Blood Bowl 2 Review (PS4)

Blood Bowl 2 is a clever mixture of Warhammer’s board game fantasy universe and the basic structure of American football that features violence and humour. Instead of being a live-action type of football game, it’s a turn-based strategy type game. Like traditional American football, an offense consisting of 11 players uses coordinated plays (and some trickery) to move a ball into the opposition’s goal, while the opposition does everything it can to stop their progress and gain control of the ball.

Unlike American football games, Blood Bowl 2 plays like a board game on the gridiron with a heavy reliance on luck, since important movements are followed up with a six-sided dice roll. A single game consists of 16 turns. During a single turn, you, as the team’s coach, position and interact with each of your 11 players. Each player gets one move, in which they can re-position, block, or pass the ball. When you finish issuing orders or when a player fails an action, your turn ends. The success of almost every move depends on two things: your players’ stats against the stats of the opposing player, and the outcome of the dice roll. At certain times the game may feel like it is totally random and luck based, but once you get the hang of it you realize the game is good at calculating what actions are more likely to succeed or fail based on the situation.  With that said, even when you perform actions that seem to be a lock to succeed, they can fail miserably.  You can have a wide open receiver have a pass slip right through his claws, or have a player running free to the end zone and slip and fall a step short of the goal line.

The graphics in the game are great.  Players have a great amount of detail and are very animated when they interact with another player.  Although these animations are great, after a while they seem to slow the game down.  

The single-player campaign is where the game lacks.  It feels more like a challenging tutorial than anything else.  It does a good job at teaching new players how to play the game and brings in new concepts each game.  This is a good approach for a tutorial, but doesn’t give experienced players anything to look forward to.

Multiplayer with friends or a good opponent that won’t quit is a great time.  I can’t think of the last time I had a better time playing a strategy type game.  With that said, I have had a hard time finding good players online that won’t quit a few turns into the game if things don’t go their way right off the kick-off.

Overall, Blood Bowl 2 is a great strategy, turn-based football game.  A better single-player experience would be nice, but the multiplayer makes up for it, as long as you can find good players.

Score 3 out of 5

Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy for review.