Rising Sun Review - The Kickstarter Experience

okay [Music] Rising Sun rising sun is rising sun [Music] rising full risings so basically ever since we launched the Kickstarter I've been having trouble finding anything sensible to say about games I know what you mean maybe you're just stuck inside your own head maybe you're trying to stack it professionally when what you really just need to do is think about what you liked about it at the beginning well do you know what when when I got it when I got the Kickstarter opening up for the first time I was kind of like seeing your newborn baby [Music] hello hello little baby welcome to the world look look this is you my little kickstart is so pretty oh look at that shiny plastic oh and what's that that looks like I looks like a nice baby baby put down that knife no no put down in Rising Sun you will take control of your clan with unique powerful abilities such as turtle clan or kangaroo clan or capybara clan and here's a video of all the clans in a rare moment of peace because it all very quickly erupts into bloodshed on a map and let's face it this isn't a map it's a work of art of mythological Japan you will recruit bushi you will summon monsters and you'll move them into positions where battles will erupt like a teenager's face with a bad case of acne and if you're already losing yourself in all this methyl neoprene and plastic don't because you can't have it Rising Sun published by serial Kickstarter cool mini or not raised over 4 and I can't believe this is a real number 4 million dollars in its crowdfunding campaign and most of this blinged out stuff you see these are exclusive rewards to that campaigns backers making their version better and prettier than yours you can still very much by the retail version but it turns the miniatures into less miniatures neoprene into board metal into plastic and plastic into cardboard so why tease you with all this stuff well bear with us we think there is a good reason but first we have somewhat of a rocky relationship with games published by seamen and yes the abbreviated version of the publishing company's name is seaman prompting this clip from last year seaman see me right yeah semen that's that's not been doing that joke no that's my thing is Africa C Mon yeah sounds like semen which is produced by glands good times anywho C Mon games we didn't really get along with many of them and we wanted to lay that straight onto the table just so you know where we are coming from we found them to be big loud but none of them have mechanically really clicked with us and we never splurged on one of their excessive campaigns that shower you with cool minis honor so instead of just reviewing the retail product again we wanted to see what it would be like to back one of these campaigns so we got the whole shebang and caboodle with the metal coins the neoprene planer and more expansions than many popular games getting their entire lifetimes and this isn't a review of those expansions it's more of a was it worth it kind of thing after all you know what they say give a man a fish and he will eat fish teach a man to fish and he will save money by not buying fish unless he likes fish so much that he can't get all the fish he needs to finish that got very fishy and I must admit the moment the parcel came in the mail I immediately got the appeal I mean just look at this thing and these as well I love these things and you inspect these just here these babies clack admit it you never wanted to clock as much as you do right now and Rising Sun is a game with a lot of Clarke clacking isn't one of those things that also means something naughty right I was opening box after box endlessly flooring and all the pretty things inside having no idea what any of them do and I immediately wanted to play with all of them and immediately wanted this game to be good so that I could tell you that this game is good so I could play forever and so we tie together I want to push them and prompt them and feel them and sometimes I wanted to eat them I still kind of want to eat them people get really upset when we put board game pieces in to emmaus I shouldn't do it I've got you're gonna eat that many aren't you I really want to look any time that you want to eat a mini just remember no pun included song what holo holo bossanova by the who any toes no not that one the other no pun included so what other no pun included song board games are good all games are good all games are good but ball games are not food if you eat a meatball if one tastes very good girls unless you who are woodlouse board games are not food board games are not food [Music] all right that one Rising Sun is split into three rounds that are then each split into three distinct phases the tea ceremony where you declare alliances the political phase that is then split into mandate turns and Carmy turns and then the war phase during the tea ceremony you will try and tag-team yourself into an alliance each member who agrees to be part of the Alliance well again yang themselves together like the cosmic forces that you are meaning that you are now best buds but only in the way that wrestlers are best buds you'll work together and agree on things until one of you smashes the other one over the back of the head with a metal chair the tea ceremony can be quite awkward at the beginning of the game where in-game relationships are yet to be established and this is where wisely son surprises us with a really cool action selection mechanism doing mundane turns the player who studied it will take the top four tiles from this stack and choose one of them to be the mandate for that turn which means that's the action that everyone across the table is doing not just you but crucially you will get to do it at the most opportune time for you so if you are marching your troops or recruiting new ones you get to be the last person to do it after you have evaluated what everyone else has done but if you are training which is basically acquiring new cards with powerful abilities you get the first pick of the cherry pie you can even have the cherry if you want although I don't know why you would go say cherries horrible but here's the best bit you and whoever you are allied with will get an additional bonus and extra little treat that no one else can get and that treat depends on the mandate so if you're recruiting you get to recruit an extra unit if you're marshalling you get to pay a little bit of money and build an extra stronghold which will then let you recruit more units if you're purchasing I can't you get to purchase that card at a discount and so on if you've been fostering a good relationship with your eye then you can ask them to do something that's beneficial for both you in return for you doing the same but equally you can foster a relationship with someone who is not your ally offering them coins or mutually beneficial borders or even intimidating them even when you're not making a decision you are still making a decision because even if you don't choose the mandate you still get to do the thing it might not be exactly what you want to do exactly the right time but you try and make the best of it admittedly there is something to be said about player psychology here exactly how much fun are you having doing things that other players have chosen for you what are still waiting impatiently for your turn to take center stage a wait there can be long and sporadic particularly if there's four other people sitting around the table with you as long as we're talking about cajoling others into doing what you want them to do we found that Rising Sun as a framework for a game isn't really interested in incentivizing you to do any of it I mean sure there are rules for it the rulebook even encourages you to send secret text messages to each other and players who engage in alliances and negotiation will certainly benefit from it but there's barely a nudge in the mechanisms to say hey maybe you should make a deal right now and show clonk this game on a table full of extroverted loud and brash players and it will bloom as they take matters into their own hands but as soon as you add an introvert into the mix or maybe someone who's not so much keen on sly negotiating well they will feel overwhelmed squashed and frankly they probably won't have a good time what Rising Sun is interested in is being clever and making you feel very clever let's say it's the start of the round it's the tea ceremony and you decided do you know what I'm not gonna pay anyone any coins are making many promises I'm not going to be in anions and that's great because now you get to play the very powerful betray mandate without any consequences or let's say you're still going alliance and you saved yourself up three coins and now you're playing the marshal mandate that's also great because you're the only one who gets to build a stronghold out of it or let's say that everyone recruiting troops and instead of recruiting bushi you decided to recruit a Shinto and send them to pray to one of the commie great now you are reaping benefits of that commie free times around and no one else's if you're sending sensing a theme of opportunism here you are not far off I hate to admit it but if weddings and bar brawls are anything to go by people love a good punch up and I suspect that's why this genre of games is so popular it's like finally getting the chance to wallop a beer bottle into Kevin's stupid mug without having to clean up the glass been denied the gel so and then realization that you've just smashed your brothers facing I don't really have a brother called Kevin but he's just a fictitious representation and as far as fictitious representations go Kevin is an ass and it's nice to have a consequence-free chance to introduce him to your it combat in rising sun doesn't just emulate those feelings it's straight up makes you feel uncomfortable instead of fighting with dice or whatever you are going to be fighting with coins like some sort of weird Japanese feudal investment bankers each combat face is essentially a bidding match and you're going to be bidding on four different things secretly select your bids however many coins you are bidding on each of them and reveal them to your opponent simultaneously and then when you do well whoever bit the highest on each ability will get to execute it you could bid for seppuku which makes all of your troops kill themselves stop some of you who have been following me on social media or perhaps frequent the board game subreddit might have noticed that I have made some very disparaging remarks towards the way this guy depicts seppuku remarks that have received some mixed responses whilst my opinion still very much stands we simply do not have more time in this video to devote to this particular subject a video that is already longer than most of our reviews and this is a very complicated issue that would take a lot of time to dissect but if you do want to discuss it further we're doing a livestream Q&A on Wednesday and we can address this particular issue if you're there if you pop in and if you want to ask questions but we do ask that in that live stream and in the comments down below of this video please be respectful to us and to other viewers most importantly please believe me when I say in no way has this influenced how I judge the mechanisms of this time I hope you can appreciate that I'm professional enough to be able to weigh that in without mind let's rewind you could be forced seppuku which makes all of your troops kill themselves and for each one that died you would increase honor and gain victory points you could take another unit hostage removing it from battle and stealing a victory point from the owner you could employ a ronin adding one force towards the battle total for each Ronin token you control then you total each players remaining force and the one with most wins the battle and claims the token for the area each other players units are then killed finally the fourth ability triggers grinding the person that won the bid a number of victory points equal to the number of all the units that died the only reason to go into battle is points win a battle you will get that region's token which is points kill all your troops via seppuku and you will get some points win a bid for the Imperial poets in a massive five way battle and you will be crowned the Japanese William Blake which is a lot of points I mean what's funny is you could end up winning a big battle getting the token for that region and then realizing the measly two points you've got is hardly worth it considering all the money that you spent hiring Ronin when the other players bid on committing seppuku Imperial poets and with the helpers and virtue cars have scored eight points and what's worse is all that money that you bid will go to them because you won the battle yeah that's right that jerk there scored more than twice twice the amount of points that you have will also be getting all the money you bid each round will start by randomly determining the regions in which the battles will happen which will map out your orchestra of carnage perhaps you're trying to sneak your sneaky turtle into a battle what everybody kill themselves all you're trying to do is win a bid for the Imperial poets or perhaps you're not gonna bid at all perhaps all you want to do is scoop up all the coinage from the victor so that you can spend it on another battle in the future and the bidding makes it pretty certain that you are never certain about anything being certain let's go back to that wedding analogy and the start of that wedding you know there will be a punch up at the end kiss come on it's a wedding but you don't know who'll start it you don't know who's gonna get hurt and you have no idea who's going to get dragged it out if I had to guess I would say that this is where rising sun' will either win people over or have them running for the hills blind bidding is just not for everyone okay it's a bit unfair to call it blind bidding there's certainly a bit more strategy to it than just blindly hedging your bets the key to getting what you want out of it is not just focusing on what you want but also I'm figuring out what everybody else wants and basing them to the punch even sometimes bidding on something you can't use just to deprive them of it but it's incredibly infuriating to continuously draw the short straw call the wrong shots on what everybody everybody getting exactly what they want out of it everybody except you but this is certainly not where our problems with Rising Sun and I am absolutely in love with all of this plastic that you can find in the game from this tree that grows for similes of that little girls from the Rings heads all this evil spider parasol lady thus aspire but she has a pain it's so awesome and then this dragon that's big enough to engulf ER volleyball it's all really amazing but it visually tells a story without you even having to play the game you kind of get what it's all about but on top of that when you play the game when you find out what these things do that story is reinforced this tree creates more bushy and then you're like how does it do oh my god does it just grow them and this parasol spider lady just how evil is she and this big dragon that's hugging a volleyball what does it do it has quite force that's like five Butchie together does making a mega Power Ranger but then a very sad thing happens when you realize that behind all of this facade of plastic all that's really important it's just cardboard let me explain did you ever get into Magic the Gathering and did you ever like discover those big dumb legendary creatures and think to yourself oh my god if I ever get to eight mana I can cast this platinum empyrion and it says my life total can't change so I'll never lose so take this big dragon it has sorry force that's a lot it goes into battle someone else bids on take hostage and takes that dragon hostage and now it looks very dumb that won't always be the case sometimes you'll have the coins to back it up but you get my drift it's a glass rhino masquerading as a rhino and that's not necessarily a problem figuring out what's good and what's not it's part of any game but Rising Sun in this regard is a bit special and here's two things that set it apart we plot $200 on this plastic and the plastic is the big feature it's the standout we got our Barbie but then we looked under the skirt and it turns out there's nothing there imagine taking the time to painstakingly paint this dragon and make him the visual centerpiece of this game but then your friends play it once and realized that he's not actually very good he kind of just sits there it kind of makes me want to design a game we're all the Forgotten plastic of blood rage and Rising Sun get together so crime or something but here's the second thing the way that you get the monsters is via this train mandate you buy the card and you get the monster but equally you can buy cards that will give you rules exceptions and get you points like you can buy a card that will let you take two hostages instead of just the one or a card that will get you points every time your figures are killed some of these strategies are very potent and some of these monsters are very potent so much so that in your first couple of games of Rising Sun they will be dominated by someone who spots that potency let's say in round three you buy the Oni of sight which unlike the dragon can change the whole tenor of the game every time it moves into a region it will leech two points off each player in that region whose honor value is lower than yours in a five player game that's a potential of sixteen points and a theoretical swing of thirty-two victory points but let's say this game also has the Fujin Carmy which will let you move one figure twice on any Carmi turn bringing that sixteen points up to a theoretical 64 points and an additional 64 points that your opponents have lost whereas this dragon will net you three points for winning a battle now I know I know it's not an entirely fair comparison to engineer the situation you would have to have an incredible amount of things go right but anyone that has played against the only of spite and no you can't let anyone abuse this situation or you could just take out the cards that include the only respite never to play with it again or at least not let it be paired with the food in Carmy but then that leaves another piece of plastic in the box look we're not making any sweeping assumptions like Rising Sun is unbalanced or this game is broken hi then maybe there's a reason for all of it to exist and certainly if you don't like something there's so much content in this game that you can remove whatever you don't want and just keep the bits that you enjoy trim it to perfection Rising Sun is best when played with the same group of people a group of people who are invested in being competitive but also don't mind a very swinging pendulum and whilst we are sure that this game will have its diehard fans we feel like that premise is more of an ideal than a reality of course those groups exist but surprise most games just aren't played that way they sit in cozy living room shared by couples or perhaps at your friendly local gaming club with its ever rotating cast in its nature Rising Sun is incredibly generous the monsters are big the card sets of plentiful the plastic is lush and there's just a lot of everything but it's also generous in terms of design each clone starts with a unique game braking ability and on ice a game breaking I don't just mean any symmetry I mean it breaks the game's legs and takes its crutches away whilst figures of other clans can move only one space each time someone marshals the dragonfly can move anywhere from anywhere to anywhere and wherever they want whilst purchasing new abilities and maintaining your economy is a continuous Sophie's Choice for other clans the koi can purchase anything for one coin sometimes even for nothing I understand that this next criticism is a touch on the esoteric side and maybe a little bit personal to me and I don't necessarily agree with it but for me it is too much Rising Sun gives its players all the power in the world only to realize that it is at the expense of removing entire portions of the game movement is a key element in this genre of games and in Rising Sun as well where are you going to position your troops how are you going to sequence multiple move actions and how are you going to convince your enemies that whilst you're headed in one direction you're secretly aiming for somewhere entirely different but if you are playing as the dragon flying all that candy is taken away from you not all clans are guilty of this I found the turtle clan a joy to play it's actually a tour toys not a turtle Seamon because it's puzzle was not at the expense of other puzzles even though it might not be necessarily the most important clan I don't know maybe it is maybe it isn't and that just about mirrors our impressions of this Kickstarter as a whole we've got a game that is mechanically and aesthetically great but not really anything that moves us it was so much better than we expected but still not something we would recommend investing in certainly not an investment of $200 and of course Kickstarter's will vary in their quality but if this one is anything to go by it's incredibly eager to please and to be honest it loses something of itself in the pursuit and now Elaine for a very special message above the no plan included Kickstarter if you have enjoyed this no pun included presentation then you should know that right now no pun included is on Kickstarter just like Rising Sun was and we're looking for a much smaller amount than four million but we would like to continue forward as we go along and to do that we need funds and this is where you come in we hope that if you enjoyed this video our previous videos we'll just be enjoying and having a good time with us that you will consider backing our campaign and if you do there's some great rewards well yes there are some excellent rewards like a voicemail perhaps recorded by yours truly or even magic a video of a bad joke and most importantly it will give you a very good feeling inside of you knowing you have done something really very nice mmm really nice oh you might pray my food yeah so go ahead click on the I think click on the link in the description do your part and we'll keep doing our part thank you

Channel: No Pun Included

Views: 90,601

Keywords: no pun included, board game, review, rising sun, cmon, eric lang

Id: wtrHczuFGoM

Length: 25min 17sec (1517 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 26 2018