Still Searching For Paradise

a brief review of Conquest of Paradise by Mark Mokszycki

Disclaimer: This review does not contain a summary of game rules or mechanics. That info is available elsewhere, including the Living Rules at the GMT website.

I watched this game with some interest as it moved up the P500 list. While I was never quite motivated enough to preorder, I knew I wanted to try it at some point. I figured I would wait until after it was released and see what other's were saying about it. The early comments and reviews here on BGG seemed to be pretty good for the most part, so I decided to pick it up. Several games later, here are my impressions.

The theme is terrific. The extensive historical notes provided in the designer's notes booklet are flat out fantastic. The cards themselves (Art and Culture) are attractive but generic in terms of gameplay mechanics, falling into either the " 1 bonus to x" category or the "earn 1 VP" category. I wish the cards could have been better incorporated into the theme, for it is only here that the theme feels rather "tacked on." I'm not sure why they chose black for the backs of the cards, as black wears out quickly and shows wear.

Most of all, I'd have loved a bit of flavor text on each card. A picture displayed beside a word in another language (which means nothing to me) does very little to bring me into the flavor of the game, or explain why I get a +1 bonus to this or that. The designer's notes go into to great depth explaining the relevance of each card, and while this is nice, I'd still have very much liked a single sentence on each card explaining it's relevance, a la most card-driven games these days.

The artwork is fairly nice and functional, though I'd have prefered more contrast between player colors (more on that later), and especially more contrast in the open sea tiles which blend perfectly with the map so that you have to "zoom in" and squint to see the three-dimensional edge of the counter to tell whether or not there is an ocean tile in the hex.

Note: In the designer's review of the final game component's from GMT, he mentions that the open ocean chits were supposed to be printed in the same color as the surrounding ocean, not the box in the center of each hex. So apparently the choice of open ocean color was due to a mix up.

The incessant chit pulls for exploration got tiresome. I'd have prefered cards or tiles. Picking a chit just to pick a tile is a needless process that could have been simplfied. And using tiny half inch chits for this sort of function doesn't doesn't feel very pleasing, especially since you need to do it so dang much. But it works, so this is more a nitpick than a major criticism. It seems to me that the creators could have used hex tiles for all exploration purposes. Yes, there would need to be about 3 times as many of them- and this would have driven up productions costs- but it would have been worth it. They could have displayed a tiny number of 1, 2 or 3 knots at the bottom of each tile so as not to require it to be double sided. The tiles would have looked nicer, been easier to handle, and displayed the same kind of information but with larger print. Best of all, tiles would eliminate a step from the process.

Let's look at the map. It's well done and certainly functional. I rather like the style. It's not garish or overdone, and given the subject matter it would have been easy for an artist to be lured into such a direction. The symbols, text and other info diplayed on the map are all well incorporated. I have no complaints with the map design. However, I'd have prefered a standard paper map, as the cardstock one seems MORE likely to be damaged due to the thing's own weight causing it to tear at the center cut. I realize that there are folks out there clammoring for hard-mounted maps, but I don't see this happening anytime soon at GMT. I suppose the heavy cardstock is supposed to be a nice compromise between hard-mounted and paper. It almost works. However, these cardstock maps don't lie as flat as regular paper (at least in my experience) and backfolding doesn't work as well. We ended up using plexiglass despite the cardstock map- it was the only way to get it to lie flat.

The counters themselves are decent, if unexciting. They get the job done, even if they are a bit cartoony for my tastes. There was no variety between warriors or colonists of different player tribes- they all had the same pictures on the counters.

The improved agriculture side of the counters is basically just a checkered blob of colors. It works, but they might have come up with something a bit nicer.

The village counters look nice, but I'm not sure why all villages had to be the same color. It would have been much easier to tell at a glance who had colonized which island if the villages were in each of the player colors.

And the player colors- they are all pretty similar looking in all but the brightest lighting conditions. Your choices are white, light beige, light green, and light pastel yellow. The independent warriors use light blue. The player colors look nice set up on the map, but I wish they had more contrast. It can be tough to tell white from yellow from beige when things start to get really clustered.

So how about the gameplay?

In brief, my impressions: This is too light, abstract and random to be a historical game, too lacking in any developmental / research tree / building hierarchy to be a civ type game, and too clunky (in terms of both physical components and game mechanics) to be a Euro type strategy game. In the end, it's not what I was expecting... and I wasn't sure what to expect. I'm also not sure what kind of gamer makes up the "target audience" for this game- or if it even has one. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Games that fall into this un-category often get big points for innovation.

Sadly, I'm not sure if that's the case here. There are some original ideas- the theme, the canoe transport chain are a couple of my favorites- but the game feels very mechanical and process driven. It often feels like the game is playing me. There are too few meaningful choices for my taste. The correct choice of where to go and what to build is usually obvious once you know the rules and the basic strategy. Yet it still takes up a lot of time to count, place things, move things, convert things, place things, rinse and repeat. Only the large dose of randomness provided by the tiles and fog of war keep each game from being an identical series of mechanics. After many turns, it starts to feel like less of a game than an excericise, with only limited choices that make any sense, and more luck than planning.

And for that matter, the tile draws are far too random. That's ok in a game like Carc where each player will draw, place and score from dozens of tiles per game, but there just aren't enough tiles here for the luck factor to balance out. A player that draws poor tiles near the start of the game will need to go on the warpath to catch up in terms of victory points. Here is where the game almost gets interesting... except that combat is a simple 50:50 mechanic (rolling a 1-3 favors the defender, and 4-6 favors the attacker).

I really want to like the game and I keep playing it, hoping that something will magically "click" and I'll start to enjoy myself... I love the theme and the overall look of the game, but I just can't embrace the actual gameplay. This doesn't mean that the game won't be your own cup o' tea. If you like exploration games and you don't mind that the game isn't sleek and Euro-ish, you might find something to like here.

Ratings:

COMPONENTS 6 / 10 - nice overall, despite a few strange choices (chits instead of tiles, black backing on the cards, etc.)

ARTWORK AND PRESENTATION 8 / 10 - very nice, and fits the theme well.

THEME 10 / 10 - here is where the game shines. It has an original and exciting premise, and the Designer's Notes really back this up.

RULES EDITING 9 / 10 - rules are almost bullet proof. We encountered few questions.

COMPLEXITY 2.5 / 10 - simpler than previous GMT entries, still a bit more complex than your average Euro (but not by much). The 10-15 minute time to understand the rules and get started on the box may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I doubt it would take more than half hour to an hour to be up and going with this one.

WEIGHT (strategic) 3 / 10 - there are some choices to make- whether to explore or turn your energies toward building, when to expand, when to build more warriors, when to attack - but the limited choices combined with the fog of war means that your decisions don't feel very critical.

GAMEPLAY 5 /10 - driven to a large extent by process and mechanics, I found the remainder to be rather repetetive and unexciting.

OVERALL 6 /10 - Not a bad game, but it didn't excite me. I don't dislike it, but I'm not sure how often I'll want to play it. I would gladly play again if it was with a group of people who were fans of the game. Maybe some of their enthusiasm will rub off on me. The designer has potential, and I plan on keeping my eye out for his future releases, which will hopefully be even better.

(numerous edits for poor grammar, spelling etc.)