserules, and it can be really frustrating.
