Beat Season Two of Pandemic: Legacy this afternoon. Which makes this my, third, or fourth Legacy game, depending how you count it? I've played Pandemic Legacy Season One of course; SeaFall; a game of Risk Legacy though not as part of the campaign (just a Risk game played out on a board that had been through some stuff; that was interesting.)
Funny, this time, how it doesn't offer up any ideas for playing on the board now that we're finished with it, speaking of playing on previously Legacy'd boards. The other Legacy games all had that option, even SeaFall, rudimentary as that mode may be. There appears to be a few secrets left that the board has to offer, though; some panels that we never got to open though we completed the whole thing. Maybe they have to do with searches we never completed, or maybe they're just blank or funny or Easter eggs or what; or maybe they're like SPOILER from Risk Legacy, and we have to figure it out for ourselves. (there were a few failure options we didn't fail often enough to trigger, so it may have something to do with those??)
Speaking of spoilers, though, I think it's time to rank how I feel about this game as compared to the other Legacy games I've played? What I mean by that is, the twist in this one, definitely my favorite, plot-wise at least; game mechanics-wise, it'd be really really tough to top SeaFall for its twists. The opening part of the game, the months of exploring the world and connecting everything, that was tops, better than just starting out with the whole world open like in Season One, and better I think than sailing off and discovering new islands in SeaFall.
The way the game balanced, the world getting bigger our resources getting more stretched thin, but with mechanical ways to counteract that, was very well done, and I could feel Matt Leacock's hand in the way everything fit together, the elegance of the similarities and differences between Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert in between this game and Season One, and the balance of always being just about to fail just like in those games. I think he and Rob Daviau are a crackerjack team, and please please please somehow give us like, it doesn't even have to be Forbidden Whatever Legacy or anything, but please work together again.
Out of all Legacy games I've played so far, I think this one is the one I'm most likely to replay, not only because the thrill of discovery is more plot- rather than mechanics-based, like I said, but also to see how differently things can turn out. SeaFall was a mind-bending experience, once, and Pandemic Legacy Season One was harrowing and exciting (and heck maybe I'd need to play that one again as well as a refresher,) but this one did, well not everything, but most things right, that Legacy games should do.
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