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.
Last edited on 2006-08-03 09:46:46 CST (Total Number of Edits: 1)

































