Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 Review - A Phenomenal Finale

[Music] i'm just gonna say what we're all thinking this pandemic's great where can i get another one i'll tell you where you can it's in this box pandemic is a classic 2008 board game where up to four players fly around the world cooperatively working to stop the spread of diseases as a nice team and it has three great expansions if you instead want to start diseases or be in a lab or make sure that animals also have a bad time you know those sweet parallels between coronavirus and the spanish flu guess what there's a pandemic guest starring the spanish flu quinn's i've got nothing against diseases who i hate is the sea i've heard it a thousand times there's a pandemic for that but what if humans are the real disease you've been to university and i love it there's a pandemic for that are you anti-disease but pro-tentacle there's a pandemic for that quince can i be a pandemic you crazy crazy crazy yeah there's a pandemic for that quinn's i don't want to play pandemic i just want to roll dice i hear you there's a pandemic for that no no no not that kind of game just like a game where i don't have to think where i can just roll dice and mentally check out right gotcha there is a pandemic for that no no no no no stop this is silly that is all together too much pandemic all right what i want is less pandemic luckily there's a pandemic for that maybe let's just stow the silliness for a second and be real the last thing any of us would want in 2020 is more pandemic and yet here we are pandemic legacy season zero is probably the best pandemic box ever made making it the most entertaining game in perhaps the most entertaining series in board games although just to pique your interest i'll also say that it's not my favorite pandemic game as always there will be no spoilers in this review my copy of this game is covered with spoilers so we're presenting this review with a mint condition copy so you don't need to worry about seeing anything you shouldn't so let's recap pandemic legacy season 1 was released in 2015 and represented the game of pandemic reimagined by willy wonka this box offered a campaign of pandemic games that could be played through once and never again with players changing the board with stickers opening sealed compartments full of stuff and making choices with consequences that rippled outwards into every future game in this story pandemic legacy season 1 was and still is superb at the time hobbyist board gamers called it the greatest game ever made then in 2017 season 2 came out a post-apocalyptic continuation of the story with players working to reconnect a shattered world pandemic legacy season two was drastically more experimental and daring than season one it also felt less inclined to use the original 2008 classic game of pandemic as a foundation the result was a game that was more divisive than season one and now we have the conclusion of the trilogy pandemic legacy season 0 is a prequel set in 1962 where players don't work for the center of disease control but instead work for the cia and rather than racking up air miles trying to stem the flow of disease you are instead flying around the world snuffing out soviet agents who are appearing all over like strawberry jam smothered over global toast in terms of mechanics the big change in season zero as compared to normal pandemic is you no longer cash in sects of cards to cure diseases because there is no known cure for communism instead you're going to use a less high-tech solution you're going to cash in cards with an affiliation of either soviet neutral or allied to create a bunch of mean dudes in a van and once your team has vans on the board anyone can on their turn spend an action bossing any van around the globe allowing it to hoover up soviet agents like a spy devouring roomba the more vans you have out the easier a time you're going to have snuffing out soviet spies and the more time you'll have to focus on completing your objectives for that month what objectives you ask why that would be telling let me make this nice and easy for you if you have not played any of the pandemic legacy seasons before i think you should play one of them and i think it should be season zero not because it's a prequel but because while all of the pandemic legacy seasons are fun and fascinating and tense and surprising and funny i think season zero is the designers at their most experienced and at their most expansive without wanting to spoil any of the literally hundreds of surprises sequestered in this treasure chest of a box season zero has more components and cards and tons more writing than the other seasons season one shipped with a legacy deck of cards to guide you through the story in season zero we are now up to three legacy decks also the story in this game feels like it branches more based on decisions you make a game has more world building it has more color season zero is so slathered in secrets they've even had to figure out more ways to hide okay seems i can't say any more without setting that clackson off frankly i don't know why i agreed to have it installed so to avoid spoilers today i'm mostly going to be talking about season zero in terms of how it relates and how it compares to the other two seasons if you would prefer more information on pandemic legacy in general i'd suggest watching my reviews of those two games so for this review let me talk briefly about the design ethos behind the different seasons season one simply asked how the designers might use legacy mechanics to add surprises and drama and permanence and consequences to the legendary co-operative board game of pandemic making it the least striking and novel season but where the puzzle is the most consistently strong in season two the designers frisbeed the rulebook out of the window and worked out a sequel where your actions didn't just change the game but were tools you would use to build the game yourself painstakingly mapping out the world over months as if you were loading google maps on an internet connection from 1986 this was the most experimental season what i think defines season zero is adventure this is the first pandemic legacy without the threat that if you fail an objective then put down a sticker because thousands of people are dead it's a lot more easy going than that failing an objective in season zero usually means just denying your group a juicy fragment of the game's plot that's partially because this is a sequel and the world can't change too much because whatever happens in your story still has to set up season one but it's also part of a design ethos that's generally more friendly this is the first pandemic legacy that's not fixated on the chilling notion that your character could die saving the world season zero returns to more comforting role-playing game territory in giving players dollop upon indulgent dollop of ways to customize their character every player in your group is going to be forever thickening their gorgeous little passport with stickers and there is still tension in this game let me clarify if you spend too much time in cities under surveillance then your identity will eventually become compromised but there's all these little winks and nudges that say you're probably not gonna die this feels like a passport to adventure the other way to put it is fun simply feels like it's at the forefront of the designers minds more often from mr potato heading your player character to slipping cards you have in these dinky little intelligence and personnel files and even in this saturday morning cartoon depiction of spy work pandemic legacy season zero is the cold war depicted without blood without politics and come to think of it without war considering the designers of this had no idea that coronavirus was waiting to ambush season zero upon release they were incredibly lucky that for this box they've decided to abandon the traditionally brooding atmosphere that accompanies pandemic it feels like they're done with darkness and this time they just want a box full of surprises that will make people smile after every mission every objective every decision and sometimes even in between those moments the designers simply know where to hide stuff now because they've made two boxes before but not only that they still have even more ways to hide stuff in season zero because they have to impress people who've played season one and two and all of this is why i say that this is the best pandemic legacy and i say this is the one you should play but i'm not gonna keep you hanging any longer i've got to describe why this is not my favorite for me personally the high water mark of this series was playing pandemic legacy season 1 and being enthralled i got emotional talking to my fellow players about when to try and save cities and when to amputate them from our support network and leave those ill imaginary people to die now it could be the case that dark stories just excite me more as a player but i'm thinking a lot at the minute about another legacy game the king's dilemma which is absolutely fantastic as well we reviewed that earlier this year now that game also had a bleak story and i think it showed us that bleakness can make a game's legacy elements pop off the table by threatening you with truly grim consequences for your actions board games as an activity are intrinsically light so it's only by having a dark story that you can truly create contrast in the course of all of my 15 or 16 games of pandemic legacy season zero the height of my moral quandaries was wondering if i should just take the cat eye glasses from my character without asking any of the other players because i really wanted them mine now thank you now let me stress here i am saying the story in season one is light i am not saying it's bad i'm not saying it's small in fact the story in season zero is so broad and expansive and sprawling it makes the story of pandemic legacy season one look like something someone wrote while waiting for a bus that just arrived i guess what i'm getting at is that unlike pandemic legacy season one or the king's dilemma the story in season zero did excite me but it never moved me the other reason that i still say season one is my favorite is that when everyone got hot and bothered about legacy games when risk legacy first came out in 2011 it wasn't just because of this idea that board games could have twists and surprises and unlockable content of the type that season zero disgorges constantly it was also the idea that legacy games could offer consequences permanent consequences and season one didn't have many legacy elements compared to season one but when you put a sticker on the board you felt you were stuck with it pun not intended every sticker felt like you were scaring the board in a way that felt like the game had changed on the other hand season zero is so full of twists and turns and tweaks that the changes actually become less exciting because they'll probably change yes on my turn i screwed up i let the soviet spy escape but who cares in two months time we might be working for the soviets not quite the same as in season one where yes i screwed up on my turn and that means we cover up paris with a sticker because it no longer exists the final reason i say that season one is my favorite is that it still had what was my favorite mechanic in pandemic which was if you would ever put a fourth disease cube in a city ah it instead pops and we place disease cubes in every connecting city instead however obviously soviet spies don't do that they don't sort of reproduce like a kind of fractal calm in san diego instead if you would ever put a fourth spy in a town you draw the bottom part of the infection deck and it will tell you what incident happens and these could be anything who knows what the reds are up to except practically sixty percent of the time the effect will refer to something that isn't on the board so sixty percent of the time nothing happens which is underwhelming and forty percent of the time you can get whomped by something that absolutely ruins you demolishing your chances of winning the game and i don't know why they do that if the thrill of pandemic is in planning and prediction i do not know why they would introduce a system that you cannot plan for and you can't predict except i guess i do pandemic legacy season zero is an adventure but candidly i don't think you should listen to my criticisms not just because it's personal taste not just because this is an absolutely frustrating phenomenal board game but because when i talk about season one i'm gazing into the past through rose tinted coke bottle thick prescription goggles and while i remember all the things i liked about season one i'm not gonna remember all the stuff that hadn't been invented yet goodness gracious we were impressed in 2015 when season one told us to destroy a card there's a bit in season zero where you're asked to destroy my friends and i didn't even know how to do that there had to be a discussion so in conclusion if you've not tried any of the pandemic legacy games i would absolutely buy one and i would absolutely make it season zero if you want a fun adventure or season one if you want us more of a stern puzzle and an exploration of what made the original game of pandemic great perhaps it's as simple as saying have you played bass pandemic if not season zero is good if you haven't even explored why pandemic's good season one is i think maybe the game for you let's try ending this video let me set on the table like an uncool but well-meaning teacher uh so i actually want to close by giving a little shout out to anyone else like me who might have played season one and or season two is wondering whether to climb back onto this playgrid and pony for another ride uh whether to buy season zero as well um and let me tell you a story so internally at shut up and sit down we were having a discussion as to who should review this and we settled on me reviewing it because i did the review of season one and two i can be the science pandemic legacy guy and then matt can review the new gloomhaven jaws of the lion become the site's gloomhaven guy and i was happy with that state of affairs obviously it's a great game i get to review it but in about june right the halfway point of this game i realized that i would rather be playing gloomhaven jaws of the lion not because this is a better or worse game but because we get so dazzled by all the little ways pandemic is changed by legacy that it's easy to forget that underneath the legacy this is just pandemic and between all the pandemic i've played before and then legacy and zuma one and two and all the spin-offs i've maybe played 70 games of pandemic by now and at some point you've got to ask yourself when is that going to lose its luster so also for the record i had more fun playing the king's dilemma earlier this year than i did playing this legacy game not because one's better than the other but because i've played some variation of pandemic legacy dozens and dozens of times now with all the different games in a campaign so all i'm saying i guess is just ask yourself whether you want more of this because just because they keep making it doesn't mean you have to keep buying it there's a ramen place right right outside my window that i love more than any restaurant in brighton but if i ate there every time they made ramen i would be at best unhappy and at worst debt so there's something for you to chew on and now i've encouraged you to be financially responsible please allow me to encourage you to be a little irresponsible i am sweating like a sausage if you enjoyed this video two things first off you are clearly a person of impeccable style and grace but second please consider paying as much as you think this video and all of our content is worth shut up at sit down is currently in the middle of one of its twice yearly donation drive so we don't like to bang on a lot about how all the content we make is funded by donations this pandemic legacy video took tens and tens of hours to make it's all because of shut up and sit downs donors who are just a lovely club of people who pay for this stuff because they want it to exist so if you've not yet given us money please consider doing so you can watch this video to see us talk about donations and that might be exciting or you can skip all that jazz and go straight to this link so give us as much or as little as you can afford thank you very much

Channel: Shut Up & Sit Down

Views: 271,888

Keywords: Shut Up and Sit Down, SUSD, SU&SD, Board Game Review, Review, Board Games, Board Gaming, Boardgame, Board Game, Gaming, Tabletop, Fun Games, Quintin Smith, Pandemic, Pandemic Legacy, Pandemic Legacy Season Zero, Season 0, Legacy Game, Legacy Board Game

Id: wi2GSg_0vUE

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 14 2020