My Biggest Disappointments of 2023 - Not Everything Will Be What You Hoped For

hey I'm Alex rack from board Gameco and this is my top 10 disappointments of 2023 2023 like basically every single year before it has been a great year for board games a lot of fun things a bunch of top games that have come out changes to my top 100 all the usual things and this is unfortunately not those these are the games that let me down to some degree and I will say as we go through these that these are ranked kind of an order of what I found most disappointing but not ranked in order of what was the worst game if that makes sense some games I expected more from than others some games less so but ultimately all of these games are games that gave me experiences that I found myself wanting I found myself wanting more out of those experiences and some of them I'd say not say some of them one of them two maybe two of these I still have hopes that I'll change my mind on at least where I am currently but starting off these are my top 10 disappointments starting with number 10 which is tiger and dragon now oink games in general have a passionate audience and unfortunately I'm not in that audience I don't mind their games I've played their games scouting particular I find to be fairly fun but I I've rarely walked away from an oink game seeing the magic behind it in a way that there are people there are people who go to conventions and the one thing they have on the list is I have to pick up the newest oink game I have to get the newest oink game whatever came out I have Scout tiger and dragon dozens of other names that I'm not the hidden artist I don't know there's tons of these games I don't know offhand what they are but there's a lot deep deep sea is that one of them there's so many oink games but people are very passionate about those titles and I've played maybe four or five of them and they've always been fine they haven't really overly impressed me Scout is so far my favorite one that I've played and even that I don't consider to be blown away by but tiger and dragon in particular based on the description of the game when I saw I was like this is not this isn't even a small box oink game this is like a slightly larger box oink game and I was very excited to dive into this one to give this one a shot and see how I like it uh but ultimately one of my least favorite on games if not my least favorite I thought the gamep playay just felt like playing the cars you have playing the tiles you have I didn't feel like it felt overly clever I'm sure there's a game here and a new one wants to it that changes exactly how I'm I'm sure there's something here but for me tiger Dragon was a disappointment it was a disappointment my number nine was going to be terraforming Mars uh the dice game terraform Mars the dice game over here and I didn't have particularly high hopes for this to be fair which is why it's a little lower down the list but I still hope to enjoy it hope to enjoy it enough I mean I know I'm a Hu I I love ter Mars and that has made every follow-up or variant slightly harder to follow because I'm always comparing them to ter for Mars I made that mistake with AR's Expedition which looked like it had great art combining ter for Mars gameplay with a race for the Galaxy which is another game I enjoy and I figured the combination of all those things just felt like it was going to hit out of the park and then for me it unfortunately was a let down when I first got it although as I played it more as I did some small house Wheels to it uh as as the expansions have come out I found AR's Expedition continued to deliver in a way that that originally it had let me down on but that can't be said for the dice game I walked in with Lowered Expectations I walked in resolved not to compare to ter for Mars it's not the same game it's operating in a different space but I found the choice here the meaningful decisions to be less interesting I found so much of your actions came down to mitigation around bad rules and and so much of the game just felt underwhelming to me I understand that there could be an audience here I don't think it's a bad game but I do think it does a disservice to the teror Mars brand and at least so far I have no clue with the futural hold but unlike AR's Expedition I've yet to come around on this one and see whether it changed my mind ultimately for me tform the dice game is I mean I'd recommend other dice games over terraform Mars If you're looking for that kind of experience and if you're looking for ter Mars either get terraform Mars or even are Expedition which I think does have a lot of reasons to suggest it over terraform Mars despite the fact that I'm still in the terraform Mars Camp myself my number eight over here is going to be War of the being the card game I walked in with High Hopes on this one this is one of those tug-of-war two-player experiences although it actually is a four-player mode as well a four player mode which is often recommended as the ideal way to play it and I played it as the full four player mode the idea of Leaning into the Lord of the Rings Universe which I do enjoy the idea of trying to mitigate the war the wing big box experience into a smaller experience still a long one this is like still a 90-minute long game but the idea have all these things combining to give you an experience that gives you that tug of war that gives you the the Thematic sense of the Thematic agency of the game a lot of things going on in this experience and to be fair I think there is a good game here I just don't think there's a good game here for me specifically because I feel that I feel this is a game that will benefit strongly from players knowing the decks incredibly well you're constantly pulling from different decks you're constantly referencing different things I think this is a game system that doesn't doesn't bode it doesn't operate at its best when you have a handful of plays under your under your belt and even once you do have a handful of plays under your belt even if you do have five six seven plays under your belt and you started to learn the intricacies of the decks you still have to be mindful of the fact that whoever you play against should ideally be on the same playing level as you they might have to either know as much or not know as much as you do as you go through this game it puts it in a very hard spot for me to enjoy and so I heard a ton of good things about the game it was more accessible War of the ring and it's an IP I like an art I like and presentation I like and rules I like but ultimately that memory aspect the aspect that you have to really know the system systems to be able to get the most out of this and you have to play it with players who also know the systems that put in a camp where I just lost all interest in continue to dive into it because it's not the kind of experience I want to enjoy I want to experience experiences that I can pick up pretty fast and that you can pick up pretty fast so I don't have to worry about who I play it with or constantly pull back my plays I have a handful of games that let that that exist under that framework of my collection but I keep it at a handful for a reason I don't like that player imbalance my number seven d romantic the board game also not bad game not a bad bad game by any means I've enjoyed D romantic I played through half the not really campaign but the the the the gameplay of it the basic idea of D romantic is you play a bunch of tiles to score a bunch of points the points you score unlock more tiles and more ways to score points then you win and repeat and ultimately you're constantly escalating new ways of scoring and new ways of scoring points such that your first game maybe you score 120 points but by the time you get to your final game you might be scoring hundreds 450 points or whatnot for that for that experience you're just adding more and more win conditions this is based on D formatic the video game and I think it's a fun time but you never lose there's not a real sense of challenge there's just a sense of let's just keep playing it until you keep playing it to me this gave me the lightness of a game like my city but without that little bit of an edge that keeps you moving forward I believe there's going to be a d romantic two-player version coming out and that has more a more interest to me because I potentially the the nature of the game first of all it's meend is a solo Cooperative game but ultim Cooperative game just means you're making all the decisions together bit by bit you're just basically saying hey we alternate placing tiles it's L rewarding to me than just playing this game straight solo I've played this at two players and I've played it at one player I prefer the game solo but neither way is it ultimate a game that really drives home for me I think there's still a good game here I understand the appeal of it I'm happy it has worked for so many people but for me it was a lighter game than what I'm looking for and one that doesn't have any real sense of strong challenge to it there is a sense of how to you get the best score but that sense is not present enough for me to have the incentive to dive back into this for 18 plays or how many plays there are it's variable because it depends on how many things you get done is how fast you unlock stuff so it's not a fixed number of plays But ultimately I was there for half the experience not the whole one but number six is going to be number six is going to be epic 7 R the board game this was my lowest rated game on the list so the reason six my number six over here is only because I didn't have particularly High Hopes or Ambitions for this game it was vaguely my radar I was interested was on crowdfunding and then I then when it came to retail when um oh my gosh um Japan games picked it up that's when I got a chance to try this one but it wasn't one that was very high on my list of Interest it was it looked cool it looked like cool game it's a Dungeon Crawler with cool Miniatures cool art those basic things look fun the Miniatures are great and so overall I was kind of not that interested until I got it and I was a little bit more interested and then I played it and rapidly rapidly fell down a cliff on this one this is my lowest rated game not just on this video but one of my lowest rated games ever from the games I've actually rated on the channel more often than not I self- select the games I get more often than not to me the games ratings are going to range more often from like a 2.5 to a five you're rarely going to see lower than that it does happen infrequently but I gave us a 1.5 5 out of five it was so bad as far as the the execution of the game the balance of the the overall mechanics the way the game plays out component issues rules issues left right and Center whatever kind of issue you could have with the board game is present in Epic 7 arise so to me it's not the biggest disappointment only because I didn't have that high hopes for it but it's still it's still it's it's it's a lot this is this is I I I got excited once I unboxed it like once I unboxed it was going through the Miniatures I got excited for it and the gameplay looked like it could be fun and this comboing that looks like it has like a nice Vibe of getting so much done it just comes at the cost of any sense of balance for the game this this is a hot mess unfortunately epic 7 eyes uh this is um yeah hot mess so defin definitely disappointment over here my number five is going to be barrage new lands and this is the one that's going to ruffle some feathers I assume barrage is a highly rated game and I still I mentioned earlier I have I still have hopes for two of these games this is one of those two games I've played barrage once one time so far that's it but barrage is one I was looking forward to very heavily both based on the rules of itself based on the kinds of games I like based on the sheer amount of love for the game system I was strongly looking forward to barrage and I still have it in my collection I backed the two-player map of this campaign over here and then I had a chance to play the game and I just found that it felt fine it didn't feel like a bad game to be clear I wasn't I didn't mind the game it just it didn't do there are a lot of Euro games out there and some will take more games to see or experience their Brilliance from them and I I I kind of like the genre in general I like the genre of trying to make all your ge's turn in the exact appropriate way that results in the most victory points I have fun with that as a genre I think is so much satisfaction to games like Leonardo Leonardo Vinci to not leard Vinci um I'm Bing Leonardo no what's Nardo Lorenzo Lorenzo magnifico to Loreno magnifico to Golem to to to uh expeditions to apiary to to uh I have so many what's it called food chain magnet to so many games I can't remember coimbra this there's a ton of game systems out there that have you turning different lovers in different ways to try to get as much as possible out of the system and I find they are generally a rewarding genre that I usually like to some extent and the question is do I like you enough that I'm going to choose and pick you over other games in the same genre and barrage in particular as I think is like number 35 number 36 on Board Game Geek and between that and knowing people who played the game who love it I totally thought this would be my jam and my first game for me wasn't it wasn't bad it's just it just was okay I didn't get a strong sense of everything and the way it inter interconnects and the way that I find rewarding and I'm skeptical it's one of those games where I'm going to play it again I'm going to give it another shot I'm going to see where it goes but based on my first play I just was merily okay with it it was not bad at all it was just I was okay it was fine you did these things they gave you points you flowed water you did all that stuff you earned more points it just I didn't get the sense of satisfaction I have I normally get when I play this style of game and so ultimately for me barrage definitely disappointment because I had such high hopes for and it's one it's the main one on this list that I do hope turns around with multiple plays but where I am right now with this one I I debated do I dive into it more do I continue to try to see where it's at or do I just move on to the next game and for right now I'm going to be diving back into it but I I debated that which is a level for me moving on to number four we have the hunters ad 21 and4 second Printing and expansions I backed this game based on people telling me hey you should get this game it's really good like way back when I covered the campaign people were like this is like Gloom even bit better this gives you a giant epic sprawling adventure with upgrading your character with your own base with all these things that Gloom Haven does but this one does it better I got peer pressured into backing it I'm not blaming any when I take a responsibility for my own actions but I got peer pressured into backing this game and then I sat there when I eventually did show up I unboxed it I talked about it I was excited for it and eventually I sat down read the rules dove into it there were things that did well there were lots of things that did well like lots of elements of the game I think are are well done but the the table space isn't completely obnoxious and so many other elements of the game just feel like you're working a little bit too hard to get something out of the system like the table space is is it's like it requires a full table setup and it's not an easy to pack up and put away in between sessions you kind of want to have a dedicated cover table space for this game for however long you're going to be playing through it and so ultimately for me I thought this was I thought it was a fine experience that did a lot of things well but it's not one that I would personally recommend when diving into this kind of experience it wouldn't be my first choice and I a again as usual Happy a lot of people like it for me this one wasn't for me I will say despite that I was still interested in the followup campaign they had they had another campaign over on game which takes the same system and puts it in more of a medieval space and I'm still in that one I'm not getting it I'm not getting it I have some degree of shelf control but I was interested in that one because it made it took the same system made it look better but I'm not sure how much of that is aesthetic and theme versus how much of it actual gameplay changes but number three is legacy of you this one started off high I played my first game of legacy of you I back this game on Kickstarter I don't usually back against from garfall games because they've been more they've been more missed than hit for me they are phenomenal publisher and their games do incredibly well like many people consider garl games an instab back company and I understand why for me they have Hadrian Wall which work great and they've had a bunch of games that I enjoyed but didn't love and so Legacy of you I took the chance on it a solo campaign go through a bunch of missions try to survive as the water you know put build the canal stop the water stop the bandits do all the things you need to do in this experience and when it eventually showed up I learned the rules like that week I started my first game and I loved my first game I thought it was an excellent push and pull the balance of the game the things you're trying to do to mitigate things going wrong it felt like such an incredibly good experience to the point that I started doing a playr series like I'm going to play through all these games on camera I'm going to film them all I'm going to go through them and I played and then I played and then I played and as I played through the game I found that I had a few things that kind of got in my way but the biggest thing for me was that ultimately the the core system when you lose the game you get a perk that helps you win and when you win the game you get a perk that helps you lose and they don't feel like small balancing mechanics they feel like huge shifts that make the difference from whether you win or lose in the game the game is so well balanced in terms of how you have to operate that the small the small differences they give you when you win or lose kind of feel like when you win they are setting it up so that you will lose and when you lose they are setting it up so that you will win assuming you're trying to play in any way optimally it just felt like a strong shift that by the time I got like six or seven games in I just didn't felt I didn't feel rewarded in what I was doing anymore I feel this potentially could have operated better as a one- shot experience at least for me I'm sure a lot a lot of people enjoying this one I'm happy they are for me this would have worked better as a one shot experience where you play a single one as opposed to forcing me to go through forcing myself to go through the same game again and again and again again with small differences to it with a degree of of of not only Legacy but campaign elements cards get mixed in but you're going through repetitive motions while not even feeling strongly in control of your own agency this started off very very high and I still think it's a good game but for me like the degree to where it started to where it finished I I was sad I was sad I I had such high hopes for it too like garfall games like they've been interesting an interesting publisher for me I will say I love wafer as the South tigers and that one I haven't cooled on at all but Legacy of you started off so high and then cratered pretty quickly my number two is going to be habitats from allplay now allplay has actually been on a role for me this past few months I've been playing a lot of games from all plays that have just continued to deliver rewarding fun experiences from Chomp to H to to fiction to other games that I'm not remembering to to to roll to the top I've been playing a bunch of their games that have really been I anticipated keeping around for some degree of time we'll see how long any of them last but all play in general I always think their games are good and some last some don't for right now those three that i' I've played this past few months have really been doing well for me but habitats is one that I was excited to play because this is based off of a similar system as novaluna sagani uh framework those kinds of games from OU Rosenberg that kind of core system as far as how you build out connected chains of stuff and so to me as like the production of all playay the rules accessibility of all playay and then the game system that I already know I like and so I'm sure I'll love this game and I thought it was the worst one of the four like of that four of that Series where you're building connected chains and everything scores of everything else so as you put on a tile you're getting a new scoring requirements be also fulfilling other scoring requirements I found habitats to be the most confusing the least rewarding and the least enjoyable from all four of those game series when I thought it would have the chance to be the best one for it so again not a bad game but I'd highly recommend framework or or noval luna over any of the other games I think sagani is also good but again a little complicated considering a little unnecessarily complicated relative to what you're getting out of the experience but for me habitats I very much looking forward to this one I thought it was going to be an absolute knock out of the park and um again all play has been doing great for me but habitat this year unfortunately was a miss my number one disappointment is a complicated conversation my number one disappointment of 2023 is larana and this is not about the gam playay it's not I'm not saying the game play is amazing but noise particularly bad I've had a chance to play the game a few times and I think I think it's fun game I think it's a fun game with potential for it to grow and develop and get better as you go through it and I had such high hopes for Lana I was very like I've been out of tcgs for years I did Magic the Gathering for a few years for like I don't know 5 six years I got out of that and then short shortly later got into board games and it's been a fun Journey For Me overall but L was like I was finally ready to go back to tcgs I was finally ready to spend money on these games in a way that I have successfully avoided doing for a very very long time and then it launched and the complete lack of reasonable reasonable availability for the game made it so that I just lost interest I created hard if you watching my channel I was like hey by the way you know maybe we'll have like a month once a month video on lurana talking about what's going on because it's lurana and I'm excited and I want to be here for it and I think it's doing incredibly well it's incredibly successful and I'm happy for them and maybe I'll dip my toes into the water later but for right now they took all my hype and Buzz about this new trading card game that's going to take the market by storm it's going to be playable with your friends playable with your family it's just an enjoyable overall experience and then the lack of being able to get the game I mean it's already if you get into tcgs you're already paying more money than you would for most board games once you get a decent way into it but the fact that they made it so that you have to like really run to any store or pay premiums and you have to hunt to get your hands and stuff they took all of my personal interest out of exploring the system and I was like you know what honestly I should be avoiding tcgs anyway I should be I don't have the time or space or energy for this level of immersion into a game even Marvel Champions the game I love I can barely keep up with and so why am I doing this their lack of availability brought me back to Common Sense which I'm still torn whether to feel grateful for or annoyed by but definitely as far as things I was looking forward to in 2023 lukano was one of the things I was very much excited for and when it launched I was very into it and then it just cratered hard because it was so hard to get your hands on it and it's one of those things because if it was too easy to get your hands on it could die as well I think luk is doing well and I think they're going to have a very successful continued launch and they are addressing the the approaches as far as what kind of availability and scalability do they need it's hard to measure a market print too much and you just lose money print too little and you create you create accessibility issues they printed an absolute ton and they still couldn't keep it in stock so I'm happy for them I'm happy for the success of the line but for me Lana is one of my biggest disappointments of 2023 by the nature of where it is on this video that's what I have that's my 2023 list my bit my 10 biggest disappointments of the Year nothing here like is a particularly bad well epic 7 R is a particularly bad experience everything else here is more about the nature of expectations versus reality where you start where you end up what you're hoping for along the way most of the time I walk away from game experiences find myself almost more impressed surprises I I already did a video of the top 10 surprises of 2023 on Sunday you can check that out if you want to see the games that I wasn't really expecting that much from that delivered if you want something a bit more positive you can check out that video but if you want to know the game experiences let me down this year uh these 10 are definit definite candidates for game experiences I was hoping for more from them and ultimately despite that I'm mostly done with them barrage is the main one I want I still want to play again Lana maybe things will change I don't know but barrage and Lana a little bit of Hope for those but not a ton in any case and until next time I'm Alex R from board game Co I hope you enjoyed this video and as always I hope you have a good one

Channel: BoardGameCo

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Length: 19min 52sec (1192 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 21 2023