Disclosure: The author of this review backed Primal: The Awakening on Kickstarter.
Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: Primal: The Awakening is a big game. I’m talking in the physical sense here. Between its huge plastic miniatures, numerous cards, tokens, and whatever else, this is a board game with zero respect for moderately-sized gaming tables. For Reggie Games, the phrase “go big or go home” is more of a vision statement than a pithy one-liner, but hey, they’re proving it works for them, so who am I to judge?
This is an original board game IP influenced by the world of video games. The setup whereby 2-4 hunters delve into a lost civilization to slay gigantic creatures is immediately reminiscent of Monster Hunter, with varied character builds and tonal elements resembling Dark Souls, thrown in for good measure. Mechanically though, the cooperative, mostly card-driven gameplay resembles Marvel Champions: The Card Game in how players discard their hand cards to generate stamina to pay for attacks and defensive moves that will help outwit or overpower an opposing enemy. They do this either in campaigns featuring character progression and story beats, or in standalone sessions where the setup is fully customisable.
Primal: The Awakening is a beautifully produced game boasting a gorgeous visual identity across its many monster boards, terrain tokens, and action cards. The artwork is stunning throughout and the monster miniatures look incredible. These models demand a robust storage solution because of their large size though. You can argue a card game with a little board positioning and light deckbuilding elements doesn’t warrant such overproduction. I’ll accept it. Especially since it took me two days just to unpack my pledge!
Presentation wise, there are a few quibbles to be had with iconography. Action cards are designated as offensive or defensive depending on icons best described as, “weird triangle thingy” and “the one that looks like a nicotine patch”. The same criticism applies to the crafting and aggression icons whose nondescript appearance makes setup fiddly. Things are held together though by an excellent rulebook featuring an intuitive layout and many good examples to help players learn how to play quickly.

Healing potions are more potent on certain turns. Deciding when to drink one is tactical decision unto itself.
Primal: The Awakening‘s card-driven battles are fairly unique in how the opposing monster lacks a dedicated phase of its own. Each beast instead has a row of behaviour cards which trigger after certain actions are taken by the players. For example, when a red attack card is played, or when someone empties their hand, or moves to a new sector on the combat board. This dynamic forces players to choose their cards carefully because resolving too many behaviours is a really effective way of getting the party killed!
The hunters can’t afford to delay attacking for too long because of round limits and attrition damage that will gradually wear them down. This means there are times when players might need to assist each other — the cooperative atmosphere in this game is great — in powering through a series of damaging behaviours simply to take advantage of a potent hand. It’s in tense moments like these where the game really shines.
The side effect of having so many triggers everywhere is that it’s easy to forget a bunch of them when you get carried away with the “fun part” of playing long sequences of action cards. “Oops, we forgot to resolve this”, or “Oops, we forgot to resolve that”, are frequently heard comments at the table that won’t ever really go away, and there are definitely some players who will be put off by it.
While the game is complex in how its various triggers and timings work, the deckbuilding elements are elegantly lightweight. Each hunter has a starter deck of foundational action cards alongside upgrades that further specialise a chosen play style, with hunters possessing different archetypes to get players inspired. The selection of action cards per hunter is modest by the standards of the deckbuilding genre, but action cards feel unique because they don’t have duplicates, and since hunter decks tend to be small, it’s possible to build an entire strategy around a specific card or two if you can find the right supporting equipment.
Equipment selection has a big impact on how each hunter plays and it adds considerable depth to the overall experience. It won’t take long for savvy players to construct loadouts geared towards damage, defence, or other unique combos that interact with a hunter’s chosen mastery. There’s fun to be had just theorycrafting builds — something that makes the game’s expansion sets worth purchasing as well.
One problem with equipment (in campaign sessions anyway), is the weirdly pointless crafting system. Crafting resources are a pain to track and contribute nothing except tedious bookkeeping and unnecessary cardboard handouts. The only time they really impact anything is when players want to change their minds and equip something different, which is unfairly punishing on those who like to experiment. I’ll be ignoring crafting entirely in my future campaigns by simply letting players switch between any equipment they’ve unlocked. It’s just so much easier that way.
Another niggle with campaigns is how restrictive the early sessions can be. Each campaign has ten chapters followed by an exciting finale featuring an epic boss to end on a high note. However, the early chapters have a much smaller selection of monsters to choose from, so the variety of character builds and equipment at that point is limited. This can be problematic for inexperienced players because there are some monsters who shut down certain strategies. Mirah the great bow huntress, for example, can be a powerhouse with her constant stream of damaging arrows, but that relevant mastery she begins the game with, suffers against the annoying metal monsters whose arguably overpowered shield ability neutralises her volleys entirely. It’s a sad fact that some hunters are weak against certain monsters, and the only way to realise that is to stumble into a bad match-up and get completely bodied!
Additionally, the prologue chapter of every campaign always features the same fire monster, which limits players to always selecting fire gear in the following crafting phase. It’s a strict ordering that doesn’t make sense when every other monster in the core box has a set of prologue-compatible behaviour cards. It feels like a missed opportunity not to include some variety in quest structure right there.

Crystal monsters are generally easy foes compared to metal monsters who are a huge pain to face. Having hunters with lots of Stun cards always helps.
Still, getting wrecked by a monster and retrying with a tweaked inventory can be satisfying as well. I recall a 2-player session where my brother and I got savaged by an aggressive raptor creature who rapidly responds to red action cards being played. On our return hunt, we crafted new equipment that could deal damage without red cards, and on that occasion it was the monster getting destroyed instead! This felt very thematic to the game’s setting — like a group of real hunters learning from their mistakes and preparing for a new hunt with those lessons in mind.
That aforementioned sortie highlights a particular strength in the monster design because of how they all feel different from each other. For example, Toramat the rampaging horn beast generates extra struggle tokens to unleash deadly charge attacks, and the method of killing it can also be slightly different if players pay careful attention to its behaviour cards (I still contend this monster is too hard to be featured in Chapter 1 though). The insectoid Azew uses a nearby thunderstorm to shock hunters who fall behind, and the watery Korowon, just tries to drown everyone by healing and waiting for the time limit to expire. You do you, as they say!
This variety does come at cost though, and it’s mainly felt in those behaviour cards which are face down before they’re triggered. Trying to remember the effects of these things is next to impossible unless someone at the table has a very good memory (I allow peeking at them after the deck cycles once). Even then, the appearance of “Perils” means players can stumble into unexpected battlefield conditions and penalities they didn’t see coming on their first try. Take my advice and always read through everything in the monster deck before fighting it. You’ll spoil the surprises by doing that, but I’m sure the other players will thank you when said surprises are so nasty!
Hunts are also hardest in the final few rounds, which means players can lose considerable time in defeat — certainly something to remember in long 4-player sessions. Things play much quicker with fewer hunters, but beware of the game’s poor scaling if you’re thinking of purchasing this for a 2-player experience like I did.
Primal: The Awakening feels like it was designed as a 4-player game first because the 2-player mode poses several extra difficulties. The most severe of these is how KOs work. When a hunter’s health fully depletes, it takes multiple rounds for them to stand back up again unless they’re assisted by another hunter (which speeds up the process). But of course, with fewer players at the table, comes fewer opportunities to be assisted in the first place. A lone remaining player also has to withstand the full force of the monster on their own, which is nasty because when both players are down, it’s game over. This applies considerable extra pressure compared to 4-player games where there are more friendly bodies to run interference. In the simplest terms, things can unravel fast if someone gets knocked out in a 2-player game.
Several action cards and mechanics are also weaker with fewer players at the table. Anything that says, “other players get X” is inherently weaker in 2-player, and that’s especially true of cards that inflict the “Stun” condition. Stun is an extremely powerful and important mechanic for the hunters because when inflicted, it shuts down a good percentage of what the monster can react to during a turn. This effect can last longer in a 4-player game and the damage it deals is based on red cards a chosen player can reveal at the time of triggering. Again, with fewer hands to choose from, this effect is always less reliable in 2-player games.
Likewise, the “Unstoppable” attribute some monsters have is a nightmare to deal with in 2-player because of its flat penalty that impacts smaller parties way more than it does larger ones (the exact same goes for acceleration tokens). Orouxen the water dragon has a nasty third stance which ideally needs a hunter always standing in one space of the board, which again is harder with fewer players present. And then there are various abilities like Stun mentioned earlier, whose vital control mechanics are not available to certain hunter duos. The 2-player experience is certainly still enjoyable, but Reggie Games could afford to do some balancing in this area.

Expedition mode is nice for one-off sessions, but building a character over time in campaign remains the primary focus. This is one area where the game far exceeds Marvel Champions.
Primal: The Awakening still has a reasonable difficulty curve, and the replay value is good because it will take several campaigns to see every quest and reward card in the box. It’s just a shame that the accompanying story is so mediocre. The quality of the writing and production in this area is perfectly fine, but the boring narrative is composed mainly of cryptic visions and humourless quest summaries written in an anodyne tone. Reggie Games have tried creating an intriguing world where some detective work is needed to fully appreciate their land of Thyria and its colourful history (this is where the setting most feels like Dark Souls), but without any memorable events or story beats to cling to, you’ll find it difficult to summarise what happens in each chapter when you choose to “skip the cutscenes” like I do.
Overall, Primal: The Awakening can be an uncompromising beast, and there’s no doubt it’s one made for a particular type of card game fan who welcomes complexity and challenge in equal measure. Nevertheless, this is also an excellently designed cooperative board game which delivered exactly what it promised, and it hasn’t left my thoughts in quite a while.
Primal: The Awakening at Reggie Games »
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