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« on: September 16, 2019, 05:42:39 pm »
Today my partner and I finished Season 1. Yes, we played after season 2. Here are some of our thoughts and results. Major gameplay and plot spoilers for both seasons - you have been warned:
A few notes that might be useful to know: We won with a record of 11-3 W-L, that being 10 early month wins, 1 late month win, and 1 month lost. Our final score was IIRC 637, but really it should have been low-mid 800's (see the complaints below about Team Bravo). Black was the CoDA colour, it ended up spreading to I think 15 or 16 cities in total - all black cities plus Khartoum, Moscow and I think 1-2 other blue edge cities. Riyadh was City Zero. The main characters we used throughout the game were Valerie the Scientist, Pikachu the Quarantine Specialist, Guy the Operations Expert (traitor), and later we added Shivali the Virologist. In the final game, Hank the Soldier made his first appearance, and though it was just one game he was so critical I'm listing him anyway. He close to single-handedly found the hidden CoDA stockpiles and blew them up, thanks to his equipment grabbing powers.
Firstly, the story and objectives feel much more forced in S1 compared to S2. Where S2 gave you exploration and freedom to do things in different orders, and lots of possible things to discover - or not - S1 is much more rigid in its structure. There's advantages to that in S1 I suppose, while you can't know exactly where a player will be at and have to account for all kinds of skill levels, you've got perfect knowledge of what tools they have available at any given point, and can introduce things based on that. I think this makes sense - S1 the designers were of course less experienced, but by S2 they'd done a whole game and gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback, they knew they could push the boat out a little bit.
I think the story in S1 has a better high point, in the betrayal and reveal of what's really going on. I knew that was coming but managed to keep it quiet, and it totally blindsided my partner as our best character, the Operations Expert, turned traitor and fled. S2 on the other hand I think has better world building thanks to all the different searches, the slow reveal of information and so on.
Probably my biggest gripe in S1 was the pacing towards the end, and the scoring mechanics feeling a bit... unfair in places. In particular, the searches. The first three searches, we nail game 1 as soon as they're available, we're all over this info and working towards our prize. October rolls around, the search for that month is to discard CoDA cards in City Zero (Black and Riyadh respectively in our case), +2 if it has a military base. Well, that's awkward - our Operations Expert just went traitor, and looking at our starting hands that seems tough. Our lack of drawing black quickly makes it clear we're not going to complete that objective this game, in fact I think the trail probably went cold before we could even draw the Riyadh card or get enough black cards between us to complete the search - meaning it was an impossible task in that game. But we win anyway by completing other objectives, deciding hey, completing three searches immediately and one just one month late is totally fine.
WRONG. We go into our next game, November, and immediately get hit with the "you failed, team Bravo picks up the scraps and does your job for you" card. Okay, that's a bit surprising, only one chance to do that search? Well, whatever, we press on with the game and things go okay. We win November and then December first try... and then we tally up final scoring. Okay, so Team Bravo helped us, I tell my partner I know that's like -40 points in scoring - which sucks but eh, it's a reasonable penalty in most cases. Nope. It's -200 points. The same penalty as losing 10 games, and twice the penalty of losing 4 times in a row, to give a bit of context. We drop down from what would have been about 830 points, putting us solidly in the top scoring bracket, into the third bracket. It felt very unfair, even if it's ultimately meaningless. Had we known in advance, not completing that search in October would be really bad for our points, we may have tried something different, but as it was, this really feels like a kick in the teeth on top of it throwing the pacing a bit off.
We also lost 80 points for not destroying all military bases because, well, it just wasn't necessary. There were two left on the board at the end, one harmless in Chicago, the other was slightly annoying in Lagos, but it was easier to leave it and eat the +1 action cost for vaccinating in the two cities left it affected for us. I dunno if we could have actually won that final game while also destroying the military bases, mind - but we definitely could have done in late december if we decided to do so. Admittedly, we probably could have guessed that clearing military bases would be worth points so I'm not so upset about this one.
Anyway, ranting over, I feel like season 2 for the most part handled that better. Yeah, there's times where things felt slightly rushed in S2, but there were dozens of things throughout the game that you could do at any time there, and they needed deadlines for, and most of it felt quite fair. In S1, it's just these searches, and especially that one October search which you can not do.
To the best of my knowledge, we made just a single rules mistake, which was using Self-Sacrifice as a free action and not an actual action on two occasions. We decided that the overall benefit we got from this was probably small enough that we simply moved on.
I think the main issue that faces Season 2 compared to Season 1 is how volatile and varied it can be, and how much the game can swing one way or the other based on how you're doing - if you get some useful searches done and make good connections early, and use box 6 well, you stay on top of everything, and the game stays easy going forward. If you get a rough string of luck early you can fall behind, miss out on box 6 for a while, feel so pressured trying to survive that you don't even think to go over there, and can end up in a horrible situation. Season 1 isn't perfect in that way either - if you do well, you keep winning and stay at 0 events but the game can't become any harder from there, so the better you do, the fewer CoDA cities you'll have, the fewer riots to deal with, the more research stations and so on, making things easier and easier - no extra challenge. But if you're just doing okay, winning some and losing some, the game is pretty well balanced I feel, the extra events and upgrades balance out the losses in the world. In Season 2 it doesn't feel like it flows that way if you're doing badly - yes you get more upgrades, but it can't undo the major issues, and while you still get extra rationing, it makes less and less difference as your player deck bloats, and if you're not doing well you're probably not trimming it down frequently either. So basically the balance mechanisms in season 2 to me don't feel as effective.
Anyway, overall though, I very much enjoyed season 1, but of the two I prefer Season 2. Both were great games, and I'm really looking forward to Season 3. And I really hope the entire trilogy eventually gets a digital release.
world. I also accessed the hidden level in the overworld and got the orb - are there more orbs I could have found by now? I kind of wonder. I also managed to get the flower from ABC, and accessed the Depths. I think I reached level 3 or 4 in the depths, which is where I'm currently at. I'm on 131 levels clear, 11 flowers, 1 orb. I think I've managed to find about 185 levels so far, give or take. Everything in these worlds is crazy and breaking my brain, but I'm slowly making progress.