by metaridley18
Ugh, I wish I had thought to ask this question before my group got the game. The game tells a story, a bad one, in a cliche and poor way that totally disregards player actions.
....
Says the guy who gave Betrayal at the House on the Hill an 8. :what:
Because "I like to play it. Probably I will suggest it and I will never turn down a game."
Also that game doesn't promise a compelling story and isn't number 1 on Boardgamegeek. It's just a fun stupid little filler stop that has some neat gimmicks. Not sure what that has to do with PL though?
Not sure why Legacy being number one on the ratings would affect your rating of it or Betrayal. And it seems odd that you rated Legacy a 3 because "it ignores player actions and has a bad story" but didn't at all seem to mind those things in Betrayal which is even more random and has even less coherent stories.
I'm not saying you need to like Legacy. I just found the reasoning for why you hated it to be kind of odd, just my opinion.It's my expectations for a Legacy game. On Risk: Legacy, there's a sticker you break when you open the box that says "Note: What's done can never be undone." There's a contract that the players sign that says "We, the undersigned, take responsibility for the wars that are about to start, the decisions we will make, and the history we will write. Everything that is going to happen is going to happen because of us." And then that's TRUE. NOTHING happens unless the players trigger it. The whole story arises from the game play. And it was AMAZING.
Pandemic has nothing to do with the players. A monkey could lose 24 games in a row and the only thing that changes would be a paragraph epilogue based on your score. The store plays itself without you, the upgrades are not compelling, the game play never changes based on what you do. In Risk: Legacy, the game board changes fundamentally and you feel like everything happened because of what you did.
Betrayal at the House on the Hill wasn't selling this experience. It's selling a filler that is random fun and resets every game after a neat story, or a so-so story, or even some kind of cool stories. Pandemic Legacy is trying to live up to the expectations set by Risk Legacy and it failed. It doesn't engage the players, player decisions have very little meaning, and the story that they use to try and make up for lack of player engagement doesn't do the job well.
I'll admit that a lot of it were my expectations. With it being so hyped and being a follow up to one of the most unique gaming experiences I have had in Risk Legacy, I expected it to be really cool and expand on that experience. However, it didn't live up to the hype, it didn't expand on the previous Legacy game, and it didn't even meet my basic standards for an entertaining game. I can't fault the game for not living up to my expectations if they were unrealistic, but I can fault the community for hyping what is clearly a mediocre experience that doesn't even learn from the only other Legacy game out there.
