This is a repost of my review on BGG, I have been playing this game for a decade and nothing else has come close.

ZoA is the best skirmish game I have ever played, using the savage worlds showdown skirmish system essentially grants rpg level of choice while the means of playing solo/ coop as well as VS was a rarity when it released.

Like most skirmish games you make a gang, of which you have 3 choices - survivors, bandits and the military. Each have unique units and things they bring to play and based on choices will greatly shape the style of the gang itself.

When playing in a campaign each gang draws a place to live which provides the gang a specific perk but while scavenging they can be on the lookout for somewhere new, and between games can assign jobs to any functional members like fixing equipment or a vehicle if you have gotten lucky enough to find a working one.

One thing that really made the game shine is the activation system, ZoA uses a card deck for a lot of the random finds etc, it also uses it for activation order. At the start of every turn each member of each gang draws a card and when everyone has theirs they all get flipped to determine the turn order, if someone draws a joker a random event occurs.

The zombie rules are superb with an increase in danger the more action that happens due to noise any gangmember makes (even getting hurt requires a test to not scream in pain) and some games that start as Vs end up coop by necessity.

The optional "Strain" rules are the icing on the cake, representing the evolutional drive of the virus the strain are a third player (or second if playing solo/coop) force that adds to the standard zombies and have allow you to build "Aberrants" which with the detailed creation system can be any freak zombie or monster from pretty much any franchise you like from the Left for dead Mutant Z's to the entire B.O.W. cast of Resident Evil, all the way up to the Tyrant. In a campaign a Strain player starts with one Abberrant which they gradually evolve as the virus reaches milestones and gradually gains further abberrants which too evolve. Ingame when an Abberrant dies it still draws an activation card as normal and if it gets an Ace will respawn.

The game does have a few conversion issues that we ended up house ruling (Shotguns with slug ammo were a starting weapon and did as much damage as .50 rifles and jamming was way to common on automatic weapons) but largely due to the RPG system the game uses (even watered down) nothing is hard to fix.

I doubt I will ever recommend another game as much as this one, its simply that good if this is the genre you want to play in.

This is a pretty good example of why D20 is not a great system for a lot of things, the back and forth high stress combat of the souls series just does not translate well with just how much of the core rules that have been changed to try and make it "fit" and only being moderately successful. There are some things that clearly took inspiration from the DS board game that Steamforged games also made, which may or may be a deal breaker for some.

Some of whats here is pretty well written and on the whole the book does a MUCH better job with laying out the rules than d&d does but some of the changes are just a bit baffling.

Instead of the normal hp system D20 uses you have "Position" which is a catch all for health/stamina and general readyness. Functionally its hp but you have your lvl 1 class health but with a hit dice worth of temporary hp per level and you roll it every fight. Position is also spent for casting spells and weapon arts so you can pretty much kill yourself if you arent careful, I get that they were going for a "overcomitting is dangerous" to fit with the Souls theme but it really doesn't play well (on paper at least).

The Initiative system change is also not a good one. Players roll initiative as normal, enemies have a fixed initiative. Players going before the enemies can activate in whichever order they choose as can any going after, this works quite well in a players vs a single opponent scenario such as a boss but when there are multiple enemy types they all activate at the same time as the highest CR enemy rather than having slow undead be slow etc. which......is just bad design.

A great many of the famous weapons, armour and trinkets of the souls series as well as the various sorceries and incantations all have individual entries, sadly very few of them do anything remotely like their ingame equivelant, this is anoither example of trying to force the souls experience into a ruleset not built for it. There is no smithing or anything of that nature either, you get what you get and its honestly quite random what a weapon does, doubly so when Dark Souls staples like bleeding and forstbite aren't included.. An Average shortsword does lightning damage as its skill for example.

I will say that the replacement Character creation system is very well written, rather than try to stat the various types of people in the Souls series you simply pick one of four Origins, which has fixed stats (no rolling atributes) you get a melee/tank, a dex melee/archer, a caster and a jack of all trades. These funcionally replace race in d&d.

The Classes are all there, some kind of close to what they should be, some arent.

One further thing that bothered me was that this is not Dark Souls the rpg, Its Dark Souls 3. It has some things from across the franchise but everything about this is based on Dark Souls 3, from terminiology to the art throughout the book.

Theres also practically zero lore about anything which is a massive strike against in my books, even for core concepts of things like the age of fire. You assumedly are expected to either know going in or have a DM try to explain such concepts.

Overall, not the worst thing ever but a prime example of why jumping on the "5e" bandwagon is not always a good idea.

I got this as a wave 3 backer and am very disappointed, not so much with whats provided but by how its provided.

Half the Stl's aren't scaled correctly, none are supported and none are parted for smaller printers.

The pdf's for the cards are not layed out in a manner that makes them easy to print ( 1 per page) and requires a lot work on the users side using photoshop or an online printing service to prep properly.

Whats provided in no way is worth the asking price.

Edit: Following some issues regarding copyright infringement with regards to having the cards printed, River Horse were kind enough to alter the description to assuage those concerned.

Big fan of patricks previous titles, but was honestly a little dissapointed with Nightwatch.

its just too abstract in some areas with a few limitations that dont really fit, a turn limit for example has no place in a coop game with a plot, by all means crank the difficulty up the longer it takes but failing a campaign because of something so forced is not good.

The dice system used is actually pretty good, with player characters having a action pool of 3 with 3 dice (D6,D8 and D10) usable on whichever action they like against a target number of 4 with modifiers. If the action is one the character class is skilled in they roll 2 of the die and take the highest result.

Equipment is sadly very basic, even more so than similar games (Rangers of Shadow Deep, 5 leagues from the Borderlands) and aside from ranged weapons granting a ranged attack, typically provide a once per turn ability that are a mixed bag. Polearms for example allow you to attack from further away, but only once per turn despite having 3 attacks. A personal peeve carried over from Zona Alfa is present here too in which grenades can be thrown further than firearms.

The enemies are the biggest disappointment. In a game centred around hunting monsters, there are no monsters, or at least beyond whichever miniatures you choose to use. There are 3 levels of lesser enemies with the only major thing differentiating them being the die they roll. Every mission sees the group fending off waves of minions while completing basic objectives until they reach the final mission which is to hunt the big bad, which again has no unique stated adversary but the same stat as one of the human player characters with a few abilities to jazz them up a bit.

While I dont doubt fun can be had with Nightwatch and it is a game thats quick to play, it feels like there's a lot missing. There's no tracking mechanics, no equipment to exploit vulnerabilities (silver bullets, holywater etc) and while I understand the enemies are intentionally simple to aid the agnostic nature of the game, it leaves very little depth which is only exacerbated by the non random spawn tables.

I should mention that throughout the book does mention houseruling things as you like.

Roleplaying without the game part.

While everything is well written and there are a lot of options, this isnt what I was looking for in a Sentai rpg.

I even watched a let's play with one of the writers just to make sure I understood the gameplay.

What it amounts to is, as a group describe the whole scene and then act out what has already been decided.

While its nice to have new scenarios to play and the new magic weapons are nice, the format of this expansion is not one that can played directly without creating mutiple warbands which is ok for stand alone games but less desirable for proper campaign play.