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shannon_aIt's easy to think of Puerto Rico as being overhyped nowadays, because it's been so highly lauded for so long. It's also pretty easy to forget about Puerto Rico, because so much other highly hyped stuff has come out since; in fact, this was my first game of it in nearly two years. But, in playing it again, I am newly astonishing how at elegant the game is.
You compare it to something like Agricola (which I think I enjoy playing more), and it's so obvious that Agricola has so many warts and lumps, as opposed to Puerto Rico's really smooth veneer, where everything seems to just blend together seamlessly.
I usually write some about how the game works, here, in my analysis, but I'm not going to bother here, because if you don't know how Puerto Rico works, you probably don't care. So let's move straight on to what makes it a great game.
First up, Puerto Rico has a fun foundation. It's an economic engine game, where you're building up the parts to a machine and trying to fit them together. Building always gives you a sense of accomplishment, and that's clearly the case here.
The creation of an economic engine pretty much defines the strategy of Puerto Rico, but you have great opportunities for individual tactics too, where taking a certain role at a certain time can really advantage you and hurt your opponents. That's the best of both worlds, where you feel like you have a big game plan, yet every turn is quite important.
All of this combines to create an interesting differentiation of players. The strategy of my engine building helps to define my tactics in a way uniquely different from any other player.
Finally, I think that even today you can't write an article about Puerto Rico without lauding its use of roles. They've certainly gotten very common through the sub-method of worker placement, but Puerto Rico's use of them still seems clean, elegant, and intelligent.
With all that said, one of the reasons that I almost never play Puerto Rico is because of its biggest flaw (for me). It can be too strategic ... too programmed. Playing Puerto Rico with a know-it-all who understands all the best moves at every point is pretty much the definition of not-fun, and the almost-zero-luck of Puerto Rico encourages that type of gamer.
Nonetheless, it's deserving of its rating as one of the top Eurogames.
L1: Ra. A+. (Plays: 15) [ Read my Review ]
L2: Chinatown. B-. (Plays: 1)
L3: Taj Mahal. A+. (Plays: 7)
L4: Princes of Florence. A. (Plays: 4+) [ Read my Review ]
L5: Adel Verpflichtet. B. (Plays: 2) [ Read my Review ]
L6: Traders of Genoa. A+. (Plays: 3+) [ Read my Review ]
S1: Wyatt Earp. B+ (Plays: 2)
S2: Royal Turf. A- (Plays: 6)
L7: Puerto Rico. A+ (Plays: 11) [ Read my Review ]
As a postscript, I'll comment that we played San Juan right after Puerto Rico, and I was really struck by how different the games feel, despite being so similar. That's really a great combination of factors for a card-version of a board game.
You compare it to something like Agricola (which I think I enjoy playing more), and it's so obvious that Agricola has so many warts and lumps, as opposed to Puerto Rico's really smooth veneer, where everything seems to just blend together seamlessly.
I usually write some about how the game works, here, in my analysis, but I'm not going to bother here, because if you don't know how Puerto Rico works, you probably don't care. So let's move straight on to what makes it a great game.
First up, Puerto Rico has a fun foundation. It's an economic engine game, where you're building up the parts to a machine and trying to fit them together. Building always gives you a sense of accomplishment, and that's clearly the case here.
The creation of an economic engine pretty much defines the strategy of Puerto Rico, but you have great opportunities for individual tactics too, where taking a certain role at a certain time can really advantage you and hurt your opponents. That's the best of both worlds, where you feel like you have a big game plan, yet every turn is quite important.
All of this combines to create an interesting differentiation of players. The strategy of my engine building helps to define my tactics in a way uniquely different from any other player.
Finally, I think that even today you can't write an article about Puerto Rico without lauding its use of roles. They've certainly gotten very common through the sub-method of worker placement, but Puerto Rico's use of them still seems clean, elegant, and intelligent.
With all that said, one of the reasons that I almost never play Puerto Rico is because of its biggest flaw (for me). It can be too strategic ... too programmed. Playing Puerto Rico with a know-it-all who understands all the best moves at every point is pretty much the definition of not-fun, and the almost-zero-luck of Puerto Rico encourages that type of gamer.
Nonetheless, it's deserving of its rating as one of the top Eurogames.
L1: Ra. A+. (Plays: 15) [ Read my Review ]
L2: Chinatown. B-. (Plays: 1)
L3: Taj Mahal. A+. (Plays: 7)
L4: Princes of Florence. A. (Plays: 4+) [ Read my Review ]
L5: Adel Verpflichtet. B. (Plays: 2) [ Read my Review ]
L6: Traders of Genoa. A+. (Plays: 3+) [ Read my Review ]
S1: Wyatt Earp. B+ (Plays: 2)
S2: Royal Turf. A- (Plays: 6)
L7: Puerto Rico. A+ (Plays: 11) [ Read my Review ]
As a postscript, I'll comment that we played San Juan right after Puerto Rico, and I was really struck by how different the games feel, despite being so similar. That's really a great combination of factors for a card-version of a board game.
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Date: 2009-07-03 12:35 pm (UTC)• Play 1 and 2: "Ouch! How the heck did I lose so badly?"
• Plays 3 through 8: "This is the best German boardgame ever made."
• Plays 9 through 15: "Welllll.... maybe not. It seems pretty scripted."
• Plays 16+: "Oh. It's not scripted at all. This might still be the best German boardgame ever made."
Puerto Rico seems to me to fall solidly in the class of boardgames where it's quite important to play with people who have the same level of experience as you, or perhaps a wee bit more. I think Puerto Rico really shines at a table of three or four players where everyone has at least 10 plays of experience, so everyone understands the basic rhythms of the game, and the risk of anyone making silly moves is low.
I think the game is quite susceptible to being unbalanced, and this is, I think, the only negative aspect to the game. If you play with four or five players and one or two of them is new to the game (or worse, new to the game, and new to boardgames in general), then you need to be prepared for this and start "managing the meta-game". Sub-optimal choices in the game don't just harm the chooser, they can harm other players in the game as much or more. People who don't like meta-game behaviour need to realize this and, if they don't want a game with lots of meta-gaming, they must be willing to absorb the cost ("Yes, well, I only lost because you kept letting Bob ship his huge mountains of corn.").
Oh, I do think there's one other down-side: setting up and tearing down the game can be very fiddly. In my all-time list, I have only Bridge and Civilization (Tresham's original) rated higher (and I note that set-up and tear-down for those games is much easier 8)). I think it's far and away the best of the Alea series; although like you, I rate the Knizia titles very highly, neither of them are (I think) as fun as Puerto Rico.