Talisman: Legendary Tales

Today's review is of the 2018 release, Talisman: Legendary Tales.  For 1-6 players, it takes 20-40 minutes.

Overview
You and your companions (this is a cooperative game) are on a quest to recover the five lost talismans.  (I think because something bad will happen if you don't.)  Anyway, this game is played over five adventures, each with a specific map layout and goal.  Complete an adventure before time runs out to recover a talisman and move on to the next!

To play, each person will take a hero (wizard, warrior, dwarf, elf, etc.) and that hero's corresponding token bag, containing 7 tokens unique to that hero.  Set up a given adventure based on the instructions, placing the map location pieces and face-down adventure elements (could be enemies or treasure, etc.) in the stated locations.  The heroes are placed on a location, and the game begins!

game example; image from here

The turns are simple:
- read the adventure guide for the scenario's objectives
- roll the die and advance up to that many spaces
- if you stop on a map location with face-down tokens, turn them face up.  If they are enemies,
- draw three tokens at random from your bag and compare your symbols with the enemy.  If your symbols match theirs, you've defeated them.  Draw a reward token at random from the reward bag and place it in your hero bag.
- once you meet an objective, read further for the next
- some dice rolls and hero tokens contain the hourglass symbol; when you get one, advance the hourglass token on the story card
- if you and your team finish everything before the hourglass moves to the end, you win and obtain a talisman, unlocking the next adventure!

Review
I enjoy this game; it's good to play with the children.  It's a simple concept with mild replayability- once you've done an adventure, you'll have some idea how to approach it in the future, but the enemy tokens are always randomly placed, so you never know just what will happen.  The components are okay- the hero bags are nice, I wish the map, figures, and enemies were a little nicer.  We've played through two adventures so far (each takes 20-30 minutes), so it moves quickly and isn't a guarantee- we won the first but lost the second.  There are definitely elements to this I may incorporate into my own game, if I ever make one.  This game goes on clearance every now and then at major online sellers; grab it the next time it does.

Rating: A-