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Maolin Yuanji: Battle for the Power of the Forest is an excellent board game published by Leder Games in 2018, which presents a forest country and its occupants in a cute and bright style. Such a setting is easily reminiscent of the comic strip series "Elf Mouse Minions" or Brian Jacques's "Red Wall" series of novels.
However, don't be deceived by the appearance of "Maolin Yuanji", this country is neither pleasant nor peaceful. In this malicious turn-based game, players need to fight for forest turf and slaughter other forces. Now, everyone can also participate in this life-and-death fight on NS.
To put it bluntly, Maolinyuan is a wild game, and Dire Wolf Digital, a studio that specializes in electronic board games, has ported this board game to NS as an industry benchmark.
This is quite a difficult task, as the game's intricate interactive patterns require players to have a lot of information. The elaborate gameplay tutorial is very practical and easy to learn, and players will learn the basic operating rules and learn about the four factions of characters in the game whose power is extremely asymmetrical.
The "Cat Noble" is the simplest and most straightforward character, controlling large forests at the beginning and winning points by building different buildings; "Flying Eagle Dynasty" is a powerful faction of monarch birds, whose actions are carried out through an interesting "decree" system, which requires the player to develop a strategy to plan their actions. The Forest Alliance faction is a rebel army in the forest that hinders the functioning of rival forces and provokes riots, destroying the entire map realm.
Finally, let's look at the Mysterious Ranger, a force that only has a raccoon dedicated to roaming the map, which can trade items with other players and explore ruins during the trip. Once it has accumulated enough items, you can also start disrupting and injuring warriors from other factions.
In addition, two new factions have been added to the game (they have also appeared as an extended faction in the board game), namely the "Lizard Cult" and the "Riverbank Chamber of Commerce". Although I've only used these two factions while playing board games, I haven't tried them in the electronic version yet, and I think they'll be just as interesting to set up as several other factions.
Since each of these factions has its own unique gameplay, it can be a bit of a hassle to learn the differences between the asymmetric factions in MaolinYuan. In the case of its board game, players need to play a few rounds before they can begin to familiarize themselves with the operation.
Like another modern classic board game, Sickle Wars, Maolin Genji is also developed in an open environment, so players can see each other's layout settings and adjust their strategies according to their opponents' actions. Some players will even loudly announce what they are prepared to do at each step. The openness of MaolinYuanji helps players understand the game as a whole.
The electronic version of the game experience, because of its characteristics, will make the operation more opaque. Since resource management is done automatically, this makes the game smoother and faster. But for players who are not yet familiar with the mastery process, it becomes extremely difficult to understand the purpose of the opponent's behavior. After all, the electronic version is trying to move the amount of information on a whole table to a single screen, and although you can view different information through the menu bar, what can be displayed is ultimately limited.
Fortunately, this game is a relatively optimized version. An early version of MaolinYuan landed on the Steam Store last August, and after months of feedback from the player community, the Switch version has been improved a lot. Many of the previous deficiencies, such as slow combat animations and obvious bugs, have been improved.
The quality of AI is crucial to turn-based strategy games, and MaolinYuanji should be considered a success in this regard. In the game, I didn't have the feeling of playing each other, nor did I have the experience of being dealt with by other opponents, and the strategic decisions of the opponents' forces were usually quite appropriate.
The game's difficulty controls are also good, but the AI's main flaw is that it doesn't seem to be able to prioritize the factions with the leading scores. While this is not necessary, in multiplayer board games, when one player leads, other players form alliances, allowing for interesting changes in the progress of the game, which are not present in the electronic version of the game.
The intrigue in the interaction process is one of the characteristics of "Maolin Yuanji". Since each faction moves at its own pace, it can be difficult to discern who will win, and player-to-player dialogue often provides clues to each other.
Sometimes, for example, although a player has been trying to persuade others to join them against the Mysterious Ranger, it is only when the others finally agree that it is too late. If players can't face each other, team communication will be limited even when playing against a live opponent on the Switch.
By all accounts, MaolinYuan is an extremely faithful adaptation of the board game of the same name, and there are even some additional content that has never appeared in the desktop version. For example, there is a great new mode challenge that allows players to change game settings or modify rules. Such an adjustment would allow the Cat Nobles to use the Battlefield Hospital ability to send knocked-out warriors directly back to the camp.
There are also map tweaks that allow players to move along the river and break the normal spatial dynamics. The options for the content of these attachments are a welcome change for players familiar with the complex system of Maolin Yuanji.
I love the board game version of Maurien, and Dire Wolf's Switch adaptation accomplishes the feat of bringing the original mechanics to the game screen. While the game's learning curve is slightly steeper, there are plenty of tools to help patient players navigate the pit. Dismantling such an intricate system and recombining it into a completely different form is already a big achievement, and both game formats of Maolin Yuanji are quite successful.
Translation 丨 Yv
Edit 丨 Zoe
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