Ranking all 25 Games Played from 2021 | With Colin

hello everyone and welcome to the one-stop co-op shop this is colin and today we are going to do a top 25 list yeah so why i picked 25 is i played 25 unique games in 2021 and i thought i'd rank them for you all from my least favorite to my favorite for 2021 so these are only for games that came out between january 1st of 2021 to december 31st of 2021. on screen i'll be showing you how many plays i have of those games so you can understand how i've made the determination some i've certainly played more than others but just that way you can see you know what i've made that decision based upon i'll give you a brief description of the game itself followed by what i like and what i don't like about the games now if you're interested in any of our other top 10 lists actually just recently mike came out with his top games of what he's played in 2021 and in there he also has his top 20 21 games make sure to check that out on our channel here all right without further ado let's jump in because this will be long enough we'll jump to number 25. number 25 for me is sea of legends this is a one to four player competitive narrative driven open world game where you're trying to score the most amount of fame points as quickly as possible you'll be playing against either other players and the ai factions or you'll just play solo against the factions themselves has a lot of really cool elements in it what i liked so much is the minis themselves are really well done in this game some of the best that i've seen i love all the different captains in the game and the idea of the game and why i was so excited about it really got me excited about this one you're going and going on different adventures you can kind of choose which ones you want to do there's this cool app that you can use and you're going to level up your captain and yeah i was really excited for it unfortunately what i didn't like is pretty much everything else about the game the app the stories weren't that interesting i didn't enjoy how the solo mode worked you got to do one or two actions and then you had to do all these actions for the different factions and all of them were working differently and it just felt like most of the time i wasn't even playing the game so that's number 25 for me sea of legends number 24 is x-men mutant insurrection this is a one to six player cooperative scenario driven game where you're playing as the x-men characters trying to complete missions through dice placement very similar to elder sign now what i like about this game is the theme i love the theme there's not a lot of great x-men games out there uh so i was excited about the theme you've got tons of different heroes you can choose from i love the roll the dice choose which ones you want to keep and then you get to activate things on these enemies you can see right here to complete these enemy rows you have to place your dice on there i think that's really really cool and i should also say the heroes and how they work and you've got cards you can use to assist i thought that was really unique and very fun to do however the game itself had a few things i didn't love i did not love the snowballing effect i mean if you continue to complete missions it just becomes easier and easier and easier and easier same with if you lose it just it didn't feel like the it was um balanced correctly and then also it just feels like a lesser version of elder sign so they came out with elder sign and then they came out with this one this feels like this is the first version and elder sign was better if i was going to play this type of game i would pick elder sign over this any day so that's number 24 x-men mutant insurrection number 23 is transformers the deck building game so this is a one to five player competitive or cooperative game or solo where you are the autobots building a deck with unique cards that create a map on the table you can explore them you can see here barrett's flipping one up and you could potentially buy that card for the cost here that you can see up in the upper left hand corner goes into your deck and then you can play it out in future turns the game is has a lot of cool elements into it i love that you're exploring this map you don't know what cards are going to flip over some of them are going to be decepticons they um in the cooperative variants you'll also have different schemes that you have to deal with i really like that i thought that was really cool but unfortunately it the game just feels like it's built for the competitive play because how you uh when you go against different auto uh decepticons with your autobots you don't want people helping but they can it just yeah i did not feel like it was fully fleshed out for cooperative and i also feel like because you're only revealing a couple cards on the board while you're playing you don't have a lot of interesting choices to make of deck building because you really want to flip and remove these cards as quickly as you can because you're adding more throughout the game and if you don't then negative effects can happen so it ends up just being whatever i'm on i'm gonna buy so yeah that was transformers wasn't one of my favorites number 22 is sword and sorcery ancient chronicles now this is a one to five player epic fantasy campaign that's cooperative it's fully compatible too with the original version of the game which is actually one of the things i really like you're able to take this game and you can port it into the original one and steve actually has been doing some playthroughs on the stream channel doing just that using characters from the new game and enemies from the new game but using them in the old campaign i really really like that the other things i love about this one are the minis if you like really cool looking minis that look wonderful painted i mean you can see baron's work right here highly recommend this one unfortunately what i feel like didn't work for me for this game is it just feels antiquated they came out with the original one in 2017 and now it's 2022 and it feels like we have the same types of mechanics and you know role to resolve minimal things that you can do about it especially at the beginning ah it just gets yeah i wasn't loving it i also didn't love some of the new types of enemies like nests that you don't even get to attack you just have to spend actions to get rid of them they just slow you down for no reason yeah it's just this unfortunately was a big letdown for me i maybe need to go back to it when the second act stuff actually comes back and try and push through those beginning scenarios but i just haven't been feeling it recently so that's number 22 sword and sorcery ancient chronicles number 21 is the escape roll and right game this is a one to four player cooperative roll and right game where you're trying to escape the temple and collect enough gems together to win the game what i really like about the game is it's just so quick to play it actually has some really good cooperation for choosing which dice do i want to keep versus which ones do i want to give to my teammates so they can fill out their treasure maps i think that's really really cool and because you're only rolling two dice at a time you've got a nice small decision space so you're not being overwhelmed with the amount of dice that you're rolling because you could roll a total of eight or ten dice on your turn but you're only doing two at a time it makes it easier to make those decisions and then of course you're running across this board collecting items it's it's really fun now what i don't love about the game is it does feel very random i feel like you just kind of go with what the dice that you have it's it's a challenge to really do any sort of strategic decision making in the game and i have found that it's either overwhelmingly too easy or overwhelmingly too hard so it's it's very very swingy that is my number 21 escape rolling right my number 20 is bullet yes it's bullet mike's going to kick me over the head or something this is a one to four player competitive or cooperative or solo game where players will utilize their abilities and their pattern cards to manipulate bullets that either will attack your opponents or attack the boss if you're playing co-op like you can see mike doing right here i love the game for how quick it is to play there's lots of fun puzzle elements i mean that's the whole thing you're trying to get all of your bullets that are on your board matching these different patterns so that then you can remove the bullets or throw them at the boss i think that's really cool there's also just some simple ways that you can cooperate and i like that i also really appreciate that it's an all-female cast too you don't see a lot of games like that one deck dungeon would be one of them but i do think that that's really cool uh the things that don't really hit it for me is i'm really not into the theme or the art so i'm not really into that anime theme so it's one of the things that doesn't pull towards me and for whatever reason i feel like the game just goes so quickly it's just not a game that i normally pull out to play i like to play games that there's a little bit more to it and i think that's what what's uh what's holding me back on bullet so a great game but it's just not one that i'm going to pull out very often that is number 20. number 19 is chronicles of drunigar age of darkness this is a one to five player cooperative fantasy dungeon crawler just like the sword and sorcery the things that i love about this game you've got cube management you've got different levels so you can uh you'll actually have different trays let me show you if i can see on here here we go you'll have where you have different levels of terrain which is really cool and you could get stuck in the water and you have to uh you know mitigate all of that i love how the miniatures look they did a great job on the miniatures and i feel like the heroes themselves have tons of different ways to upgrade which is really really cool and then the final thing that i absolutely love is the cube management which cube am i going to use to activate which part how am i going to get my cubes back if i don't have this cube to defend what is it going to happen to me i think that that mechanic is absolutely amazing unfortunately the things that i didn't love is that the enemies just feel incredibly uh boring they all just do a move and attack and that's all they're going to do i really wish that we had something a little bit more complex a little bit more unique per enemy type but uh yeah so that that was unfortunate and also i just feel like the game itself seems to be overwhelmingly too easy there are ways that you can house rule it but it's just yeah overall i don't feel like the game brings enough of a challenge to make me want to get it back to the table as often as i feel like it should so i'm hopeful that the expansions i did back the expansions that are coming for the next act can hopefully uh provide that challenge and i'm really excited to see those so that is chronicles of drew my number 19. number 18 is dungeons of infinity this is a one to five player competitive or cooperative game where you can play either a one-off dungeon which is actually what i did on the channel or you can play the absolutely amazing campaign the way that i think this game should be played where in the campaign we have three scenarios for each hero in the game and so you play with that that hero for those three scenarios and you go to a different hero to play the next three and it creates this uh amazing combination of a campaign with a great story branching pass i absolutely love it so yeah that is the big thing that i like about this one is the campaign game and then the the other thing that i love is how combat works you can see here you've got uh the row of three enemies and you can actually have multiple rows of enemies and i thought that was really cool so you could have like you know you can attack range or you can attack melee or enemies can do that they can move up in range down in range and i just think that's such a cool and unique thing i haven't seen other games do so i really like that mechanic now i will say the things i haven't loved the one-off dungeons i just really haven't gotten into them they they haven't pulled me or drawn me in to continue to play the game that way and also the combat of the game is based off of a simple d20 roll and you're trying to roll as low as possible that's fine but i i sometimes prefer games that it's not a simple d20 resolution type of game so that's dungeons of infinity number 18. number 17 is disney's kingdom hearts perilous pursuit this is a two to five player cooperative yahtzee style game where players will roll their dice three times saving any dice they'd like then activate abilities on their boards and try and save six worlds from the heartless now what i love about this game is how quick it is to set up it's just boom boom boom put a couple things on the board you're ready to go i also really like yahtzee i love that mechanic of rolling my dice three times saving certain ones and then using the other ones for different effects i think it's really really uh simple but fun and once again small decision space but then it makes an effect for the whole game i love that i also love that once you have your actions ready and set what you're able to do is activate other people's abilities on their boards so all of a sudden you start becoming a lot more cooperative you of course can use items with each other as well so there is a lot of cooperation there's a lot of discussion at the table while you play the game now what i didn't love about the game is i do feel like it can become way too long for what the game provides there's lots of worlds where they just add tons of heartless and so you deal four damage then they heal the four then you deal three damage then they heal four and then you deal five damage and they heal three it's it's just kind of you go over and over and over again and it can get kind of monotonous i i feel like this should really be a 30 minute game uh but every time i've played it it has certainly taken longer than that to do that to play the game so that would be my the things i haven't loved about it but overall i still feel like this is a great family weight game i'd recommend just playing maybe four worlds instead of six and i think you'd be the right length of a game that is number 17 disney kingdom's heart perilous pursuit number 16 is stardew valley the board game this is a one to four player cooperative farming and friendship game where players work together to save the valley from the nefarious joe mart corporation now what's fun about this game is the theme itself it's something that is not your normal cooperative game you usually think of cooperative games you've got enemies you have to fight you have the things to battle down this one instead you're doing a lot of a euro type game collecting resources trying to complete goals but you're trying to do it together and i love that it's it's refreshing and it's something that i can play with my kids and it's not about killing enemies the game also has tons of variable goals so every time you play you're going to have different goals that you need to complete as a team so that provides lots of replayability you actually don't even know what they are at the beginning of the game you have to spend those resources to reveal them and then once you do then you have to complete certain ones i i think that's really cool and it provides that replayability for a game that maybe you have to play a couple times you go well i'm doing the same types of things well the advantage is the goals can really change that up now although the goals provide you different ways to win the game overall the game feels somewhat similar so that's something that i haven't loved is every time that i've played it i feel like i'm doing the same types of actions same things over and over again and it feels like certain strategies are the best things to do also i just feel like for this type of game there's way too many components there's all the components for the different seasons all the tree tiles for the different seasons all the different foraging tiles there's just so many components for a game that it feels like you shouldn't need that many so uh yeah that's stardew valley the board game if you love the theme though i'm gonna tell you this is a game to try and pick up number 15 is set a watch swords of the coin this is a one to four player cooperative dice placement fantasy puzzle game where you try to outlast the hordes of enemies attacking you at camp if you can do that and survive for nine rounds you win the game now what i love about this game plain and simple dice placement i love the idea of you going around placing dice on your different abilities placing them on the enemies and trying to decide based upon your pool of dice so you're gonna roll up all your dice based upon what you get then you can use them for the different effects and what's really cool is you don't always have to roll high in the game so many games that use dice you need a 10 or higher for whatever this one i can roll a bunch of ones and then i can use them to activate the abilities on my board i just love the fact that i can use low level dice to do awesome abilities on my board and then i can use those high level dice to deal direct damage to enemies i thought that was a really great way to make every die count in the game doesn't matter what you roll uh yes really cool i also like the camp i think the camp is a really cool idea uh but if you're playing with three or four players and having someone well three is okay but four players having someone sit out for a round don't love that so although i love all that dice placement i will say i feel like the game overstays its welcome for what it is you're not really leveling up in the game uh and that is one exception here with the swords of the coin expansion you do have items that you can buy and i thought that was a great addition because it can feel like you're leveling up but after eight or nine rounds it does feel like you're kind of just doing the same thing over and over again and it overstays its welcome so if you love the dice puzzle though you can totally get over that and just love and enjoy and appreciate the game for what it is that is set a watch swords of the coin number 14 is g.i joe the deck building game this is a one to four player cooperative deck building game where you complete missions to try and stop cobra if you can do that before the threat meter gets too high you win the game what i love about gi joe is first of all the missions and the different types of missions there are missions that you can do together and those would be the story missions so story missions you can only do one time and if you succeed or fail you have to continue on and a negative or a positive effect happens but there's other missions that are side quests and only one person can do that i love how you have that differentiation so you have to decide okay do i want to do that as a team do i not i think that's really cool i also love how they do vehicles in this game you buy a vehicle anyone can use it it's placed out into the hangar but then once you use it it goes to the discard pile of whoever's active player and then you have to wait till it comes back out i think that's really cool i think it's a nice unique mechanic that's in a deck builder i also love the dice mechanics so normally when you think of a deck builder you get three fight value and say okay well this is anticlimactic i for sure have everything i need to defeat this enemy here you don't know you have to roll dice and you might fail and so you always have that tension and then finally i do love that the game has for your starter cards they have a way to auto call themselves from their deck that means that you can get rid of them you can you don't feel like you're playing with a ton of boring cards as you level up throughout the game now the one thing i just haven't loved about the game is the length once again i don't know why it is but it just feels like the game is longer than it needs to be i actually play usually with three less missions and it seems to be the right length for me if i play with all nine missions it just feels long but that's just for me so just watch out for that if you don't love longer games this one might not be for you number 13 is tales from the loop the board game this is a one to five player cooperative scenario driven game where players are kids that are trying to solve mysteries while they also have to deal with their mundane things that they need to do throughout the day chores going to school and trying to get home on time so their parents don't get angry at them what i love about the game are the scenarios the scenarios are very different there's even one that is a sandbox scenario that's the one that i do on the channel and you can play that over and over again and it's fully replayable which i really like so the scenarios give you reasons to come back to the game i also love that the action phase you all play it simultaneously so i can use one action cube to go to a location then you can use one of yours to come there and help me with whatever test i'm trying to resolve or we want to search something or we want to hack something in order for us to hack a machine we have to make sure we're both in the same space or adjacent to the space where the machine is at i think that's so cool i love having that interplay so uh it always feels very cooperative throughout the game finally i feel like it has a very unique story it's something that i haven't seen before uh you've got kids trying to uh hack into machines yeah it's very interesting i i really enjoy how the story unfolds throughout this game now what i haven't loved about the game is you are going to be doing tests and when you do tests you roll dice just looking for a six and that's the only way you can succeed is looking for a six and that can really hoes you so if you're not okay with that make sure that you avoid this one at all costs the other thing i do want to say is although the scenarios are replayable there's only what five or six in the actual box so after you play those you might not pull this out as much but overall i just feel like this is a really good one that is tails from the loop the board game and i do feel like it will continue to go up my chain as i play it more number 12 is micro macro full house this is a one to four player cooperative investigation game where you play essentially where is waldo as a team to track down the bad guys on this huge expansive paper map i've been playing this with my family and i absolutely love it i gotta give kudos to mike i never would have looked at this had he not told me to check it out uh you're essentially trying to find different characters like for an example you can see this guy with the top hat you're gonna try and find him on this huge map and then track pictures of him on there to see what's happened to him and solve these mysteries what's fun about full house so mike is playing the older version crime city that came out in 2020 in 2021 they came out with full house and they have different scenarios that say hey these ones are okay to play with kids and these ones might not be okay to play with kids i really appreciate that because some of them the murders are a bit brutal so you just gotta make sure you watch out for that but i absolutely love how this game plays my only real negative is that after you play them you're done there's no replaying this but you can easily pass this along so that's number 12 micro macro my number 11 is terraforming mars aries expedition this is a one to four player competitive game a two-player cooperative game or a solo game where you are building an engine with cards to work together and terraform mars into a habitable planet now what i love about this game is the engine building itself you start off with pretty much nothing just some mc's some bucks and you're going to go and play these different phases out and build your engine out all of a sudden you're going to be generating cards you're going to be making money you're going to have plants that are going to turn into forests you're going to have heat that turns into pumping up the temperature of the actual planet it is so cool uh the cooperative version of the game i find to be really a good challenge my wife and i have only beaten it once we actually just played it today uh so much fun though trying to terraform that planet within the 15 rounds the game also has really nice components especially if you you have the kickstarter version i love these boards they are totally player boards are really nice uh the card art filling out the card itself i wish every game was like that it feels i feel that game uh that car right there that food factory it looks so cool it's not blocked by all the words and everything and yet it has all the information that you need so i really like that about the game uh i will say what i don't like it about it is that you can't play it with co-op more than two players i wish there was a way to play with more than four and then what i've heard and understand is that when you play competitive it can feel a little bit long the hope was that the card game was going to be faster and from what i understand is it's basically the same length as regular terraforming mars but overall this is one that i am never getting rid of really i my wife and i love it that's number 11 terraforming mars aries expedition number 10 is descent legends of the dark this is a one to four player cooperative fantasy dungeon crawler that utilizes a very well put together app to keep track of your items activate monsters and do a bunch of cool storytelling so what do i love about this game well the minis look at the minis the detail on the minis are great if you paint them up i mean look at that they look fantastic on the table you have 3d terrain now that's all cardboard but the terrain actually looks really nice on the table this is what it looks like here where you can have actual different levels on the board and you're after climbing upstairs maybe jumping off of it oh it looks absolutely amazing i also really like the card flip mechanics you've got cards and your abilities they're all dual sided and so you can spend actions to flip them and then you clear them out of their fatigue and you can use them for different effects i also personally love the app i think the app is great it takes away so much of the work that you have to do when you play a cooperative game and you can really just enjoy being your characters while you play the game now what i haven't loved is i feel like the story is a hundred percent generic just like unfortunately most of the uh this type of world is terranoth unfortunately i i feel like although the missions are variable it's just overall they seem somewhat easy so i would definitely recommend playing on the harder difficulty if you want a good challenge uh and i mean i will say we've gone against two or two different bosses so far and really it's just been a lot of hit points we've just hit them over and over and over again but really overall this is a very cool dungeon crawler and i love the app and i love how simple it is and quick it is to get to the table that is descent legends of the dark number nine is cascadia this is a one to four player solo or competitive tile lane and token drafting game where you build your own habitat full of animals and life what i love about this game is it's super quick even four player i just played a four player competitive game and we were able to learn the rules play it put it away in 45 minutes it's super easy to play but there's lots of tactical choices which of the animals you want to go for which habitat are you trying to expand out the most i just i love it i absolutely love the theme i love seeing the different animals in my habitat i can create kind of a story in my mind of what this region looks like yeah this is a great one for me and uh for what i don't like there really isn't anything that i don't like about this uh i just uh there are seven other games or eight other games that i prefer playing in 2021. this one though is a great one that i don't think i see myself ever getting rid of number eight is world of warcraft wrath of the lich king this is a one to five player cooperative pandemic system game where you work together to slay the lich king through a completing quest and then storming his castle to take him down i love it so what i love about this game first of all are the components the minis are some of the best that i have seen i love how they look i'm i'm hoping this is jason doing a play through i'm going to very likely do a playthrough of these once they're all painted up because i think that it'll look fantastic i love that in this game the cards in your hand i mean think of pandemic usually your cars are just discarding them to go and cure the disease here all of your cards are going to use them for the effects on them like fighting or attacking or moving i love that instead what you do when you go on quest is you're going to roll dice depending upon whatever you're trying to complete and i i find that you don't have to use cards you can just reveal them and so that means that you have lots more flexibility but the game is still a challenge we don't always win and my kids love it because they love being able to slay monsters while also still completing those quests and then taking on the lich king i feel like they did a great job of differentiating the heroes and that's something that when you're playing pandemic has been something that's very important right you all have special abilities here you have two special abilities oh it's it's really cool i do wish that the game came with more than one type of scenario because essentially every time you play you're always gonna go to that ice crown citadel and take on the witch king and it's going to be the same final quest every time you play wish that they had given us maybe a variety of those i feel like that wouldn't have been that hard but oh well other than that though there really isn't much here that i don't like the components are great the game quality is great and even the time of the game the game isn't too long so this is one if you have kids or if you love the theme i really recommend this one that is world of warcraft wrath of the lich king number seven adventure tactics dominance tower this is a one to five player cooperative encounter based scenario driven tactical combat game players will level up between missions and become different classes that provide unique and different abilities and then complete missions as they go through the story the best part about this game is 100 percent what you do outside of the game itself you're going to finish a game and then you're going to level up your hero you're going to become different classes you're going to get different cards into your deck you can choose other cards to take out oh it's so cool and you know although the missions can be fun uh they do sometimes feel very similar to one another but that's okay because you're gonna go check some dice you can see here the cards will tell you the different dice you can roll and your range you're gonna do that boom you're set to go and you win or you lose and then you can level up your character and that is the fun part there's all these different classes to explore and the story itself is actually really fun uh and i'm really excited for the expansion content because it's going to provide more uh difficulties for the game itself to make it a little bit more of a challenge which i appreciate i will also say that some of the component quality is a little subpar but i'm hopeful with this second kickstarter that they did that the tiles will no longer be so bent i mean these were almost round and uh and the player boards aren't so bent as well so that is adventure tactics dominance tower highly recommended especially if you have kids your kids are going to love this one number six is sleeping gods this is a one to four player cooperative narrative driven game full of small stories and tons of places to explore this is one of those true sandbox games as your only requirement in the game itself is to collect totems other than that the world's your oyster you can do what you want where you want how you want i love it one of the best parts about the game is i have now played three full campaigns and there's still so much i haven't explored i have gone north i've gone east and i've gone south but i've got all these different locations that i still haven't seen after three entire campaigns of it i think that that's amazing just the amount of content they can have and after you finish a campaign when you go to your next one you've got things that you've unlocked and you can go to different you can make the game more challenging or just change up the game a little bit i really appreciate that they did that i also really like the puzzle combat in the game you can see here in order to take out these enemies you have to fully cover up all of their health spots so when you deal damage you have to decide which parts of the enemies you're going to deal damage to but if you don't take them fully out there's these different effects that will happen uh if you don't take them out i love how that works it's so simple yet it can be a real challenge and i will tell you combat is nothing to take lightly in this game even though sleeping gods is one of my favorites of 2021 heck it's probably a top 10 game in total i will say that i don't love the time mechanic after playing three campaigns i'm getting to the point where i'm just going to go and explore and not worry about my event cards because i do feel like there's a lot of things that arbitrarily slow you down in the game which i understand why it's there but really when i when i want to play this i want to enjoy all of those stories and i don't want to have all of my uh characters are damaged again so i have to go to a port to heal uh you know that to stop me from doing it so just be wary of that and it does start with a pretty high difficulty level so you might be you know i i would recommend looking at some of the ways to make the game easier at the beginning just just to recommend also i don't love that at the end of each chapter you're going to lose all of your non xp items and that's really a kind of a bummer because you're going to level up your character and put all these different things underneath them ability cards you're going to have to discard all of them so just be ready for that i wish that they had told you that at the beginning and they don't so if you just start this campaign make sure to know that anything that isn't one of your xp ones at the end of a chapter you're gonna discard them but overall the story and just the amount that you can explore in this game uh yeah is a number six for me for sure number five is endangered with the new species expansion that's why i can put this in here because that expansion is 20 21. this is a one to five player cooperative game where players work together to protect an endangered species while also vying for countries to vote yes to help that animal and conserve the species what i love about this game is it's a dice placement game you're going to roll your three dice you're going to use them to activate things on the board and you're going to be able to play cards out on the table that other players can actually put their dice at so as you play the game you're going to have more action spots more things that you can do and i think that that's so cool and now with the expansion the expansion provided exactly what this game needed which is a ton more animal types so different animal scenarios and now there's i think there's 12 different animal types it is so awesome every time i play i can pick a different animal type and they're going to work differently and i'm going to need to deal with different things that are going to hurt them so like with the elephants i had to deal with poachers poachers were the most annoying and there's destruction tiles placed everywhere and you can see there's tons of them on here when you do sea otters you have to deal with oil and the oil is going to come from land going out into the sea so i just love how they have all those differences the only thing i can say about endangered that i wish they had were just more of the player characters i just want to see more decks because a lot of the decks have the same cards with about four unique ones so i'd like to see more hero or hero i call them heroes but more of the player decks but other than that this game is wonderful it's a great family style game and it's one that i'd highly recommend checking out especially with the expansion new species number four is uprising curse of the last emperor this is a one to four player 4x cooperative game where players will work together to try and collect more victory points than both the two enemy factions which are the chaos faction and the empire faction what you're going to be doing throughout the game is recruiting units placing them out on the board you're going to be exploring you're going to be going on quests you're going to be placing havens you're going to be attacking enemies oh it's so cool you're going to be chucking tons of dice you're going to be taking on these hordes of enemies and what what i find so incredibly cool is that you've got these two enemy factions that actually can fight against each other too and they're going to gain different victory points on their own and you're trying to score as a group each of you individually i should say have to be above what their uh victory points are for the two enemy types and it's just something that's so unique i haven't seen this in a cooperative game before one of the things that i love about this game is they have put on the board itself all the different phases it makes it so easy to walk through the game so you don't miss anything because there is a lot going on so be wary of that i also love the components they did use these standees but they're acrylic standees and they look really great on the standeys themselves they actually tell you what dice those enemies or units will use which makes it so much easier to know when you're looking at combat okay which dice do i need to roll boom good to go i do also love that it's a one-off experience you can have this epic game and it's only four chapters long it will take you some time but you don't have to have 15 sessions of this game like you would with let's say descent to really experience the full game you can do this in one game session play the four chapters you're going to feel the epicness of uprising just look at these acrylic standees ah they look so amazing there's only a couple items that i haven't loved about this game i will say the length of the game you have to have a ton of time if you want to do all four chapters i only do two chapters it took about three hours to record it'd probably take about an hour and a half to two to play it without recording uh but if you want to get that full experience you're looking at four to five hours of playing also i just i don't fully understand why they did balancing for the chapter three and four cards based on faction counts but they didn't for chapters one and two and you know i have not played the game enough to fully understand why but it does feel like for a two player or a solo play with two factions it's a lot harder at the beginning than it is for three and four uh factions respectively so just be wary of that as you're playing but yeah that's my number four i expect this to even go up higher potentially as i play it more uprising curse of the last emperor my number three is role player adventures this is a one to four player cooperative story book board game where players will go through 11 chapters a side quest and level up between the missions obtaining skills traits weapons familiars you name it that you can utilize in all the future scenarios what do i love about role player adventure well first and foremost the story itself one of the best story written games out there i actually care about the npcs that we meet they come back in future quests and they do different things based upon the decisions that we have made during the other scenarios it's so cool uh and you will have three different factions that you're playing with throughout the game and you can have them going up and down in your influence with them and that's going to drastically affect the game itself i love it can't get enough of it if you're looking for a solid story if you're looking for fun puzzly combat this one is definitely for you but do know what i haven't loved about it is there's a huge power creep i mean after uh chapter four we didn't lose a single dice check ever throughout the rest of the game we got way too powerful but that was okay we still came back to it simply because of the story so my hope though is if they do any sort of expansion content they find a way to balance out a little bit of how powerful the characters get compared to the story uh but this is if you're looking for a wonderful choose your own adventure game that is probably the best writing you're ever gonna see role player adventure it's my number three my wife and i played the whole thing and loved it number two for 2021 is imperium legends or imperium classics whichever one you want to say it's a one to four player competitive or solo deck building civilization game where players try and score the most victory points for their asymmetrical civilization through unique card card play mechanics what i love about this game is just how different of a deck builder it is you have your own nation deck you have your own development deck but then you have a pool of cards that anyone can purchase cards from uh you're gonna grab those put them into your deck but you also have uh unrest cards you're gonna have to find ways to get rid of them you have regions they're gonna put out and they're gonna stay out and play but then they can have effects that will be discarded i just oh it's so cool it's so different than any other deck builder i've played and every civilization plays completely differently i highly recommend this one if you like that type of thing if you like asymmetry if you like to see how different civilizations tick and how they work and and try and figure them out and then go to go to the next one the ai itself you can play against any of the other civilizations and they all play differently as well so highly recommended for that i will say what i don't love is it's incredibly fiddly uh it takes a while way too long to determine your score because you got to look at all these different piles trying to find the different cards and i would say that the game itself overstays its welcome by about 20 to 30 minutes and if you play this competitively with three or four players be ready to sit for a long time when it's not your turn so for me this is a great solo to two player experience but it is so good in there it's my number two imperium legends or classics my number one game of 2021 is unsettled this game is amazing it's a one to four player cooperative survival puzzle game set in the wondrous and unnerving fringes of outer space what do i love about this game oh so many things one the theme it is so unique so cool you're lost in space you've landed at this planet and you have to survive each planet has three different scenarios that you can play so for the uh six different planets that you have that's 18 unique plays that you can have of the game at minimum i absolutely love the mechanics of focus cubes and you've got these three different types of focus cubes you can use all of them are better at certain actions and then they tick down and if they tick down too much then what happens is you start hitting your time that is what's so cool about this game you are only limited by the time itself uh there aren't enemies that are coming out it's all about what can i discover and find what i need to survive on this planet with the time that i have for me personally i also love the idea of the first time you play one of these scenarios it's an exploration who knows you're likely not going to win you're going to explore you're going to die and then the next time that you play you're going to take that knowledge and you're going to hopefully get farther or you're going to use it to learn more and experience more of the planet and you it's essentially where you you play a scenario you'll lose it you play it again you win it then you go to another scenario i really like that but not everybody does uh but that is something that for me is really fun it's fun to figure out well what can i do differently in this play to actually beat this planet or actually beat this scenario on that specific planet i will say the thing that i haven't loved about the game is the fact that all of the tasks on that specific planet will use the same discoveries the same anomalies and so even though i'm playing a different task or a different scenario i'm still seeing those same cards multiple times so i've played five or six different ones on the initial planet winora here and uh now i'm at the point where i have memorized all of the anomalies and all of the different breakthroughs so i wish that the different tasks or different scenarios actually came with different ones than what you see here but yes that is unsettled my number one i absolutely love this one i can't get enough of it there's tons of playthroughs on this channel of this one i did one for each planet except for i think one i still haven't done the final one uh yeah this is a huge recommend if you enjoy puzzly exploration games this one does it in droves and it does it with a really cool and unique theme and there you have it those were the 2021 released games that i played during the year and i ranked them based on how much i enjoyed them hopefully you enjoyed the list please let me know in the comments below some of your favorite 201 2021 releases and as always thanks so much for hanging out here checking out the channel and i hope to see you in some more of our lists and play throughs i'll catch you at the next stop

Channel: One Stop Co-op Shop

Views: 14,243

Keywords: board, game, one stop, co-op shop, oscs

Id: 2zCre1sIhJU

Length: 43min 29sec (2609 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 12 2022