Campaign board games very often have a simple premise: A game experience similar to a pen & paper roleplaying game, but without the need of one player playing the dungeon master / game master. For the person who would otherwise need to do all the DM/GM work, aka me, that is interesting. The downside is that the story is more scripted than in a pen & paper RPG. But different games have different amounts of storytelling, as well as different means. Arydia, which we are currently playing, has all its story on cards, and so there is a certain brevity. Other games have books, and there might or might not be an app with voice acting to read that book to the players.

The last two campaign games we played, Tidal Blades 2 and Arydia, did certainly have a story, but the focus of these games was more on the game mechanics, specifically combat. So we spent most of the time at the table moving our characters around a battlefield and using their skills and abilities to fight various monsters and bosses. And we liked to play that way.

This is where my research into Lands of Evershade resulted in me not buying the game: Several reviewers reported that in Lands of Evershade the percentage of time reading story was much higher than the percentage of time spent in combat. Yes, there is combat, but it is also totally possible in Lands of Evershade to spend a complete session just reading story, making decisions in that story, and never getting into a fight. There will certainly be people who like it that way, but this isn't exactly the style of me and my group.

I think that this also has to do with the fact that we are 4 players in my group. With so many people around the table, it is hard to have a long story sequence without somebody losing attention. I sometimes play games with my wife, and with just 2 players (and her being less interested in tactical combat), a story-heavy game is an easier sell. I could also see myself playing a story-heavy game solo, although I would probably prefer a computer game to a board game for that.