Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 is the best board gaming experience I’ve
ever had. It takes a game that I love
and turns it into something so much more.
The basic premise is there, but it’s expanded upon, updated, changed,
like a shape shifter constantly morphing from one figure to another as the
campaign progresses. It’s a roller
coaster that takes you and your friends through highs and lows and twists and
turns you’ll never expect; it’s exciting, and exhilarating, and exhausting all
the same time. And it’s wonderful.
Playing Pandemic Legacy is like cuddling up with a good book, and like a good book, it starts off fast and furious with surprises in the first few pages, then picks up speed with plot twists and game changes galore. The first few months are page-turners and you’ll find it incredibly hard to stop playing. You’ll want to delve into the next month immediately just to see what happens next.
There are high points of exhilaration as you open a secret
dossier or a box and see something new for the first time. The boxes are like little presents, and you
won’t be able to stop yourself from picking them up and shaking them, wondering
as a group what’s in them and what’s coming next. They’re cardboard crack you can’t put
down. When you do finally get to open a
box and realize the game has fundamentally changed all in an instant, it’s pure
joy. The contents of some boxes even
made us grown women squeal with delight like little girls on Christmas
morning!
The boxes and dossiers are one way Pandemic Legacy draws you
in, but the game finds ways to keep you immersed throughout the whole campaign,
making you truly care about the characters and what happens over the course of play. It does this in simple ways, ways you don’t
even notice at first: naming characters, naming the viruses, and personalizing
the experience through the stickers you apply to cities as they outbreak, and
the character and end-game upgrades you select along the way.
As the game progresses and all of your small decisions add
up, it becomes a part of you, inciting more and more emotion the further vested
you become. Scars are applied to characters with a heavy
heart, and losing a character altogether is devastating. We held a moment of silence when our
Scientist was lost after making it through ¾ of the game – she had served us well
and her presence was sorely missed. The
feeling is the same when cities fall: there’s a collective gasp and the
inevitable, “Ummm guys… we just lost Paris.
(silence) OMG. What are we going
to do now?”
While the initial excitement of the game persists through
the first few months, the story as a whole starts to lag around the
middle. We found some moths a slog to
get through, hampering our enjoyment since we were only able to play a couple
of months in each session. At times, it
was hard to get excited for the next session.
Slowing down the game after a while is necessary, however,
because keeping pace with how quickly the game changes in the beginning is close
to impossible. You need a break to learn
how to adapt, how the newly introduced characters work, and how to approach the
game in new ways. It never slows too
much, though. Just as you get
comfortable and feel like you might actually have things under control, the
game introduces something new that forces you to adjust yet again.
Then, towards the end, it picks up pace once more and the
puzzle of it is intriguing, and the conclusion, satisfying. Regardless
of how your story ends, you’ll sit back with a feeling of accomplishment
knowing you did it, you made it! You and
your friends will be bonded in a way few others are, having been through this
ordeal together, knowing that your collective decisions decided the fate of the
world. It’s an unparalleled experience
in board gaming.
But is Pandemic Legacy really the best game ever made?
As amazing as the experience is, it’s important to remember
that Pandemic Legacy is still Pandemic at its core. Now don’t get me wrong, I love Pandemic! It’s
one of my top games and I like to introduce it to as many people as possible,
but it’s not without its problems.
The biggest is a problem inherent in many co-operative
games: the “alpha player” problem. Pandemic
already had the issue of one player easily dictating the game and ruining any
other player’s ability to make a decision.
The thing with Pandemic Legacy is that the alpha’s power now extends all
the way from pre-game setup to end-game upgrades, with the potential for one or
two loudmouths* to dictate the entire course of your legacy experience.
In addition, the ever-changing rules ended up being a
double-edged sword. On the one hand, the
rules changes keep you invested in the game, always excited for what’s next,
but on the other hand they make the game convoluted and it’s inevitable that
you’ll end up forgetting rules from time to time. For us, after a certain point every time a new
rule was introduced we’d forget an earlier rule. In a way, this ruined the experience for
us.
When playing games you want to play them right, especially legacy
games where what happens in one session carries over to the rest of the game –
but if you forget something simple (eg, forgetting to put down stickers when a
city outbreaks) it cheapens the rest of your experience. It doesn’t feel good to think you “cheated,”
and you’ll always wonder how things would have turned out if you had gotten
that one rule right.
Minor grievances aside, I’m glad I had the opportunity to
play Pandemic Legacy: Season 1. I
haven’t gotten this much enjoyment out of repeatedly playing a game in years,
and heartily recommend it to anyone who has even a spark of interest in the
game.
On the other hand, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I’m
not chomping at the bit to play again anytime soon. I had already cooled on the thrill of opening
boxes and new game changes mid-way through the campaign. Nothing introduced later in the game came
close to the excitement of the first few months of Season 1, and I can’t
imagine what another play-through or another version could do to capture that
same feeling. Pandemic Legacy: Season 2
is coming out later this year and it’ll have to accomplish something truly
innovative, either in game play or progressing the story of Season 1, in order to pique my interest.
Women Like Board Games Rating:
*My husband and I played the game with another couple, and
my friend and I were these loudmouths.
We had to change our tactics at the point where our husbands said they
might as well just go play video games together and we should let them know if
we won or lost that month. On the up
side, changing tactics meant we had to keep our mouths closed and actually
listen, and it turns out the guys had good ideas when they were able to express
them!
**Full Disclosure: I paid for this game with my own, hard earned money**
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