by celsimor
Hi, this is my first review of a board game, but after finishing Pandemic legacy Season 2, I felt compelled to just write a review about it, part to finalize the game, and part to share my experiences with others. Especially since I have seen many reviews giving Pandemic Legacy Season 2 a "Not as Great" review. I often see what they mean, but consider it not a bug, but a feature! Here I will try to explain why. I will avoid spoilers that are not known after playing the introduction game and reading the initial (non-stickered) rule book / game board.In many ways, pandemic legacy Season 2 is the inverse of a normal pandemic, and in extension of Season 1. This already visible at the start in the story and the characters you play. In a normal pandemic, you start the game as experts, heroes in their world of diseases. In pandemic, you start not as heroes, but as a nobody that does not want to stand idly by while the world is crashing down around you. You start as an pretty much empty character in a world that, as you look at the board, is not on the brink of collapse, but is in the process of collapsing, stretched over the year. As such, in my opinion, Season 2 plays very differently compared to S1.
Without revealing anything about the plot, I will say that at the start, the story is not about curing whatever diseases there might be in the world, but just about survival. This makes the story and feel of the game very different. I remember in S1, i felt almost continuously "in control". There were disasters popping up in the world, but we would handle them. We had the expertise, and often had a clear goal, to bring the world back into order, back to normal. In S2, i felt myself mostly searching for some way to avoid the impending collapse of the world, often without having a clear next step what to do next. The game provides win conditions, but they do not feel to really contribute to the overall survival. So you have to change the world where the "current coarse" is collapse, but are a bit grabbing blindly around. You have to recon the world, to avoid the seemingly unavoidable collapse into oblivion. So this was not so much being in control, as searching for hope. And a crucial part of this setting, is not knowing what exactly will help.
Now to go into the mechanics of the game, these too are the inverse of normal pandemic and reflect the logic of the story. As discussed elsewhere, in normal pandemic, the game add diseases to the board, and as a player you have to removed them. You are REacting to the outbreaks of disease. You handle them, move on, you are the one trying to return to the status quo in a world that is changing.
In season 2, the base mechanic is that you are not removing diseases from the board, but rather in the first place, are adding supplies to the board to prevent diseases. So you can NOT just react, you HAVE TO act and plan. But this is far from all. Since you cannot accept the status quo, you must build your way to a better one, or at least avert imminent extinction. So over the months, you will perform recon and other actions that will expand the board, continue the story, and expand the rules. And this is also where the often cited problem of S2 starts a bit.
I have read some complaints about the story and progress in the game, and part of me has to agree with those facts. But I shall make an important note on this: in S2, the game and story in a big part evolves based on the actions of the gamers. In S1, the story and game mechanics were mostly steadily progressing in a month by month basis, because the game was gated by the months, and each month you had a clear new goal to react to. This is significantly less the case in S2, where the story progresses based in a large part on user actions. The game does not give you a clear "overarching" goal to survive, it just encourages you to basically expand and discover. It is often not clearly stated where or what you need to discover, but I do believe the game often offers you clues on what to do, just not says so outright. This lack of a clear story goal can feel problematic, but fits in the general game feel.
And I have to say, each time we discovered something new, there was a sense of excitement and dread, because sometimes you will find some small or large benefit, but sometimes you will find additional difficulties and problems. And this makes this game so rewarding and unique. But you know you have to keep exploring. The fact that for a large part, the gamers are discovering the world and rules, rather than just getting them imposed on you (act vs react), feels daunting, but is very rewarding in itself.
But this way of progress has the issue that if a team is not progressing enough, or the deck is really against a team, that it definitely can feel that the game is quite punishing. And I too often wanted a bit more "guidance" in the game at some points, to get an idea of what we should be doing. We got punished during one of the months for being too slow, but we did not even realize that we should have done what the game expected us to do. I believe that in several cases, there are some elements where the game can turn quite punishing for a while, if you're not "on track" sort to say. Additionally, we did some actions, that in retrospect made our lives more difficult. But this is part of what this game is about. Trying to do what is best, and living with the consequences.
This is in essence game about discovery, interpreting, and a lot of planning. First you discover new places, and add new parts to the story. But second, you should regularly try to interpret what the different parts of the story are telling you. In retrospect several of the story elements we discovered early contained hints and pointers to what would be expected during the following months. Sometimes we got it, and acted on it, sometimes we got it and did nothing, often things become clear in retrospect, sometimes by stumbling on success, or feeling the pain of not doing something, or doing something wrong. So S2 is not just a game about fighting disease, it's also a tiny bit a game of detective, where you need to figure out what your next step should be.
And lastly, it is a game about planning. You need to not only plan how you defeat the current month, but almost during the entire game, you are (or in my opinion at least should be) wondering how you can improve your chances for the months after. And I don't just mean in the end phase of the game. Each turn of the game, you can take actions that have an impact on each and every game that follows. And many of your actions will have a significant impact till the end of december! So you are not only considering how you can win the current month, but also make the next months (probably) easier. And for this, you have many and evolving tools at your disposal, so you are continuously weighing decisions one against the other. In addition to the clues provided by the game, you step by step work on a plan to avoid the end of the world. And it is this combination of discovery, interpretation and planning which gives S2 a very rewarding feel when your actions sometimes pay off. The reach of the impact that your actions have, can sometimes be a bit of a burden to consider, but it does add a depth to the game that I have not seen in any other game. And to put your mind at ease, most of the time, you can still just work on the goals of the current month.
So to sum up:
Plus points:
* (Mostly) player driven evolution of the game
* Acting & planning instead of reacting
* A game playing as an explorer, a detective, and an engineer.
Minus points:
* The current goals are very generic, and the "underlying story goals" are sometimes unclear.
* Can get punishing if you're running behind a bit.
Some pointers:
* Read everything you find carefully. While it sounds trivial, they contain more than just a story. They contain hints to what to do in addition to your mandatory goals.
* Start each game after januari with briefly thinking of "extra team goals", based on the clues provided. It really helps to have some extra goals (that do not count for game win conditions of course) to focus your efforts each month.
* Hurry slowly. A lot of stuff needs to get done, but sometimes doing too much may have unforeseen adverse effects too!
Final thoughts:
This is trully a thinking and planning game, where each and every turn you need to weigh doing actions for the benefit of the current game, vs the benefit of future games. And need to weigh doing something that is helpful now, vs later. And this puzzle I found tought provoking during the entire play session.