Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm an avid board gamer, and a big fan of Pandemic classic in particular. However, this was my first encounter with a legacy game, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Here are my thoughts: This is a very different kind of game. Most board games are insular, meaning that you dust off the game, play it, and then put it back on the shelf. Five months from now it will be the same game. You know it, you like it, you know what to expect from it. Sure, maybe this time you'll have the most perfect set of destination cards for your trains (Ticket To Ride) or there might not be any Villages to give you more actions (Dominion), but it's easy to adapt when the rules of the game are the same every time. Pandemic Legacy is not that way. Instead, it's more like enjoying a season of a favorite TV show. The campaign operates like a storyline, giving each new "episode" (month) of play a different, more urgent feel. There's definitely a sense of building tension as your past successes (or, in my case, catastrophic failures) start to build up. Permanently altering the game itself (omg I have to actually TEAR THIS!?) means that every game feels high-stakes. During the campaign I was obsessed with the game, ready to proclaim it one of my all-time faves. However, this enthusiasm comes at a price: once you've played through the campaign, it's done. Sure, you COULD always replay it, but realistically...the magic is kind of gone. You know what's going to happen. You know how certain surprises are going to play out and you can use that knowledge to steer the game unfairly. Am I going to keep this game and tell myself that I'm going to replay it? Absolutely. I also still have all three Mass Effect games still installed on my PC. Any day now, I'm going to set out a block of time and play through them all again. Definitely. Just...maybe not *today*... I have no qualms about giving the game 5 stars, because it doesn't pretend to be anything other than what it is, which is an awesome campaign-driven game. My only word of caution for you is this: if you're looking for a board game to add into your long-term rotation, you're better off looking elsewhere. The replayability is amazing until you finish the campaign, and then it falls off hard. Like that one amazing TV show that you love, it wouldn't be the same to go back and watch it a second time through when you already know who dies, who kisses whom, and who was secretly working for the bad guys the whole time. Here's hoping that the "Season 1" title quickly gives way to a "Season 2!"