Dragonfire is a deck-building game, which means that you start each game with just some very basic cards, but you can buy better cards over the course of the game. In this case the game is D&D flavored, so the classes, abilities, spells, items, and monsters are all from 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. And to complete that theme, there is a campaign with 5 adventures, getting you from level 1 to level 4.

That sounds very nice, until you realize that "level" doesn't mean the same thing in Dragonfire than it does in Dungeons & Dragons. In D&D a level 4 character would have about 3 times more hit points than a level 1 character, and have not only more, but also more powerful spells and abilities than a level 1. In Dragonfire, a level 4 character still has the same hit points, and same cards/abilities/spells than a level 1. You only gained one or two "features", with very, very weak effects. You also might have gotten some "magic items", but the common ones you are most likely to have are single use only, and also rather weak. Even the uncommon items aren't all that powerful. Which means that at the start of a level 4 adventure, you are not really stronger than you were at the start of the level 1 adventure. But as the challenges get significantly harder, the game is much harder at higher level than at lower level. That isn't much fun, since the game is hard to start with.

The polar opposite to this is the previous big campaign board game we played, Roll Player Adventures. In RPA, the challenges went up slower in difficulty than your power progression, to the point that the latter adventures of the campaign were a complete pushover. Moreover, Roll Player Adventures generally works on a "fail forward" model, where you still succeed in your adventure even if you fail a lot of challenges. Dragonfire has more of a "cascading failure" model, where an unlucky draw in the first round that summons more monsters is very likely to presage a failure to complete the adventure.

I think I will do some solo games of Dragonfire, playing 4 characters, and see if I can balance the game better with some house rules. The "cascading" nature of the game makes it hard to find a good balance, because you might either experience "cascading failure" or "cascading success".

Overall I like Dragonfire. It turns out that the game is out of print, with several expansions not available at all anymore. I still found a few scattered remnants at different online outlets, so I ordered an additional campaign, an adventure, and some more treasures. The content in the base box is a bit thin for repeated play, but I think that with a few expansions and house rules this could become quite a good game.