One Hundred Torii Diverging Paths Expansion Review

boardgamequest.com:

Recently I had told Tony, “I’ve been inspired by One Hundred Torri, and I’ve decided to embrace a Japanese-inspired philosophy when it comes to living my best life.”

“Oookaaay…” he responded slowly.

“There’s so much wisdom in that philosophy with aphorisms like ‘Fall down seven times but get up eight’, ‘Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid of standing still’, and ‘Learn to love the sound of your feet walking away from things that are not meant for you.’ It really resonates with me.”

Tony sighed and replied, “I’m happy for you but you still have to finish the review on that game you’ve been complaining about.”

Meanwhile, follow the sounds of my feet toward something I do like as they walk through the serene gardens in One Hundred Torii’s expansion Diverging Paths. This expansion adds four modules representing different shrines you can incorporate into the base game either one at a time or multiple shrines at a time up to all four included for the most challenging experience. There are also new Gambler and Pilgrim characters that can be used either with the shrines or with the original base game.

For purposes of this review, I’m going to focus on one shrine at a time and will point to Tony’s review for an overview of how the base game plays. The expansion comes with eight new path tiles with four each having a blue and yellow back. Each shrine is placed with one of those two sets with the arrows pointing away from the start tile. At the end of the four tiles place the shrine you’ve selected to use. Each of the shrines has its own setup instructions which, for the sake of brevity, I’ll skip over to focus on how they augment the game.

Fushimi Inari This is the most straightforward shrine as it just adds another token