Puerto Rico - at time of writing the #1 game on the 'geek. Glancing through the reviews currently on offer it's hard to find anything negative said about the game. Indeed, somewhat to my surprise, it's hard to find much said in the reviews about much other than a rules outline and how absorbing it can be. I thought it might be interesting to spend some review space talking about both the positive and the negative points, as I see them.

The Good

Let's not be shy and hide PR's light under a bushel here - we'll start with what I see as the #1 triumph of PR's design: it manages to play a lot heavier than it feels.

Since that comment is somewhat cryptic, it probably deserves some elaboration. As game geeks, I'm guessing we're all familiar with some of the famous abstracts like Chess and Go. If you're playing seriously, these game are hard work to play. They require a lot of long term planning and a lot of analysis of the variables of the current situation to see what's the best move. They induce what's commonly called "brain burn". It's entirely possible to come out of a closely-fought game of Chess feeling too drained to want to attempt another game.

PR also has a lot of variables and a lot of viable strategies. It's full of difficult, tip-the-balance decisions. Yet amazingly it doesn't induce the dreaded brain burn and indeed a play of PR usually leaves me wanting to play another game instead of wanting to go home and lie down. How does it achieve this?

I think there are two big secrets to PR's success in this regard. Firstly, it's very much a game of fast, flexible tactical play. Long term strategy is vital in PR but once you've got to grips with the basics of the game, the choice of strategy to go for is not usually difficult to see and is partly foisted on you by factors beyond your direct control - the draw of plantations and the choices of other players. Indeed, it seems to me like PR actually discourages too much strategic analysis by presenting such and ever-changing and flexible face because it's difficult to predict what role choices other players will make. The meat of the gameplay choices in PR are in the shorter-term tactics of the game that you need to master to gain your longer term goals - and these choices are fiendishly difficult and balanced on a knife edge. There are a variety of workable options at every stage of the game and never enough resources to do everything you need to do. Furthermore, the way the various options are interdependent on one another is just a breathtaking piece of design. In this way, PR manages to really tax the brain without ever feeling like a strain.

The second point is that because it each turn roles chosen by the other players are no longer available to you, you tend not to be presented with a completely bewildering array of choices to overwhelm you in the way that, say, choice of moves in Go can. Rather there are a limited number of potential moves but the difficulty lies in trying to see which is actually the best - all of them will advance your position but trying to pick the one which will advance you most while proving detrimental to other players is extremely hard. So again, you're faced with tough choices without it seeming overwhelming. Clever, clever stuff and PR manages to completely avoid the analysis paralysis trap that many nonrandom games fall into.

This achievement in design is, to my mind, so huge, so massive that you'd have enough right there to recommend people give this game a whirl but happily there's more. Even though PR eschews random factors it still manages to present an ever-changing face that rewards multiple plays. There's never a fixed path to victory and you must adapt not only to the changing circumstances of different games but the changing circumstances of different turns! I believe that the game has managed this as a welcome offshoot of the way it concentrates on tactical factors as described above.

You want more? Okay then: it's fast playing, it has very little downtime, there are opportunities to play nasty if you want to and it neatly avoids most of the old fashioned design problems like kingmaking. Satisfied now? In truth, a lot of modern games manage all these things though and how important they are depends on your point of view. I still maintain that the genius of PR lies in the depth of it's tactical play.

The Bad

You'll have gathered thusfar that I like PR. It's fun to play and it's staggeringly well designed. But, best game on the 'geek? Not to my mind, but it's a personal preference of course. Let me tell you where I think the game slips up and you can judge for yourself if you think you'd count these issues as problems were you to pick up and play PR.

Firstly, although the game plays fast and limits downtime, the setup is fiddly and time consuming. Now this might seem like a perverse thing to say but I find this far more offputting in a game like PR than I do in a much longer game, no matter how good PR might be. If I'm going to sit down to 3-4 hours of gaming, I'm prepared to invest 15 minutes setup for one long game that I'm going to enjoy. Spending it three times over to setup three games of PR just starts to seem like a waste of filler game time. Granted this is a minor point, but it still irks me - besides I'm building up here .

Second the game's carefully constructed balance can be very easily thrown out of kilter if one player isn't sure of what they're doing. As described above at any point in the game all the potential role choices can seem attractive options - it takes experience to learn to pick the two or three best options from all those available. However, the game is so delicately balanced that someone making a bad choice, leaving the next player in turn to grab the best choice can totally throw the game, resulting in a situation where the inexperienced player can no longer win and the lucky recipient will be very hard to catch. The game's hidden VP approach ensures that no-one might find this out until the totals are added up at the end, but it still happens. How much of a problem this is for you depends on who you game with - in a tightly-knit regular group it might never become an issue but then again if one player goes off and practices endlessly with PR evolver then it might become an issue. Either way I have to put this down as a small stain on an otherwise hugely elegant design.

The third problem for me is the aforementioned lack of player interaction. Now, we must be fair about this - there most certainly is player interaction in PR and very rewarding it can be too. Sometimes it pays to take a role to stop another player from taking it, and sometimes it pays to take the captain or trader specifically to nerf another players use of resources. A very astute player can gain a tactical edge by trying to predict what choices others are going to make based on play styles and personalities. All of these aspects are definately player interaction, albiet subtle interaction. What PR is missing is the social negotiation, bargaining and dealmaking that are such a feature of many multiplayer conflict games and some trading/auction based Euros. To my mind it's these aspects that really help to keep a game fresh because they're unpredictable without being random so I seem them as a vitally important ingredient of any game I'm going to want to play long-term. PR lacks them and, as such, although I'm still having fun with the game I can very much forsee a day when this will end. PR, engaging though it is, is basically a game of analysis and number crunching and although it does it's best to spin out it's viable table time by offering so many different potential options and scenarios it's going to end up going in circles eventually.

The final point, and the one to my mind which is most open to personal preference, is that it's an extremely dry game. As already discussed, interaction is limited. Because the best choices are so difficult to spot and things are so carefully interlinked it's rare to watch someone make an unusual "killer" move to universal amazement and praise from the other gamers. Similarly it's rare to get much of a "you bastard" screwage moment for the same reasons. I have no doubt these moments do actually exist in the game, but you're not likely to realise they've happened until after the game end, if at all! The theme is completely tacked on so the immersion factor is all about the gameplay choices rather than any feeling of being there or identifying with the poor colonists working hard down there on your game board. I tend to prefer games that aren't so dry: I don't see why you can't have gamplay immersion and thematic immersion - I can think of several games that manage it. Your mileage may vary.

The Ugly

It's about slave trading. Doesn't come much uglier than that!

This final section is of course just randomly added to make up the name of a famous western, but it gives me some space for concluding remarks. PR has one standout factor, one thing it does well but my word does it do it well! And my word, isn't it a big standout factor! It is a unique game but not, in my opinion, one without it's flaws. It is, I think, a game that everyone should try but certainly not a game that everyone will love.

My final rating? An 8.

No it is not. It includes colonists (who historically were slaves) but the game is not about trading slaves. It's about producing and shipping or selling goods.

Having read some of your comments on BGG I noticed that this is one your main criteria for determining whether a game has player interaction.

In the old days before Euros, most games did not have specific rules for deal making, but players, nevertheless, would go about deal-making. I've never seen a multiplayer game (including Puerto Rico) where players couldn't make alliances/deals.

I personally remember loving this political aspect that could be applied to any multiplayer game. But after a while it felt like every game was turning into the same game of politics no matter what we were playing. Furthermore I was getting bored of that game because it was the only one I ever played.

Has any one else ever felt this way?

One of the things I like about "designer games" is that the designers try to experiment with the idea of player interaction. Some games succeed more than others, but it reinvigorated my interest in games. El Grande and Taj Mahal are examples of games that in my mind have a lot of player interaction, but in very different ways. They could, or course, be played in a deal making sort of way if you wanted.

I'm staring to feel that as far as negotiation exists in a game it should be implied by the game play. Through the Desert is a great example of this.

You could play it open negotiation style: "I'll not play a camel here if you don't play one there", "If you let me get this oasis I'll block a third player from doing something you don't want him to", etc.

Or you could play it such that your aggressive or conciliatory intentions are based solely on where you place a camel. No words have to be said and players who understand the game will see what's going on. This allows players to be social in ways other than arguing, threatening, lying and bullying and enjoy the intricacies of the game itself without only seeing the game through the filter of the always-played negotiation game.

I broke the game out with some Puerto Rican friends and that was the first thing they commented on, "oh, the little dark skinned slaves." Working and trading slaves is definitely a prominant part of the game, there is no denying it, regardless of whether it's "about" that or not. It may be historical, but not everybody wants to recreate that part of history.

Ryan

I stand corrected. It's not about trading slaves no, but it does feature slave labour to produce goods as facesnorth correctly points out. You are, I think, splitting hairs.



Yes. I have attempted to be a bit more objective in my review here in acknowledging that there are other forms of player interaction but it's the dealmaking aspect of interaction that I find most compelling. Indeed it's the single biggest thing I look for in a multiplayer game.

This made me think of a whole interesting article I could write about strategy and balance in multiplayer vs two player games, but I wouldn't know where to post it. I'll save it for another day, unless anyone's desperate to hear my thoughts now.



Personally no: or perhaps not yet. But it's a very interesting observation. I find that this social aspect of gaming keeps things very fresh because you're usually making different sorts of deals with different people depending on the game situation.



I'm not familiar with Through the Desert: from what I know about it it's everything I try to avoid in a game. However, you make a good point. On the flipside I would say that certain kinds of games - multiplayer wargames - lend themselves much better to this sort of negotitation than other games and it'd be a shame if it had to be specified in the rules of these sorts of games. It'd make Risk comletely worthless for a start. However, with more modern games perhaps it would be advisable.

Splitting hairs? There's an enormous difference between saying a game is about something vs. saying it contains something.

If you disagree, I suggest you take some time off and watch The Lord of the Rings. It's a movie about New Zealand.

Man, I totally hear you on this one. I used to think table talk negotiation and strategy discussion was all part of the fun, but my group's last game night opened my eyes to the potential problems. First we played the driest Modern Art game I can imagine, %90 of it table talk about probability and whether what someone was about to do was 'wise.' Then, a 5-player PR game in which the two corn players openly colluded and bargained for an early advantage. I don't particularly like playing 'stop the committee'.

Hey, did you know The Settlers of Catan is about genocide of the natives on the island so paleface can come in and build productive cities?

Wow nothing brings Geek Guys out of the woodwork better than posting that Puerto Rico might not be the end all be all of gaming (I traded my Puerto Rico for a deck of 54 standard playing cards so I can play with myself without any interruptions). Keep hope alive, one day the world will awaken from their slumber and we will dethrone this oppressive game from Geekdome, “I have a dream.”

Todd, I'm not concerned with the reviewer's opinion on Puerto Rico. I'm concerned with the spread of misinformation that the game is about trading slaves.

You're splitting hairs.