Godzilla: Tokyo Clash Crushes It - Review

Now, as a lifelong Godzilla fan, I must admit that...

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You had me at Jet Jaguar.

Oh man, I've just convinced myself I need Unmatched:Cobble & Fog, and now this....

This will tie in well with a running joke my friends and I have about Mothra just constantly waiting by the phone for his agent to call.

"Jerry you're killing me here.. I have larvae to feed..."

also didn’t bother to turn in a complete, coherent set of rules to the publisher prior to printing.

From Richard Berg? No!

ubarose wrote: Mothra just constantly waiting by the phone for her agent to call.

Mothra’s Queen of the Monsters.

Of course! I'm an idiot.

I just played it and I don’t want to jump to conclusions but I think I’m pretty disappointed.

At the very least, I think there are some caveats to how you play it that, of course, make enjoying it something of a trial by fire. I’m not sure if it’s really a 2 player game, which IS essential criteria for a Kaiju game for me. I like the concept of the King of the Monsters token, but in practice it’s kind of a rich get richer thing. In a 2 player game it’s damn near impossible for it to change hands by the end of the round. If you do play 2 player, Mothra makes the game extremely boring and SLOW. In fact, I think there might be enough unbalanced bullshit with Mothra that I’m not sure I’d want her in anything other than a 4 player game. And while I also love how damage works, it does lead to having fewer options as the game winds down, and even with a 45 minute playtime, I’m never a fan of that.

Everything Michael praises is spot on though. It is a remarkably intelligent game and is not a big dumb monster brawl, which as some of you know is the same case in my Kaiju game, but the depth makes the missteps all the more frustrating.

I’ll definitely play again, there’s a lot I do like, but my first play was kind of a frustrating mess.

My wife and I just picked this up and tried it last night. I kind of agree, so far, with both "sides" here in terms of strengths and shortcomings. It's a generous package at $35, and yet the dark tones of the tiles, vehicles, and small buildings are genuine playability issues, and I found myself yearning even for Monopoly-style houses to throw. The rules are generally OK but lack a certain level of polish in terms of anticipating likely player questions, particularly around fighting, throwing, and damage. (For one thing, it seems odd in a mass-market game that they wouldn't stress the point that the monsters don't have hit points. This didn't confuse me, though some aspects around throwing did, but it was a contrary-to-expectations moment.) We had a decent time, but it's probably better at four, as has been said (also true for Monsters Menace America, though we have some house rules that make things a little better at two).

I've been able to play it multiplayer since my first post and I'm coming clean: I HATE THIS GAME.

It has some interesting ideas as far as no HP and instead collecting cards from opponents for VPs and yet I can't think of a single choice made that was the right one. Every turn feels like I'm just doing something because I can, not because I want to, or I'm doing something because I have to. I just do not care about anything going on for the entire duration of the game. It needed that investment that comes from the idea that I can defeat you when I attack you, not that it's going to net me points. Plus it has playability issues, any game with Mothra is boring and too long, the throwing rules blow, and the math in the VP to damage outputs is completely fucked.

I love Godzilla but there's no two way about it, this is a terrible game. It's more than a stumble for Prospero Hall, it's garbage.

100% what Josh said. Ditched this after 1.5 plays and no that's not a typo. It lifts a bunch of its design decisions from better games without understand how any of them actually work, and the result is an overwrought mess that is absolutely no fun in motion.

*sings* Oh, no. Josh says it's got to go. Go~go~Godzilla.

Mild threadomancy:

MB, was wondering if your opinion had changed in the intervening months, especially given Josh's visceral rejection of the game (and Vysetron's, whose opinion I also respect.) It showed up in the ad column on BGG for me today and I noticed that it's been listed essentially at cost (i.e. half of MSRP) by Amazon for the past six months, which usually means a clunker that they're trying to clear out. Does it still seem worth it or did you run into the same cited problems? Is replayability still there? As you say, it seems like a nice visual design, at minimum, for less than $20. Of course, no one knows what Prospero Hall is doing these days (I saw someone on BGG say they're doing "spec work for Funko"), so no telling if this will get any expansions for more beasties to play or if it's just a one-off like Jaws.

I dunno, I still liked it when it came back to the table a couple of months ago...it is a pretty shaky design and Mothra is definitely unbalanced but we still had fun with it. There are some aspects of it that are a little tentative but are great ideas, like how the military/aliens come into play.

I mean, it’s a $20 (probably $10 now) mass market beat em up game...I think it’s worth the price. But like a lot of these titles, they have a strong first impact and not what I would call a long shelf life. All of these games from that run of PH/Funko stuff that I reviewed well and still really like, but I can totally see where some folks see them as limited in shelf life. Villainous would be the one big exception to that, it really has legs. And a new expansion with the freakin’ Horned King in it.

Thanks. Good to hear that it was still worthwhile when you got back to it. I agree that Villainous is the one that has real lasting power. I just wish I could convince more of my locals that that was true. I was geeked to hear about the new xpac, too, but I suspect it will struggle to see the table like the rest of them. Villainous seems to struggle from the Root problem. It needs regular players who are familiar with all or most of the decks to really hit it. That's part of the appeal of Godzilla, in that the system is right there in front of you the whole time.