Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan - And epic adventure in bite sized chunks

Naske, our emissary, has been taken captive and we've been summoned to get her back. She's being held in the city of Easafir, a far cry from our humble forest home. Her plea for help suggests this might be more than just a rescue mission, and her captor might have designs on a larger prize unless we can stop them.

Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan was a successful Kickstarter back in 2022, and this month, they're launching the next KS for the second printing of the core set, and a new expansion. In this review though, we're just looking at the core Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan set. While this is our first foray into Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan, we've covered Mighty Boards products before. One of my earliest tabletop reviews on TechRaptor was the awesome Vengeance. Along with the board game we're reviewing here, Fateforge also has a tabletop RPG and upcoming video game, which you can check out here.

The Start Of An Epic Campaign

Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan is an app-driven narrative cooperative adventure game that can be played solo, or with up to 4 players. Each player picks a character, and the app then guides you through a series of narrative options, battles, and side quests. Mighty Boards have deliberately focused the different elements into manageable chunks, with each combat taking around an hour, including set up, and the exploration and side quest elements between 15 and 30 mins.

Chosen For Adventure

The core Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan set has 5 character options that most will recognize as fantasy archetypes. There's the Mercenary, Rogue, Forest Guard, Shaman, and Noble. Each has their own unique dice pool and style of play, along with character development along the way. The Forest Guard for example starts with 3 blue and 1 green dice, blue for ranged combat and green for intelligence. The dice themselves have different icons for movement, ranged and melee combat, misses, and also focus which can be used to activate skills and abilities.

During each combat turn, all players roll 4 dice which will indicate what actions they can do during their turn. Certain abilities will let you reroll misses and convert some icons into others. The shaman's power chant for example can turn a miss into a focus, which they can then use to heal other party members. As the characters develop, you'll be able to change your dice pool and add more abilities to give you better options and more powerful attacks.

The App Controller

The Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan app takes players through the story, detailing all the narrative elements and offering choices as players progress. It also details how combat missions are set up, and regulates the actions of the enemies, which are controlled by AI scripts on cards. I found the AI controls for the enemies to be extremely well handled. Most maps are close enough that you could feel the pressure of the enemies, and although they could be worked around (some enemies don't move, and will only attack if you're in their or an adjacent zone), it felt in keeping with the story. 

I felt that the game did suffer from what all app-driven games suffer from, and that's the feeling that sometimes it could all be done on the app, or none of it, and the transition between the two, especially in combat can feel a little jarring. I forgot to progress the app during combat a few times, following the combat phase stages until the reaction phase of the enemies, which is detailed by the app. It does progress the narrative well, and the way it remembers and changes the narrative based on your actions is difficult to do with pure physical components.

Are We Nearly There Yet?

As mentioned above, Mighty Boards have deliberately managed the timing of combats and narrative sessions in Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan, and the pacing feels great. In a full gaming night, you can get through several combats and their linked events, or if you're only able to meet for an hour or so, you can move slowly through the campaign that way and it won't feel like your campaign is stagnating if you can't meet for longer sessions.

The game is challenging as well, and your health doesn't fully regenerate between combats, making you manage it between combats, or deal with the scenarios differently. If you're low on health, you will have to choose to miss objectives, just punch straight through to the exit, or be a lot more tactical in avoiding combat and enemies. My Rogue and Forest Guard combination sees the Rogue rushing forward, stunning and removing enemies, and the Forest Guard trying to take out the rest at range. They had no healing between them, so if the Rogue's stealth failed and she took a beating, it meant us trying to avoid combat for the rest of that scenario, and possibly the next.

The story itself is a lot more engaging than I thought it would be, and the city itself, the characters you meet, and the choices you make feel very impactful, and is probably as close as you could get to a full roleplaying game without a Games Master.

Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan Final Thoughts

I was surprised by Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan. I thought the dice combat was going to be annoying (I usually prefer to just choose my actions), but the different skills and abilities as you level up make it a unique and challenging puzzle, and although the enemies have set AI controls that can be worked around, it feels like part of the game. The setup and play time is fast and the story is extremely rewarding, and each of the different character options feels unique, and their development, along with that of the core narrative is extremely engaging.

The app is very prevalent, so if app-driven content isn't your thing, you can't avoid it here, but it does add to the game well, and although it does feel like the entire thing could be done digitally, without the need for physical components, having that physical element, especially with 2 to 4 players, helps keep it grounded in the moment. 

The copy of the Fateforge Chronicles of Kaan used to produce this review was provided by Mighty Boards.