HI there, and welcome today to my review of Key Largo. As with the handful of other reviews I've written I'm not going to spend any time here describing game mechanics. That's been done already in another review and it's a waste of time to both write and READ that information twice. Instead I'm going to give you my opinion and thoughts on the game as that's really what a review is all about anyway now innit?

I'd like to address the components first off. The infamous board. It sucks. Yes the idea of the non-rectangle board is neat but what happened is the die-cut cardboard does cause severe warping to all four sections of the board. Now my "puzzle piece" that holds the 4 sections together did stay in place and I never had an issue with the boards moving around but it was still awkward to put your boat on a spot and have it leaning this way or that because of the warping.

Speaking of the boats they look cool and are very nice plastic models…very nice indeed except they are really quite difficult to make stand up. The "flat part" of the hull is so small in comparison to the rest of the really large boat figure it simply isn't enough surface to easily balance the boat. YES worse than the Pirate's Cove boats! In addition the mold seam of the fig runs right through the middle of this small flat part creating a slight imbalance to the boat too. Couple all this with warped boards and you literally end up just grabbing your boat and laying it on it's side in the place you want to navigate to.

Great ideas for the components no doubt about that but terrible implementation here. Now that I've got that out of the way I can move on to a real part of a review.

This game get's heavily referenced to Pirate's Cove…and why not? Paul Randles only other game was Pirate's Cove. Here's the deal there are similarities but then are there extreme similarities between Antike and Imperial just because they both use the rondel mechanic and are the same designer? So with Key Largo players secretly select TWO locations to travel to each turn then resolve the results. Similar yes but not that's very basic and doesn't go much beyond that to compare it to Pirate's Cove. Granted this game is considered to be a sequel of sorts in that you are diving to the ships that sunk here years ago but that's about it.

When 2 players meet at the same location for instance there is no battle between them to see who gets the spot. Each player is able to freely take actions at the location. What happens however is the more players that show up to the same spot typically means the prices go up making it more expensive to procure the items/services you needed. I will say they were nice with the selling off to the tourists section in that one item goes down in value with more and one item goes up in value with more players showing (and a third that remains constant) so you can always make some cash but maybe you'll have to switch your plan this turn

In this way I'd say that KL is a little more friendly than PC. Have you ever played PC and it just seems like the game itself decided to pick on one player over and over again? This doesn't happen here. That player may be lower on money than he/she anticipated but they can always purchase the goods/services they were looking to get no matter how many other players showed up.

Now the character cards are listed as optional/advanced rules. Man I hate it when games do this. These are EASY cards to deal with. I taught this game to people who are not avid gamers and they grasped the concept of these cards straight away so there is no reason to ever play the game without them. On the most rudimentary level they add a lot of flavor and well, character to the game. More over they give an added reason to visit Dolphin Cove. Some times mid week just isn't attractive enough to take tourists dolphin spotting...but if you are guaranteed a card well now that might make it worth while!

Alright so what's the deal then you ask? Key Largo is a fun little game. Not as blood thirsty as Pirate's Cove but still lays out a nice round of game playing for 45 minutes or so. It's light and fluffy it's got some randomness and playful chaos along with great cheeky artwork that suits this game very well. I encourage this game to given a try by all.