Mechanics: Pick up and Deliver, Tile Placement, Route Building
Players: 2 to 4
Introduction
Some signs of a man rapidly approaching middle age may include weight gain, hair loss, and a sudden infatuation with trains.
Early last year I become mildly obsessed with a video game called Train Valley 2, and ever since then I’ve been more and more intrigued by train-focused board games. While most train games focus heavily on the economics of running a rail company, with the delivery of services being secondary, Maglev Metro removes all the money and fares and sets you to work on the urban design challenge of creating a rail line.
When I saw a used copies of Ted Alspach’s The Castles of Mad King Ludwig and Maglev Metro for sale in my neighbourhood, I just couldn’t resist picking them up. I had played the former previouslu and knew I loved it, but the latter was a mystery to me. If you’ve played Maglev Metro let me know how you felt about it in the comments below!
How to Play
In Maglev Metro, players are competing metro lines trying to collect and deliver robots and passengers to earn the most points. Robots earn you no points, but allow you to unlock upgrade your actions. Delivered passengers are worth points at the end of the game, and can be slotted into your player board to increase the number of points you earn in certain areas.
Maglev Metro‘s dual layer player board holds the entire menu of actions you can take, and the more robots you slot next to each action, the better that action will be. You can lay down tracks, move between stations, pick up and drop off passengers, increase your trains’ capacity, refill stations with passengers, adjust your robots (move them between your action spots, build stations, and turn your train around.
At the beginning of the game, the worker bag only has robots in it, but as the first station of each colour gets built, all the available workers of that colour get poured into the bag. Once all the colours are in the bag and the bag are subsequently emptied, the end of the game is triggered. All players get one more turn, then the points are tallied.
Review
Maglev Metro, designed by Ted Alspach and published by Bezier Games, is a fantastic looking game. The first time I opened the box and pulled out the tiles that get placed on the board and my jaw dropped. I’m used to the 3 mm thick tiles, but these were like 8 mm thick! I thought it was lavish and way overproduced, until we slotted the incredibly thick station tiles into their recessed slots on the centre board and placed our plastic track tiles next to them and realized a station sits flush when you have four line tiles next to it. What seemed unnecessarily extravagant revealed itself to have purpose. At first, we complained that the copper and gold robots were too similar in colour, but Bezier is offering free replacement copper robots, all you need to do is pay for this shipping. I can confirm that the new copper colour works great.
What sets Maglev Metro apart from other train games is the tracks are printed on clear acrylic tiles, which allows players to place their lines on the same tiles. Players can only use their lines, meaning while you can’t piggyback off someone else’s hard work, your opponents can’t explicitly block you from getting to a location.
Our first game of Maglev Metro was on the Manhattan map, which features “The Hub”. The Hub breaks a pretty major rule; you can have as many entrances and exits as you want, coming in and out of The Hub. This allows for players to pivot quickly and dash out to lucrative locations easily, without taking turns to rebuild their line, or turn their whole train around.
The other map available is Berlin. Berlin has more individual stations, but you can only build your metro line in one continuous path. With no options for forking paths, you may need to spend more time moving past stations you don’t want to stop at, or turn around more often in order to get to where you need to be. On this map, I found myself removing the ends of my line and reconstructing them, adjusting to the changing state of our board.
I found Maglev Metro to be a fascinating experience. At first, I was worried, three of the players did the exact same things during their first four turns of the game before finally diverging. Once our paths split, the game got exciting. The robots in Maglev Metro don’t give you any points, but they do make your train run better (and are necessary for unlocking the ability to pick up commuters, who DO give you points). I enjoyed the constrictions the game placed on us, it seemed to tap into our inclination to be as efficient as possible. We didn’t want to turn around, as that takes a whole action, and we raced for every robot, even though we all had robots languishing on our boards on actions that we weren’t taking.
In the end, I found Manhattan’s “The Hub” to be a good tool to introduce us to the game. It would be frustrating playing the Berlin map first, and making critical mistakes right out of the gate, bringing your progress to a screeching halt. Going forward, however, having a hub that lets you build branching paths and embraces short trips seems to be anthesis to the spirit of the game.
Maglev Metro triggers my loss aversion pretty hard. With only two actions per turn, the last thing I want to do is spend one of those actions rearranging my robots on my player mat. I would just so much rather gather more robots to make all my actions more powerful. After all, once I’ve used an action at its full power, it’s painful to purposefully reduce it back down, even if another action benefits. Unfortunately for me, there just aren’t enough robots to go around, so re-arranging the robots on your player board to unlock and improve actions is a must. For some reason this mechanic rubs me the wrong way, instead of it feeling like an action efficiency puzzle, I’m left feeling handcuffed and unable to do the things that I want to do, or used to be able to do.
One of the actions you’re able to do is to refill a station, where you pull random meeples out of a bag and place them on your tile. In my plays of Maglev Metro this meant you either needed to be very lucky and pull the meeple out that you wanted to pick up, or you were just injecting points onto the board for the other players to swoop in and pick up those workers before you could make the necessary modifications to your player board, so you could pick them up.
Maybe it was just back luck, but Maglev Metro isn’t inspiring me to return to its puzzle. While I don’t think I’ll be requesting to play Maglev Metro again, I’d play it if someone else was particularly interested. Granted, I’ve only played it twice at four players, perhaps reducing the player count will result in an experience I enjoy more. A lower player count reduces the number of meeples significantly, so it won’t solve my need to have a completely filled up player board, but I think would result in more opportunities where you could refill a station and be reasonably sure that the meeples you pull out of the bag will be there for you on your next turn.
“Sorry, I don’t have a license to carry anyone other than robots”
Bezier Games recently ran a Kickstarter campaign for the Maglev Maps: Expansion Volume 1, which includes 6 new maps, each with their own unique theme and mechanics. Exploring new maps would certainly encourage me to return to this game, but I’m not sure if they’d address my core issues. If I ever do try the new maps, I’ll be sure to come back and give my updated opinions!
Maglev Metro is a fun game, and if you’re a fan of pick-up and deliver and/or action efficency games, I highly recommend you give this a try. The components are brilliant, the theme is unique, and the two maps offer very different play experiences.
Number of Plays: 6 (since I started recording my gameplays, I have dozens more from 2017 and 2018 that are lost to time)
Game Length: 15 minutes
Mechanics: Hand Management, Hidden Movement
Release Year: 2017
Designer: Tim Fowers
Artist: Ryan Goldsberry
Introduction
How tense can a single deck of cards feel? Can you imbue all the excitement and fear of a get-away chase into a simple little card game? Prior to 2017 I would have been skeptical, but that’s the year Fowers Games published Fugitive, a 43 card two player game, set in the world of Burgle Bros. Thematically, this takes place at the end of a Burgle Bros game with the Rook trying to escape from the Marshall who is hot on his tail.
Fugitive has the distinction of being the first game I ever backed on Kickstarter. I was caught up in the excitement of getting more from the Burgle Bros. world, especially considering Burgle Bros. was both mine and my wife’s favourite co-op game. To this day, it sits high on my top games of all time list.
How to Play
To begin a game of Fugitive, the 0 card is placed in the centre of the table, and the cards with the number 1, 2, 3, and 42 are given to the Fugitive. Then, the rest of the cards are broken into 3 decks, 4 – 14, 15 – 28, and 29 – 41. These decks are shuffled and placed where both players can access them. The Fugitive draws 3 additional cards from the first deck, and 2 more cards from the second deck. The only thing the Marshall gets is a dry-erase board to scribble down notes.
Gameplay alternates between the Fugitive and the Marshall. The Fugitive will draw a card from any deck, then they may place a hideout. The Marshall will draw one card from any deck, then make a guess as to which hideout the Fugitive as placed on the table. If the Marshall wants, they can guess more than one hideout at a time, but if they get any wrong, none of the hideouts are revealed.
Fugitive is a quick two player only game where one player is trying to evade the other. To win, The Marshall needs to discover all the Fugitive’s hideouts. For the Fugitive to win, they must play the #42 card onto the table. The catch is, the Fugitive can only play cards in ascending sequential order, and only able to skip over 3 numbers at a time. At the start of the game with the #0 on the table, the next card played must be a 1, 2, or a 3.
The Fugitive can break this rule by playing additional cards face down when they place a hideout. Each other card will have a number of footprints under the number. The number of footprints played is the number the sequence can be extended. By playing two cards with two footprints each, the Fugitive can make a leap from card #3 to #10! This is a gamble however, should the Marshall discover that hideout, the footprint cards will be revealed as well, giving the Marshall even more information.
Review
Fugitive is a fun game. My favourite memory of this game happened when I first introduced it to my brother. I made him play the Marshall role first. Simply because I was the more experienced player, I managed to escape with relative ease. He quickly proclaimed that the Fugitive role is obviously the easier role to be in, there’s not enough time for the Marshall to find ALL the hideouts!
Then we switched. As the Marshall, I generally employ the road block strategy of stocking up on cards from the last deck, filling my hands with high valued cards. The Fugitive is lulled into a false sense of security, meandering around with half a dozen or more face down, hideous. Once they get to the last third of their escape, it’s too late. With all my previous guesses, I’ve deduced the vast majority of hideouts and correctly guess over half of them with a single turn. They are forced to stall as they need to draw more cards to stock up on footprint icons in order to make the long leap between hideout spots, not realizing the sheer amount of information that I already have. They’ll only have a scant few places to hide, and I already know them all. The trap snaps shut, and the Marshall wins!
To an inexperienced player, both sides feel impossible. As the Marshall, you’re in the dark, it’s difficult to make the logical leaps necessary to deduce how the Fugitive is snaking their way through the city. As the Fugitive, it feels like you have a spotlight on you, every move you make is telegraphed and the Marshall is just toying with you, like a mouse cornered by a cat.
I need to commend Fugitive, as it manages to achieve a great deal of thematic tension in a mere 43 cards and 15 minutes of gameplay. The feeling of momentum, the tension of hiding, and the joy of misdirection are all present in this little game. Much like its spiritual prequel Burgle Bros., adding an appropriate soundtrack can ratchet up the ‘Catch me if you can’ vibe that this game evokes.
The production is also top-notch. The box is styled as a tiny briefcase with a magnetic latch. The cards have a good linen finish, giving them a premium feel and the art on each card is unique and shows the story of the Fugitive enlisting the help of his comrades to evade the Marshall.
I’ve found that Fugitive doesn’t always make a great first impression. A few people I’ve introduced to the game bounced off of it, citing it too stressful, or too difficult to play well right off the bat. It’s anticlimactic when the Fugitive gets fully caught only a few rounds into the game, thanks to some lucky guesses by the Marshall. It’s a shame because I really enjoy this game. Unfortunately because it’s a 2 player only game, it doesn’t hit my table very often, as it’s quite rare that I sit down at a table with only a single opponent. That being said, it’s a great game that I would happily play at any opportunity.
Artist: Jacqui Davis, David Montgomery, and Beth Sobel
Release Year: 2015
Mechanics: Worker placement
Players: 1-6
Introduction
Viticulture has a storied past. It started out as a project on Kickstarter way back in 2012, long before the platform hosted a deluge of tabletop games that now makes up almost a third of the platform’s revenue.
Once Viticulture was successfully funded and released into the public, the revisions began. The second edition introduced Grande workers and other mechanics are hard to imagine the game without now. The 2014 expansion, Tuscany, ballooned the game by including several new mechanics such as Mamas and Papas that give players asymmetric starting positions, unique buildings that you could build on your farm that provided a unique action only you could use, an extended game board, special workers, arboriculture where you could plant and harvest tomatoes, apples, and olives, a cheese expansion, and even a module that has you offering gifts to a retired Capo. Needless to say, it was a lot.
Not all workers are created equal
In 2015 Viticulture Essential Edition (EE) came out, incorporating some of the most popular modules from the Tuscany expansion into the base game, and throwing the rest away. In 2016 Viticulture: Tuscany Essential Edition was released, featuring 3 more modules from the original Tuscany expansion (Extended boards, structure cards, and special workers). This is the version I’ve played the most, and will be focusing on today.
How to Play
Viticulture is a worker placement game where you’re competing against your fellow vintners as you each grow your meagre vineyards into bustling and prosperous farms. The game begins with an inheritance, your Mama and Papa bequeath you the resources that will lay the foundation for your farm. Each player places their rooster pawn on the turn order track, and then in player order, you can either place a meeple on a space to take the corresponding action, or pass.
It’s not uncommon for people to pass entire seasons, on the Extended board there are 4 seasons, and you only start with 3 meeples. When you pass, you’re unable to place any more meeples in the current season. All those who haven’t passed can continue to play. Once all players have passed, you progress to the next season, and resume taking actions in player order.
As players pass during winter, they recover their workers, age their grapes and their wines, collect any royalties they may have accrued, and choose their spot on the turn order track for the next year. On and on, players take their actions throughout the years until someone hits 25 victory points. At that point, the end of the game is triggered. Players finish the current year, and the player with the highest score is the winner.
Review
Viticulture: Essentials Edition begins by asking its players what actions they want to ignore. Players start with 3 workers, half their maximum capacity, and the main board contains 16 action spots. With only 3 actions available to you in the first year, you need to assess what your Mama and Papa left you to make the best start. Your inheritance may have included some grapes that you can plant on the very first turn, while other farms feature a nice set of trellis, allowing you to spend more time drawing grape cards, hoping you’ll find a variety that can take advantage of your existing infrastructure. No matter what you choose, the race is on!
Viticulture feels like it should be an engine building game. You need money to build up your farm to be more efficient. Money will allow you to train workers, build more supporting structures and bigger cellars, so you can age and produce wine at iridium quality (Cough I’ve been playing too much Stardew Valley cough) and sell it for a huge profit. Because Money is so constraining at the beginning, players may be fooled into prioritizing coin generating actions, thinking their early investments will pay off in dividends, it’s a trap! Excess money isn’t worth anything in the end, and before long you’ll have more money in your coffers than you can reasonably use. Because Viticulture ends the year someone achieves their 25th victory point, good players should approach this as an action efficiency game. There’s no need to plant vines that you’ll never harvest, or build a windmill after all your fields are sown. Each action should be in service of furthering your goal of getting those 25 victory points.
Unfortunately, this is where the luck comes in. Viticulture features 4 decks of cards. Grapes, Orders, and Spring and Summer visitors. The grape and order cards work together, dictating the value of the grape as they come off the vine and goes into the mash tub. You use grapes in the mash tub to create wine. The higher quality the grape, the better the resulting wine will be. The order cards simply request 1 – 3 wines of varying types and qualities to be delivered to the docks in winter, and offer between 1 and 6 victory points, along with some persistent royalties which will generate some coins every year thereafter.
Making a few bottles of very good wine should work out, right?
Should you happen to draw grapes that require a support structure (the trellis and the irrigation tower), you’ll need to choose if it’s worth building that structure before you can plant that grape, or if you should take another draw from the deck. The difficulty is, other players will be drawing from that deck too, making that action space coveted at the beginning of the game, and if you happen to draw another grape card that has the same restrictions, then 2 turns have now been wasted instead of just one. Thankfully, Viticulture features the Grande worker, who can take any spot, even if all the action spaces are full. This feature really helps alleviate the pain of having the other players take the action spot that you desperately wanted to take
The wine order cards are similar, in that luck can swing the game. It’s unfortunate if you happen to have a very strong red wine production farm, and you find yourself continually drawing white and sparkling wine orders. You can continue to draw cards to mitigate this luck, but in an action efficiency game, every wasted action hurts. It’s difficult to keep up with players who are blessed with lucky draws.
The visitor cards are a different kind of luck. Many will offer benefits and bonuses that can propel your farm higher and faster if used correctly. A great visitor can save you a whole year of actions, allowing you to convert resources that would normally take two or three whole actions to do so, or providing a discount on a structure that you desperately needed, but were one or two coins short. Some visitors are great early in the game, and it stinks when you draw them when you’re approaching the end of the game.
Hope I don’t need to make a rose or sparkling wine any time soon…
I’m not always against randomness in games. The amount of cards available does make Viticulutre feel more varied and replayable. I just end up with a bitter taste in my mouth when I see lady luck bless my opponents while I’m stuck with a handful of useless cards. Milling the deck is not optimal play here.
I’m perpetually fascinated by iterative board game designs. I find it hard to consider a specific edition of a game in a vacuum without considering all the previous versions that came before it. It’s also interesting to consider how the wider board game playing audience reacts to these changes. When two people talk about their experiences playing Viticulture, their experience might not be the same. Once you find your favourite way to play, it can be hard to deviate.
I ran into this ‘problem’ after playing Viticulture: Essential Edition with Tuscany Essential Edition half a dozen times with my friends, but then tried playing the classic version of Viticulture on BoardGameArena and was struck by how significantly the game has changed since its original release. Without going into the nitty-gritty details of all the differences, Viticulture Essential Edition with Tuscany Essential Edition is my favourite way to play. It feels smoother, more varied, and I’ve had a better experience overall. While you don’t need the expansion content to enjoy Viticulture, there may be some modules that sing for you specifically, and it’s easy enough to introduce new players to any amount of the available expansion content. It all integrates seamlessly, to the point where I was surprised to discover all the things that weren’t included in the original game.
I enjoy Viticulture. The setting of making wine in a Tuscan farm feels relaxing and unique. Aside from blocking action spaces, a few of the visitor cards offer ways to interact with your opponents. Either tasking them with giving you something (like 2 cards each), or offering a small benefit to each other player and rewarding you with points for each player who takes advantage. I like this kind of interaction, and I’m glad there’s no way for players to steal wine from each other, or destroy things they’ve built. In a race game, it’s more fun to go faster than your opponents rather than win by dragging them all down into the mud.
Viticulture: Essentials Edition with Tuscany: Essentials Edition is a great medium weight euro worker placement game. There’s mild interaction and luck, which may or may not detract from the experience. It’s smooth, inoffensive, and the setting is great for introducing new adults into the hobby. While this isn’t a MUST-HAVE game for me, I’m glad it exists, and I’m glad someone in my gaming group is quite keen on playing it, as I generally have a good and relaxing time while playing this game.
Artists: Tim Baron, Matthew Ebisch, James Lyle, Kaysha Siemens, Adam Stoak
Release Year: 2014
Mechanics: Cooperative, Set Collection, Hand Management
A copy of Kings of Israel was provided by the publisher for review purposes
Introduction
There’s a knee-jerk reaction that happens every time someone mentions that a piece of media is ‘Christian’. Memories of kitschy messages layered on sub-par productions, fictionalized idyllic stories that lean too heavily into prosperity for the good guys and a lack of danger or consequences is generally what comes to my mind. Some people have complex and traumatic experiences with the church or religion, and will refuse to engage with that media, because no one likes trying to be bombarded with propaganda, especially if they’ve already rejected the message a dozen times.
I am of the Christian faith, but I generally rebel against the media that caters to my religion. It always feels lacking, more of trying to push an agenda or message, rather than focusing on good story for the sake of art. But when the opportunity arose to get my hands on a couple of Christian themed board games, my curiosity was piqued. Are board games subject to the same criticisms that I have for other Christian medias? Read on to find out
How to Play
Kings of Israel is a cooperative game set in the Northern Kingdom of Israel during the reign of its kings up until Israel’s destruction by Assyria. Players represent a line of prophets that are trying to stem the influx of sin and dismantle the golden idols, while also trying to build enough altars to win the game.
A round of Kings of Israel has four phases. The King’s Godliness phase will either bestow a blessing on the players, or a punishment, depending on if the current sitting king is good or evil. After dealing with the event for the round, the Sin Increases phase has players revealing location cards, and distributing black sin cubes. Should a location receive a third sin cube, they also erect a golden idol. If players ever need to put out a sin cube, or an idol, but there are none in the supply, they lose the game. After the sin has been distributed, the Prophet’s Work phase begins. Each player gets four actions. They may move, remove sin or idols, draw resource cards, build an altar, make a sacrifice at an altar, or give resources to another player. Once all players have taken a turn, the End of Round Phase has the starting player card passed clockwise, and the timeline token moves to the next king in chronological order. If the timeline token hits the bottom of the track, Assyria invades and destroys Israel, resulting in a loss for the prophets.
The only way the players can win is if they manage to erect altars. 7 in a 2 player game, 8 in a 3 player game, and 9 in a four player game. There is also a 7 game campaign in the back of the book if you want to challenge yourself to walking up that scaling difficulty ladder.
Review
“Biblical Pandemic” is how I described Kings of Israel when inviting people to come play. The similarities are obvious, there’s plague cubes spreading across the map (although Kings of Israel only features one colour of cubes), and players have 4 actions on their turn where they are trying to move and clear the cubes from the board. What separates Kings of Israel from Pandemic is the resource cards, and how players win. Instead of drawing two cards at the end of your turn like you do in Pandemic, Kings of Israel has you spending your actions to draw cards. Players need to decide if they want to draw cards to the resources they need, or focus their time in clearing sin cubes and dismantling the idols. The former is the path to victory, but ignoring the latter will result in a loss for the prophets.
Kings of Israel is fast to get started, and quick to play. All the decks of cards get shuffled and are ready to roll, no need to separate out cards to ensure an even distribution. This means it’s both quick and random. In my most recent game, I drew a card that had me reshuffle the discard and put it all back on top with only 4 cards in the discard pile, putting each of those locations in danger of getting an idol almost immediately. With a bit of luck and some great blessings, we found it not too difficult to get out of tough situations, making the randomness feel fair.
Beyond the set-up for the decks, each round is quick too. You draw and deal with the blessing or punishment, draw location cards to spread sin, then each player does 4 actions. After all players have taken a turn, the first player card is passed to the left, and you do it all again. As with most cooperative games, if you have players who prefer to discuss every possible option, the game can drag on too long. The rule book says for an “easy mode”, players can play with their cards on the table, but there are no restrictions on communication on what’s in your hand. I’m hard-pressed to figure out why you wouldn’t just play with open hands anyway, as you could just ask “anyone got gold?” each round. Playing with the cards face up on the table just removes a small memory aspect from the game.
The goal of the game is to build altars. To build an altar you need to play a gold, a wood, and a stone card from your hand. There are only 6 of each of those cards in the resource deck, meaning you’ll need to get through the entire resource deck at least once in order to win the game. This lead to players taking their entire turn to just draw cards, milling the deck, trying to run the deck out, so we can reshuffle and get the resources we need from the discard pile into our hands. This is doubly painful when the punishment cards destroy build altars, or force you to discard one of the necessary resources from your hand. I don’t particularly like it when the boring play is the smart play. Sure, you can distract yourself to clear some cubes that may cause a problem next round, but if you don’t mill that deck, you can’t build all the altars, and you’ll lose anyway. Thankfully, that’s not often the case and may only come up as you get down to the final handful of turns.
Let’s talk re-playability. There are about 14 full rounds in the game. During that time you’ll draw 4 or 5 blessing cards, and between 10 and 15 sin and punishment cards. Some blessing cards are permanent buffs that can really alter how you approach the puzzle, and the order that the punishment cards can cascade pain upon your game. Add into this 9 ability cards, and I’d argue that the variability in Kings of Israel is fairly high, even though the goal is always the same. Each game will feel different and have you using different tactics to keep the forces of sin at bay, which is something I’m looking forward to.
Now is where I come back around to the theme. I really appreciate that Kings of Israel doesn’t proselytize. At no point does it beat you over the head with scripture, or force the virtues of the church down your throat. The flavour text on every card does contain a relevant verse from the bible, but it’s incredibly small and serves to enhance the theme. I also enjoy that the game doesn’t turn God into a vending machine, doling out blessings and prosperity at every turn. Instead, it shows both sides, his blessings and his wrath. The prophets aren’t universally loved and granted unrealistic divine protection, but are persecuted. To me, this more accurately reflects my experience with the bible, having read it cover to cover a few times. There’s a lot of violence and wrath in that book that seems to be skipped over during Sunday morning sermons and in most Christian media. It’s plain to me that designer Lance Hill has done his homework and handled the theme very respectfully.
As I said before, Kings of Israel is Biblical Pandemic. That phrase alone will tell you enough if you should seek it out or not. I’m looking forward to the next time I have my friends of faith over, as I have no doubt this game will be a hit with them. I think I would have been even more enthusiastic had I played it back in 2014 before the other Pandemic spin-off games Fall of Rome and Rising Tide came out. Kings of Israel is quick and easy to play, making it a great game to play with any collection of people, whether it be you and your kids, or a youth group. Funhill Games also produced some Bible studies if you want to teach more about the Kings, locations, or prophets that are featured in Kings of Israel.
I am so disappointed by Mario Strikers: Battle League. I’m so thankful that I borrowed this from the library and didn’t actually spend any of my hard earned money for this game.
This game starts with such promise. The training mode shows all kinds of cool skills that could theoretically raise the skill ceiling and make this such a great experience. There’s a limited number of characters in the game, but the gear they include allow you to tweak their stats to tailor to your game play style. The stat changes provided by gear is net-zero though, every point added to a stat takes away and equal number of points from another stat, so there isn’t a good reason to dive into it unless you specifically want to make a character over powered in a single stat at the cost of all the others. It’s not an interesting, exciting, or engaging aspect of the game.
No story or challenge mode?
The first round of cups are fairly easy, but fun. Each cup pits you against teams that specifically focuses on one of the 5 stats (strength, speed, shooting, passing, and technique), and the last cup is the “best all around teams”. I should mention, each game is 4 minutes long, and it’s a double elimination tournament with 4 teams. Assuming you don’t lose any games, you’ll finish a cup after only 12 minutes of game play. Of course, it takes a bit longer than 12 minutes with the Hyper Strike animations (which are gorgeous, but repetitive), and the highlight reels, if you choose to watch those.
After beating all the cup battles, you unlock ‘Galactic Mode’, which raises the difficulty significantly. Unfortunately this is where the game breaks down for me. All the opponent AIs are brutal and violent. They’re constantly tackling all of your characters, and are adept at intercepting passes. As a consolation prize for getting tackled when you don’t have the ball, you get an item, which is useful. However, because all four of the opponent AI are turned way up, it highlights how absolutely brain-dead your AI controlled team-mates are. It wasn’t uncommon after two passes for all four of my characters to be tackled, leaving the opposition with a clear shot on my goal. It’s also not uncommon for your teammates to just stand around when you have the ball, not getting clear from the opponents, giving you no opportunity to pass without just handing over the ball.
woo
Mario Strikers Battle League seemingly wants you to control all 4 of your characters together, but doesn’t give you options to do so. The change character button doesn’t cycle through all the characters, but swaps between the two characters that are closest to the ball. When I finally beat all 6 Galactic Cup tournaments, I wasn’t filled with pride. I felt hollow. Empty in my heart where my rage and frustration had been sitting for the last hour. Never did I feel like it was my skill that won the Galactic Cups, just luck. I got the right items at the right time, happened to get a break away, and the same charged shot that had been blocked before now just happens to go into the net.
I pine for the previous games. Maybe it’s the nostalgia of my youth, but I remember these games being properly difficult. Where when I lost I wasn’t mad at the AI, but knew that it was my own lack of skill that lost the game. That feeling pushes me to get better, and when I finally overcome the challenge, I’m elated. In Battle League, it’s just frustration and luck.
I’ve won, but I feel empty
What about unlocks? As I said above, once you beat the first 6 cups, you unlock the Galactic Mode, and you unlock the Bushido Armor for each character. Again, Gear is a weak unlock, as it’s a zero-sum benefit.
After you beat each Galactic Mode cup, your only reward is the palette swapped trophy. No new armor, no recognition, and no further game play to explore. Sure, there’s the online mode where you can play against people online, but that’s doesn’t count as content in my eyes. Mario Strikers: Battle League as it stands now, can be completed in 3 to 5 hours of game play. Banging your head against the wall of unfair difficulty can pad out the game time, but it still only took me a total of 5 hours to beat every cup twice cups and explore ALL that this game has to offer solo players, which frankly, is unacceptable.
Actually, doing the math, if I wanted to unlock all the gear for all the characters, I’d need 32,000 coins. So, I technically could keep grinding out matches until I earn enough currency to do so, but AGAIN, gear is nearly pointless. Why even bother?
I feel you, Yoshi
My recommendation: Rent or borrow if you’re really interested. There is not enough content to warrant paying full price, and after just a few hours I’m sure you’ll be hanging up your cleats to do anything else.
