by ropya
Barry Kendall wrote:
Keep the game. KEEP IT. Play it. With some regularity.
Saw the review. Singularly unimpressed. I wonder if the sheer quantity of reviews expected of these folks has begun to overwhelm either their ability to be thorough, or their gaming tastes in terms of accessibility/depth/design convention (or both). It's difficult for me to conclude that they have done more than scrape the surface of RWs.
In our experience, this is one of the most vivid, replayable, and well thought-out fantasy-realm empire-scale games ever published, a truly epic experience.
There is something of a learning curve--say, a game or two--but once the system is grasped as a unified whole, wow, what a great adventure it is!
The card-resolution system is clean and fast. We were fortunate to stumble upon a marvelous physical-component enhancer (and preserver). Tobacco-card-sized hard-sleeve card protectors (which come in packs of ten with both a soft and a hard sleeve) perfectly fit the small cards in RWs and give almost a domino-like quality to them. The cards are too small to "riffle" shuffle anyway, so it doesn't matter if they are significantly thicker with the hard-plastic protection, but they'll last forever this way (and since they're used so much in each game, that is a very good thing).
The "heroes" are a useful adjunct to play, not a game-winner all by themselves but certainly a useful element of an empire's strategy, and they add a "close-in" aspect of the game that relieves the broad-brush treatment of empires-in-conflict without bogging the game down.
The "neutrals" (local denizens such as Dragons) add both an "encounter" aspect and nice variety to force composition and capability, and further enhance replayability.
I'm happy to own the original (plus expansion, nice for completists and major fans but not essential) with the great mountains. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. DO IT AGAIN SOMEBODY! My only gripe in the mapboard regard is nothing to fill in "holes" (I'm making my own--"foggy expanses,""impassable mountains,""deadly swamps", just for fun and aesthetics).
I could wish for some coastlines and a seagoing capability option, but that's not vital for play. I wouldn't mind an expansion with two new races (Dwarves and Horse Raiders come to mind) but will happily play this 'til I'm senile just as it is.
Play it, enjoy it, savor it, and ignore this particular opinion from those guys. Lately I've found myself disagreeing with them more often, and I find I'm not the only one shaking my head at some of their reviews--some, not all, but still, they're not always matching up to my experiences with some titles.
Saw the review. Singularly unimpressed. I wonder if the sheer quantity of reviews expected of these folks has begun to overwhelm either their ability to be thorough, or their gaming tastes in terms of accessibility/depth/design convention (or both). It's difficult for me to conclude that they have done more than scrape the surface of RWs.
In our experience, this is one of the most vivid, replayable, and well thought-out fantasy-realm empire-scale games ever published, a truly epic experience.
There is something of a learning curve--say, a game or two--but once the system is grasped as a unified whole, wow, what a great adventure it is!
The card-resolution system is clean and fast. We were fortunate to stumble upon a marvelous physical-component enhancer (and preserver). Tobacco-card-sized hard-sleeve card protectors (which come in packs of ten with both a soft and a hard sleeve) perfectly fit the small cards in RWs and give almost a domino-like quality to them. The cards are too small to "riffle" shuffle anyway, so it doesn't matter if they are significantly thicker with the hard-plastic protection, but they'll last forever this way (and since they're used so much in each game, that is a very good thing).
The "heroes" are a useful adjunct to play, not a game-winner all by themselves but certainly a useful element of an empire's strategy, and they add a "close-in" aspect of the game that relieves the broad-brush treatment of empires-in-conflict without bogging the game down.
The "neutrals" (local denizens such as Dragons) add both an "encounter" aspect and nice variety to force composition and capability, and further enhance replayability.
I'm happy to own the original (plus expansion, nice for completists and major fans but not essential) with the great mountains. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. DO IT AGAIN SOMEBODY! My only gripe in the mapboard regard is nothing to fill in "holes" (I'm making my own--"foggy expanses,""impassable mountains,""deadly swamps", just for fun and aesthetics).
I could wish for some coastlines and a seagoing capability option, but that's not vital for play. I wouldn't mind an expansion with two new races (Dwarves and Horse Raiders come to mind) but will happily play this 'til I'm senile just as it is.
Play it, enjoy it, savor it, and ignore this particular opinion from those guys. Lately I've found myself disagreeing with them more often, and I find I'm not the only one shaking my head at some of their reviews--some, not all, but still, they're not always matching up to my experiences with some titles.
Source of those sleeves good sir?