Twisted Final Fights Another Four Against Darkness Review (Long Read!)

 

First off, I will not give any spoilers about bosses. Those are for you discover! However, I will be going over a brief overview of each of the included six missions. With that said, let us join the fight against the big bads in Twisted Final Fights!

 

Twisted Final Fights, which can be found here in print and here in PDF, is an expansion book for Four Against Darkness. The core rule book and Twisted Final Fights is all you need to get started! The whole idea of the book is to replace the final boss you encounter with even more interesting and fun/pain in the butt bosses than the original bosses found in the core book and other supplements. There is a huge variety of bosses here with unique abilities and loot to take into the world and crush your enemies with.

You simply roll on a D100 table and reference the number to see which one you fight. Just remember, final bosses show up on a roll of 6+ on a d6. Don't for get to add +1 for each boss/weird monster defeated in the dungeon. There are a total of 48 different bosses to encounter and a whole slew of treasures to be found on the Weird Monster Treasure Table.

If that wasn't enough, as mentioned above, you get 6 different missions to go on, which I didn't know was included, to my joy and surprise. You can just play a standard game, then when you encounter the final boss, roll on the d100 table. If you want more, you can roll on the mission table. Variety is the spice of life so, of course, playing these missions adds a whole lot more to the standard game. I'll go over briefly what each mission is like and their names:

Monster Hunt: In the first mission, you have to spend clues in order to find the boss. I've been historically terrible and finding clues but on this mission, I actually found two in empty rooms! Amazing, sadly, that was not enough. You can gain clues by defeating bosses and then "taking them alive." I'm assuming you beat them down and then, instead of looting and experience rolls, you get to test to see if they will give you a clue. I don't think the Geneva Convention is in place in Norindaal, so torture the bosses all you want!

My first time on this mission I failed. I couldn't find any bosses in the dungeon for the life of me. Maybe the big bad has a summer home? I'll check there. That's okay, as you can keep any clues or tortured clues (the latter of which can only be used for this mission and not standard clues!) for the next dungeon, should you choose to replay the mission and make another attempt.

Once you burn your clues, go in prepared and get some special bonuses on your first attack, so that's pretty nice.

Lair Raid: In this mission, you roll on the final boss table first, so you know what's coming. I just looked at the picture and went in, not looking at its abilities. The boss may or may not be warned of you coming in to defeat him so he might have some nasty surprises waiting for you!

Terrorized Villagers: This encounter is very unique. You are hired by a village to defeat a monsters that has been terrorizing their village (what else did you expect!). They offer you a handsome reward, if you can slay the beast. You start by rolling three different possible final bosses giving each an equal chance on a 1d3. This is due to varying descriptions of the monster. If you like, you can read over the descriptions and prepare yourself for battle. Me, I tend to throw caution into the wind and just went for it.

You then make six boxes to represent the town and label each with a different part of the village (inn, smith, church, etc.). You can spread out your characters but or keep them all in one group. If they attack an unoccupied area, the village will be damaged and you will deduct that from your reward. I chose to have my party stay grouped together.

In my encounter, I think I rolled one of the worst possible bosses. It capitalized off you rolling 1's and I rolled 1's a lot that fight! Needless to say, after a long and tense fight, my party was killed and the village was left to the monsters pillaging. I did reduce him down to 1 hit point but, the dice gods were not kind to me or were just jerking me around!

Still, this was my favorite encounter, a really exciting battle. Plus, if you defeat the boss, you can loot its lair afterwards.

Monster on the Loose: A monster is being hauled through town by guards. Not surprisingly, it escapes! There is a twist in this one, which I will not spoil for you. You must kill or subdue the creature in order to win. Pretty straight forward!

Monstrous Competitors: This time, you have to side with one of two rival bosses. You roll them up as usual on the d100 table, take a look at them, and go with which ever you think is coolest, hottest, or whatever you think looks good in a big bad. I chose the cobra as I liked GI Joes as a kid *shrugs.* Then you are sent to assassinate the rival with a special "boon," to help you on your adventure. I wasn't sure if you received the reward from the "boon and rewards" table but I'm assuming you do as there is no specific treasure for completing the mission. Of course, you can double-cross the boss that hired you and kill his sorry such and such too, if you so choose.

More Monstrous Competitors: About the same as Monstrous Competitors but this time you're hired to slay two bosses in a random dungeon (not at the same time, thankfully).

Things I liked:

-A plethora of new bosses to kill (or be killed by!)

-Like the other two books in the Twisted series, boosts replay value, which is always good. Combined all three into a mega dungeon crawl!

-Optional missions

-Lovely artwork for each boss and a description of them

Then I'd say "Buy this expansion!"

All right, that review was a little bit longer than I thought it would be and I didn't even cover everything in the book...