- Fun factor – 3/10
- Replay value – 5/10
- Components – 6/10
- Learning Curve – 4/10
Fun Factor: This game was very disappointing; I wanted to enjoy it so much because the theme was so interesting. Attempting to create the philosophers stone through experimentation and deck building sounded so awesome. Sadly the game mechanics were just flawed and boring. First off the deck building is extremely light, there are only 3 levels of “money” to help you buy parts to experiment with and the ability to put things on the “table” makes it way too easy to everything up for your turn. There is no real thought that goes into a turn at all.
Once you do get to experiment the worst part of the game unfolds, the RNG. By the time I had found all 3 of the parts I needed to win the game my wife had yet to get her first part. I had just gotten lucky getting them all back to back. Everything is face down at first and you are just mindlessly going through card by card hoping you get lucky. It’s like the card version of Yahtzee, which to me means it’s not fun at all. If “card version of Yahtzee” sounds fun to you then I would totally recommend this game.
Replay Value: This game comes with quite a large supply of cards but after one game I had no interest in seeing any more of them. Several of them are just the same rule reprinted with a different title. A plus 1 bonus is a plus one bonus no matter what name you hand it. The random elements add the worst kind of replay value, the people making the game get to say “different every time you play” but it’s really not different at all just your roll of the dice.
Components: Most everything here is of fine quality, nothing bad here. The cards feel pretty good and the dice are average quality. The really nice part actually was the tuckboxes, I wish more companies would include these. I think they are an awesome way to store a card game and if you make them of nice enough materials they will last a while. The ones included were made from cardboard so eventually they would start to fail but it would take a good bit of time.
Learning Curve: The game is easy to teach but the issue I have here comes from how much time I spent attempting to figure out what rule I was missing, attempting to figure out how to meaningfully do anything in this game can be a real challenge to learn.
Verdict: This game simply was not fun, about half way through the game both my wife and I knew there was no way for her to catch up to me but we kept playing hoping something would happen. Nothing ever did happen and it left both of us disappointed because it was such a good concept.
mythosgaming 