Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan was one of my top 10 games of 2024 and a package that I think has the best dice combat engine in the action RPG business. The app-driven scenario format means you can drop in for a couple of scenarios here and there to navigate the game. The loot is great, the skills are amazing, and I have enjoyed the game both solo and multiplayer.
The game’s first expansion, Clash of the Immortals, is a must. That’s because there is a sixth playable character, the Enchantress, included that absolutely warrants the inclusion in your collection. The extras were the extras, and I’m never going to complain about more side quests, more loot, and different abilities with the added enemies. But you should add Clash of the Immortals for the Enchantress because of the ways that character changes your approach to combat.
When the team at Mighty Boards handed me a copy of the second expansion, Kin of the Wild, I whipped it out to get playing right away. Then, reality set in, because the game’s app needed to be updated with the new content before I could jump in. That took a few weeks, and when it was finally ready, I hopped in the very next day.
In a minor surprise, the content from Clash of the Immortals cannot be used with Kin of the Wild, at least not yet. (I have reached out to the Mighty Boards team to clarify, since I tried Kin of the Wild in its solo format.) That’s important, because as a fan of the Enchantress, I was disappointed that I couldn’t use that character with the new goodies.
That also spoke to my general feelings about Kin of the Wild. It’s good, but in a “more is more” kind of way and not a “whoa boy” kind of way.
Here, Kitty Eagle Thing
Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan—Kin of the Wild is an action RPG hybrid for 1-4 players. Kin of the Wild is an expansion that requires the base game. If you are new to how the Fateforge games play, check out my previous reviews of the base game and the first expansion.
In Kin of the Wild, players assume the roles of one of the five characters from the base game to take on a new threat, where mysterious figures have conducted experiments in the dark arts on animals in the town of Katafygia. When this campaign opens, players have to rescue a gaggle of pets, forcing each player to become the warden of one of the six pet characters included in the expansion. Each pet is essentially a mashed-up hybrid of two mystical animals, so Jadai is an eagle that has a cat-like face and a chameleon-like skin tone. Benopine looks like a rat, or maybe a mouse, with dinosaur-like scales on its back.
For this review, I played the first five missions of the campaign (so, five combat scenes, with two rest scenes buried in-between), with the Forest Guard and the Mercenary. I assigned one pet each to my two characters. The Forest Guard became the warden of the Pseudodragon, a dragon so small that enemies in the same zone as the Pseudodragon cannot target it.
I made the Mercenary the warden of the Pack Goat, the pet that is vying with the Snow Bear for Most Plain Pet Name of this expansion. (I am so excited to bug the game’s designers about this at my next convention.) The Pack Goat’s main powers include the ability to move through two zones to ram a minion, and to offer goat rides by moving itself and another hero—any hero—to an adjacent zone, ignoring Blockers and difficult terrain.
The new stuff, then, is mostly the addition of pets. The only other semi-major addition with Kin of the Wild is that now, some of the enemy leaders have their own deck of spell cards—random abilities that can affect a single turn in unpredictable ways. Some of these spells are actually benefits to the players, while others were so random and so defeating that I ended up with dead pets a couple of times! (Correction: pets don’t actually “die” in Kin of the Wild, but they can panic and exit the combat scene.)
How Do Pets Change the Game?
As I have mentioned, Clash of the Immortals did a lot to change the way games are played. Also, I thought Clash of the Immortals was tough, or at least, tougher than Kin of the Wild, although I wonder if the final combat scenes of Kin of the Wild might change my opinion.
With Kin of the Wild, I’m a little torn on how the new stuff changes the core gameplay.
On the one hand, the two pet characters I used did become situationally helpful from time to time. I used the Pseudodragon’s ability to stun minions constantly, at least before the Pseudodragon panicked and left combat scenes. This was really helpful when I needed to stun a minion who would have otherwise landed a KO on a hero. I used its Psychic Link ability in one scene to grab an item from a chest when I didn’t have the right dice results from the Forest Guard to grab that treasure instead.
I used the Pack Goat to push a minion into an area that nullified an enemy’s ability to hurt a hero later in the Enemy Turns portion of a turn. Again, these were game elements that were helpful, and occasionally saved my bacon when I might have otherwise lost the scenario.
On the other hand, rolled die results constantly frustrated my use of the pet abilities. Now, to start a round, players roll four dice for their hero, and a new pet die for their pet. However, the pet die has the chance to miss, just like the hero dice do. I was surprised at how often I rolled a miss, and was left with a pet that could only move and do nothing else.
When you can’t use the pet abilities, they are obviously worthless. Also, pets can’t do the things I love in video games when you have a minion/pet/minor character at your side, mainly hoovering up gems, food and treasure. Pets have a health stat known as morale, and an equal number of cubes is placed in a pet’s morale area. Some pets have as much as three morale, while others (like, yep, the Pseudodragon) have just one.
When pets run out of morale, they panic and run away. So, managing the pet health of your characters can be huge if you want to keep using their abilities during a combat scene. (Morale resets at the end of each combat scene, so you do get fresh pets to start every new scene.)
Sorting through the other pet choices, some pets might be more broadly useful than others. For example, the Lynx and Benopine are good choices to serve as aids for attack and defense in better ways than the characters I used for my playthrough. I like that there’s a wide range of choices in the box, but don’t do what I did, randomly picking two pets from the box. Making thoughtful choices about what abilities will best serve the party is an important choice with this campaign.
You Can’t Win Them All
Fateforge: Chronicles of Kaan—Kin of the Wild doesn’t do anything wrong, and in some cases, I enjoyed the additions and changes that pets and leader spells bring to the table. Its main crime is a silly one for me: the extra components, cards, and minis mean that this second expansion doesn’t fit in the Deluxe Edition box alongside the bits from the base game and the first expansion. This means I now have to keep a second box full of stuff.
Also, this might have just been me, but I found the base game to be hard, and the first expansion to be just as hard, with everything coming down to the very last round of a combat scene almost every time, win or lose. With Kin of the Wild, at least one of the combat scenes was what I might call…mid? Normal? I got through all the baddies without much issue, with die results that weren’t particularly special.
In that way, I think Kin of the Wild might have been the better game for me to try as a first expansion, since it doesn’t add as much to the rules overhead and the difficulty is a little lighter than the base game. If you are picking up all three games, I would do the base game first, then Kin of the Wild, then Clash of the Immortals. Maybe that would have provided a more epic experience.
Kin of the Wild isn’t bad and builds on an exceptional system. If you are taking this on at the maximum player count there’s more to manage with the addition of pets. With four players and four pets, expect tiles to get pretty crowded. But some of that maintenance will be worth it when the combos line up just right, as each character and their managed pet activate together when it is their turn in a combat scene.
For Fateforge superfans, give Kin of the Wild a look! For newer players, start with the exceptional base game.
