This is a personal, largely spoiler free (or spoiler-vague) review of Bloodborne - City of the Unseen custom campaign by aughhhh for Arkham Horror the Card Game.
In Bloodborne - City of the Unseen, investigators find themselves in the city of Yharnam after a strange sleeping sickness overtakes Arkham, leaving them to explore the beast-cursed gothic city to find a way home.
Bloodborne - City of the Unseen is a campaign defined by its excess. Its scenarios are long, its campaign guide is massive, the story text is abundant, there are too many new story assets to count, as well as alternate paths, and enough triggers to completely fill a campaign guide. There are four - FOUR! - different mechanics for side quests. There's nothing the campaign does half-heartedly or half-way. Everything it does, it does to excess. And yet, somehow, it works - what should feel like a bloated mess is instead an engaging campaign bursting with flavor, and full of things to explore and discover.
The Bloodborne - City of the Unseen story is what surprised me the most during the campaign. I went in fully expecting not to like it, not being a fan of often unthematic attempts to paste some other skin atop Arkham. Bloodborne, however, makes it work by approaching it as an Arkham story first, and a Bloodborne story second. Without going into too many details, the story involves your characters being drawn into Yharnam and the Hunter's Dream after a sleeping sickness takes hold of Arkham - with your characters not being the only ones, and many familiar Bloodborne faces instead being characters trapped just like you. It's a clever way to use both together, and the campaign works by constantly drawing a parallel between Arkham lore and Bloodborne lore. If you're unfamiliar with the lore, the story should still work - but you often won't be able to see what the campaign is doing and appreciate it as much. Those who enjoy their horror especially dark will have a lot to eat up here as well. Bloodborne - City of the Unseen isn't afraid to get downright mean, and is often incredibly bleak in an effective way. However, anyone going into the campaign should know that Bloodborne has a *lot* of reading - including a long opening, agenda and act cards full of text, and even paragraphs of interludes mid-scenario at times. The text is written well, but there's so much of it that it's easy for it to drag.
It's this overall coherence that is one of Bloodborne's primary strengths, integrating with Arkham and only overlapping and replacing where needed. There is no place where flavor isn't injected, and a dizzying array of paths aren't arrayed in front of you. With over 30 unique story asset cards available in the campaign, there are enough new choices to constantly be changing how you approach deck building, including one from a totally random source, promising new toys every time you play. They fit within the arkham rules framework well, but many of them have effects that are unique enough they make you want to explore the build possibilities with them. The number of side quest mechanics also offer levers which can vary the challenge, although the campaign is tough enough that it never feels like it gives you a chance to breathe. And it's that challenge that lets the campaign really get its hooks into you. Bloodborne - City of the Unseen feels like a real challenge, living up to its souls-like inspiration.
All these things that make Bloodborne shine can also make it frustrating. It truly feels like a Fromsoft game in that way. Playing it, one has to prepare themselves for scenarios that will drown you in monsters and constantly demand more and more of you. It's not just in the combat, however. The set-ups for scenarios can often be complicated, demanding you keep track of multiple side decks through multiple scenarios, constantly adjust a trackable value mid-scenario, and often do some involved set-up in the middle of scenarios. The campaign log for the campaign ends up massive, which both speaks to the number of things to see and the number of things to track. All of this is exasperated by how long the scenarios are - the longest, hardest ones of which can feel quite tiring by the time you finally reach the finish line.
When it comes to mechanics in bloodborne, there are enough in play that it's hard to decide which are worth pulling out to talk about. The most immediately one are the insight tokens - special tokens that are put into the chaos back that act as "+1 and draw another", and then get sealed. When 3 are sealed, your "Recognition" goes up by one and they get shuffled back into the chaos bag. Recognition lets you do all sorts of things - including shuffling some of the optional boss enemies into the encounter deck at scenario set-up, if you wanted just an extra challenge and XP. The most fun new mechanic was the Spoils system - where one of 12 random enemy hunters would be shuffled into the encounter deck each scenario. Defeating them didn't provide XP, but instead gave a Spoils - a new story asset that someone could take into their deck. Due to their random nature, not all the Spoils were particularly useful - but those that were often drove deckbuilding considerations. It lead to fun choices I wasn't originally planning on making.
Bloodborne's scenarios are overall strong, and usually have their own twist to the formula, with none feeling too alike. However, I need to call out Scenario 4: The Frailty of Men as a personal favorite. It's the best linking of theme and mechanics in the entire campaign, and truly gets across what the campaign is about. It's also the one that most challenges different aspects - it's not just about killing monsters, but instead has a variety of locations that all ask you to do different things to help clear them. It stands as a personal favorite Arkham scenario, and one that I'd play as a standalone.
Only two scenarios stumbled for me in my playthrough. Scenario 2: Fear the Old Blood is a defensive mission introducing barrier mechanics with unclear rules that just didn't end up terribly useful. Scenario 7, meanwhile, pushed on my level of frustration in terms of difficulty - it's long and tough, throwing a lot at you at once, and rewards foreknowledge heavily. It's got the gem of a great scenario inside of it, but it's also the peak of the campaign's oppressiveness. The campaign's finale also is worth mentioning here - there are two of them depending on story choices. Both have some scaling problems, where it feels "just right" at two players, but awkward mechanics can make it strange for higher player counts due to their goals. One makes it harder for players to contribute, and another, too easy
No individual mechanical of the campaign is really too much, but there's often enough going on that you need to be careful to track everything. There are a few places where the rules are unclear, and players should be ready to decide what needs to be done based on judgment. The survival mechanics of Scenario 2 are such a place, but they don't repeat. What does repeat is multiple scenarios that involve flipping and replacing locations, and it's never quite clear how clues are supposed to work on them except for the one scenario that specifically calls them out. It's easy enough to move through, and is unlikely to cause any major hang-ups except for a few lost Victory Points, but it is worth noting.
Overall, Bloodborne - City of the Unseen is much like the videogame it seeks to imitate. Challenging and rewarding, it certainly won't be for everyone, but those who want to push themselves and aren't afraid of a little suffering will be well rewarded.
More on Bloodborne - City of the Unseen:
Bloodborne - City of the Unseen: Spoiler-Light Review
Bloodborne - City of the Unseen: Advice and Overview
Bloodborne - City of the Unseen: Dissection
Bloodborne - City of the Unseen: Unlockable Investigator Gallery