As a young teenager, I loved playing Japanese role-playing video games on the PlayStation 2. When the first Kingdom Hearts came out, I had to go out and buy that game (a combination of Final Fantasy and Disney) right away. I played Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 to the death. When I got older, I slowly stopped playing games in the series. The titles and also the storylines became unnecessarily complex due to the various spin-offs and remakes. It also took almost 15 years before part 3 appeared. Although I personally had already dropped out, the diehard fans absolutely had not and still this fantasy Disney and RPG hybrid is immensely popular. And if something is popular? Then, of course, board games appear! Fortunately, Kingdom Hearts Perilous Pursuit is a lot simpler than the complex stories of the video games and has a title that I can actually pronounce without having to solve a mathematical riddle!
Perilous Pursuit is a simple and entertaining cooperative dice game (great for solo play though not explicitly stated in the rules) where players take on the roles of Kairi, Riku, Sora, Knight Goofy and everyone’s favourite magician Donald! A world company is formed with the large cards. Each player gets his own player board and chits in his or her colour and the dice playing can begin!
In the centre of the table, players turn over a world. Players take turns to roll the dice. In total they can throw three times during their turn. Players may set aside dice to activate skills. If they roll a heartless symbol, they must roll again and may not set aside any dice. By setting aside the required amount of dice, you can unlock skills to activate. These abilities allow players to defeat enemies, protect each other or themselves, influence dice rolls and more. If you and another player have unlocked the same skill, you can even activate each other’s skills by rolling the right dice! So cooperation is key(blade)!
After a player has rolled the dice, this player must roll for the bad guys (the heartless). The result determines which setbacks the player(s) will have to endure. For example, more heartless may appear. If there are too many heartless, a world is lost. The world cards show a track and a marker. If the marker reaches one end of the track, the world is lost or won. By defeating heartless, players can move the marker in their direction and more heartless will move the marker away from the players. A kind of tug of war with heartless? If too many worlds are lost to the heartless, players lose the game!
Because of Perilous Pursuit, I started (re)playing the remake of Kingdom Hearts again and I must say it is very nostalgic. Perilous Pursuit also feels nostalgic because it feels like a more complex and cooperative version of Yahtzee. The game plays quickly and is easy to pick up after the initial explanation (which may feel less intuitive for less experienced players). The components are great and the game itself is just plain entertaining good ole time.
