Stars of Akarios Review - Hyperflop

Stars of Akarios — Review Summary

What the game is

A large campaign game combining Gloomhaven-style tactical space combat with 7th Continent-style exploration. Players choose pilots and ships, travel between locations, encounter story events, explore planets, upgrade characters and equipment, and fight enemy spacecraft. The game reportedly contains around 150 scenarios, though not all are combat encounters.

What works

• Space combat is the strongest part. Players roll dice and assign matching results to ship abilities, then maneuver on a hex map to line up attacks, avoid enemies, and exploit firing arcs.
• Combat creates satisfying tactical moments: positioning and coordinating with other players can matter more than simply choosing which weapon to fire.
• The game’s player boards and presentation reinforce the theme. Ship and pilot miniatures dock onto the boards, while cards clearly show abilities, maneuvers, and attack effects.
• Character progression, damage, and attack-modifier decks will feel familiar to Gloomhaven players.
• The game is highly ambitious and contains a great deal of material. The reviewer felt its core ideas had the potential to make for a memorable experience.

Main problems

• The different parts do not come together into a satisfying whole. The reviewer’s central criticism is that the game promises an engaging blend of exploration and combat, but neither side supports the other effectively.
• Enemy movement is confusing and awkward. Players must interpret ship-specific AI cards, facing, and hex movement, often across large areas of empty space. Enemy behavior can seem arbitrary, and unclear movement rules make it hard to tell whether a move was intended or misinterpreted.
• Combat becomes repetitive over a long campaign. Most turns revolve around moving into position and shooting; abilities are generally available whenever needed, so the reviewer found little of the changing action-planning puzzle that makes Gloomhaven compelling.
• Space travel feels dull and procedural. Moving the ship between locations involves handling components and spending Supply, but the reviewer played roughly half the campaign without feeling meaningfully threatened by a lack of Supply.
• Planet exploration feels overcomplicated without meaningful decisions. Energy, dice, movement, checks, and stress add restrictions, but the reviewer found the resulting systems uninteresting. Moving between cards can consume much of the available time and actions.
• Exploration often failed to deliver a sense of discovery. Many encounters were described as brief, poorly written vignettes, and rewards were frequently just credits. Better rewards—such as upgrades, pilots, or ships—were available elsewhere, making exploration feel less worthwhile.
• Scenario design was criticized as inconsistent and sometimes frustrating. The reviewer cited a scenario where failure could depend on a die roll largely independent of players’ choices, and a combat mission where doing nothing and hoping for favorable enemy-card draws seemed like the best strategy.
• The writing and worldbuilding were judged weak. Characters often lacked names or distinctive characterization, and the story’s political themes struck the reviewer as simplistic and poorly developed.
• The game had numerous production and rules errors, including discrepancies between card text and the rulebook, inconsistent names for a co-pilot, and a paragraph printed four times in one scenario. The rulebook itself was also criticized. The designer was credited with answering rules questions on BoardGameGeek, but the reviewer felt this did not remedy the underlying problems.

Comparisons and value

• The game explicitly invites comparison with Gloomhaven and 7th Continent. The reviewer felt it borrowed recognizable systems from Gloomhaven—such as progression and modifier decks—without reproducing the qualities that make those systems engaging, while its exploration did not match the appeal of 7th Continent.
• The reviewer also grouped it with other disappointing campaign games, including C4, Gen 7, and Discover: Lands Unknown.
• The production was described as attractive, with a lot of content in the box. The quoted price was $170, plus $70 for enemy-ship miniatures. The reviewer considered that expensive for the experience and suggested it might only be worth considering later at a bargain price or as a design case study.

Verdict

The reviewer strongly advised against buying Stars of Akarios at its current price. Its excellent presentation and promising combat ideas are undermined by confusing rules, repetitive battles, weak exploration, poor scenario and story design, and numerous errors. The reviewer’s main recommendation was to consider it only as “academic research” for studying what can go wrong in a large hybrid campaign game.

Score: No numerical rating was given.

Different speaker views

The subtitles present one reviewer’s assessment; no distinct second-speaker review or contrasting opinion is included. The reviewer refers to a past shared ranking of Gloomhaven, but does not provide a separate view from the other person in the video.