Starcadia Quest vs Arcadia Quest - with Tom Vasel

Tom Vasel takes a look at Starcadia Quest vs. Arcadia Quest. Which game is better?

00:00 - Introduction
00:59 - Box comparison
01:14 - Miniatures comparison
01:39 - Death Curses
02:06 - Game play comparison
08:24 - Final thoughts

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[luelfs]

So we just finished our first campaign of Starcadia Quest and right after played another campaign of Arcadia Quest to get a comparison and while I like Tom's review a lot I just wanted to give the opposite conclusion.
I would agree that the set up is quicker and more random in Starcadia Quest, but that randomness also can be a disadvantage. Especially with the Tokens you collect from the boards (random in Arcadia and secret / open to see in Starcadia and fixed) you could end up in a room with 3 refresh tokens and just overpower the other player. Arcadia feels more balanced because of the fixed setting so I prefer the longer set up. The gameplay itself I did feel like two or three characters matters for different reasons. In Arcadia I would try yo build a brawler, a wizzards and a long ranged character. So I like three characters to be able to build the perfect magic team. In Starcadia there is basically just shooting and melee which makes sense in a Sci Fi Setting so I don't miss the third character. But what I do miss is the character differentiation in the upgrade phase. In Starcadia the hero teams felt very similar by the end of the game while in Arcadia Quest the options seem much more diverse. I also think that the token exhaustion is easier than turning the tiles plus it adds options like exhausting something twice. I also like collecting money and not just be gifted upgrades. The one thing I totally agree with Tom is the Monster activation. In Arcadia Monsters just stand arround while in Starcadia they seem a lot more threatening and doing stuff on their own. What I do miss is the reward system of Arcadia Quest where you got new items for specific quests which were thematically tied to the bosses and missions. I alos liked death curses because they gave dying more meaning. Components are great in both games. So while I agree with a lot of points of Tom the one thing I would say is to me Starcadia Quest feels a little less like Arcadia Quest 1.5 and more like Arcadia Quest "Kids". So I would say if you like a quick set up and want a probably more simplified than necessarily streamlined game wit the Space theme I would go for Starcadia but I feels like Arcadia offer more tactical choices, is a little less random (the tokens can really warp the game a bit) and you like the fantasy aspect I would go for Arcadia Quest. I think both games are a lot of fun and again, I hope this does not come across as a Tom is wrong entry, I just thought I would share this cause I had the same observations as Tom but came to a lot of different conclusions.

[CyberXShinobi]

I prefer the fantasy over space theme. Would love to see Arcadia Quest 2.0 with the same revamped system of Starcadia Quest.

[dbungart]

Having just played Starcadia... my god it’s so much better in every aspect. They really refined the gameplay and setup.

[hanseathl]

Now, as I just finished painting all Minis of Arcadia Quest and the Expansion I will stick with it - even if I agree that the changes sound neat.

[PonSquaredJapan]

Can we get an Arcadia Quest 2.0 that updates the rules and quests and monsters but still allows us to use our 1.0 stuff. please?

[gamesafire]

I prefer the fantasy theme. I don’t have this game in my collection yet. Thanks Tom for comparing the two.

[azrael]

I wonder if they will do a 2nd Edition for Arcadia Quest??? Given they did that for Zombicide as its probably one of their top IPs. And hopefully an upgrade pack too

[DavidSheley]

Hi Tom, I've had my eye on Arcadia Quest for a while now and recently discovered Starcadia Quest. The game store I was at didn't have the Arcadia Quest core game, so I went with Starcadia Quest instead. I'm encouraged by your positive review of Starcadia that, even if inadvertently, I've made a great purchase! I can't wait to play the game!

[DoctorGarro]

Yeah... While Starcadia Quest looks cool, I can’t justify having everything from Arcadia Quest AND adding Arcadia Quest 1.5 to my collection. It seems way too much of a hassle. And I prefer the fantasy theme.

[kenttsui]

I am hopping Starcadia Quests does well to see more content come out, I'm still hoping for a Rides (mechs or vessel) and bosses (Mecha Godzilla) type of expansion in the future. Fingers crossed

[jarldjevel]

Hi all. How does Masmorra compare with those two?

[vonwoolf]

I also find SQ to be better than AQ, but boy do I need an FAQ for this one, because there are quite a lot of cases to be cleared by the designers..

[TerrierHalo]

I quite enjoyed Arcadia Quest, but this does look better. I pretty much always had one hero just standing around and the curses were just annoying to me, won’t be missing those. Will probably pick up when it shows up here. Thanks for the comparison.

[JaKamps]

My bro. & I also found that often only used 2/3 heroes while playing Arcadia Quest, so when I heard of this change to Starcadia Quest we started playing Arcadia Quest only using 2 heroes w/ 6 inventory spots each, instead of 3 heroes w/ 4 inventory spots each.

One could flip inventory cards instead of using tokens in Arcadia Quest (if they wanted to).

I'm surprised Tom didn't talk about the Line of Sight & movement differences & more about the item drafting difference between the games.

[BenBoersma]

We have both and found that while the changes in Starcadia do sound really exciting. After a few plays, you can see that the tokens can swing the game in some pretty big ways. The streamlining made Starcadia feel more generic and the items/weapons don't help with this at all. There just wasn't much variety in what you could buy and once you've played a few campaigns, it feels very much the same.
I would like to see some of the ideas (Event deck and optional choice monsters especially) be more refined and then added into Arcadia Quest as an optional choice.

[apolishbeast]

This is why I backed Starcadia Quest. It fixed all the issues I had with Arcadia. I always felt like I was only using two characters and other was a third wheel. Set up was way too long. I also hated how stationary monsters were. Played first game of Starcadia today and had a blast. I only had the base game of Arcadia and not going back to it.

[maxducoudray]

My ideal game would incorporate elements of each. I wonder if scenarios in AQ could be remapped to be more generic in terms of set up and monster selection, ala SQ.

[LeeroyPorkins]

Just recently I sold my Arcadia Quest lot, just too fiddly to set up

[dall]

Be nice if either of them had all the content available at an affordable rate.

[Dwindamir]

I agree with everything you said, however I wasn't keen on the 'attack the winner' munchkin type quests. It causes the scenarios to be too long and with the way you can spawn mobs, you end up just attacking whoever is closest to winning!
I also think there could be a bit more guidance to the board setup since some tiles just don't work well together. Some guidance of which tile would be nice.