City of Kings - Review

About The City of Kings, from BoardGameGeek:

This world used to be a garden full of life; from the flying Vadora to the deep-dwelling Dwarves – but that was before Vesh came. The world has been lost and only one city remains; the oldest city in the world – and the last refuge for all of us. Now... we fight back. The City of Kings is a co-operative, puzzle-based, fantasy adventure board game for 1 - 4 players in which your character is tasked with exploring the hazardous world, trading for vital resources, and battling your enemies whilst uncovering a story of a world imperiled. You start by choosing one of seven stories or twelve scenarios, then select your hero, with each of the six heroes featuring twelve unique skills and nine customizable stats that allow you to specialize in attacking, healing, tanking, worker management, or whatever you desire. Aside from your hero, you need to manage your workers, who must gather resources in order to trade for new items and build structures to gain powerful bonuses. You explore across the Ageless Realms by turning over tiles, discovering resources, side quests, hazards, building sites, traders and creatures as you continue to power up whilst preparing to enter Azure Rise. At its heart, The City of Kings is a complex puzzle featuring endless strategic battles. Each creature is generated from a pool of spells, characteristics and stats offering over 10,000,000 unique battle situations. There are no dice, damage is persistent, it's up to you to customize your characters and work together to come up with a strategy to defeat whoever stands in your way.