The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era

I’ve bounced off Too Many Bones twice and Cloudspire once, chip-based combat games always felt like they were fighting me as much as the enemy was, but this one finally landed. Somebody described the earlier Chip Theory games as preliminary studies for this one and honestly, yeah, that tracks with what I felt at the table. The real joy is in the combos, figuring out which die faces pair with which class ability to chain a turn into something that actually works, and once that clicked for me around session two I stopped fighting the system and started enjoying it.

The rulebook is where this almost lost me though. There’s a five round soft turn limit in combat that the tutorial book explains so poorly I genuinely thought a page was missing from my copy. Had to go find the Dized app just to confirm I wasn’t playing it wrong, which, for a fifty dollar-plus box, is not a great look. If you’re getting this, watch a how to play video before you crack the rulebook open, don’t try to learn it cold.

Story wise, it’s fine, Elder Scrolls flavor is there if you squint, but I’m with the reviewer who said the narrative bits get forgotten almost as soon as you close the box. This isn’t a story game wearing combat clothes, it’s a combat engine wearing an Elder Scrolls skin, and once I stopped expecting the former it was a much better time.

Four stars, docked one for a tutorial that actively works against the game underneath it.