I found the “game” to be trying to order your actions for efficiency / maximum effect, including getting pieces to the right place to do the right thing at the right time. Istanbul felt the same in that I’m trying to do that thing, but if I do that other thing first I can do the first thing better, but I have to do this other thing first, etc. Efficient action pathing? Is that a phrase?
I’ve heard Scythe described as a slot machine with four levers and you are just trying to pull them in the right order.
I will jump on the anti-Terraforming Mars bandwagon. I have only played the app, but a few plays of it was enough to know that it was not a game for me. All these possibly synergies with cards that you may never see. Nope. Bye bye.
And while I have only played it in a sub-optimal format (PbF), Oath is on here for me, for somewhat similar reasons. Want to get favor or secrets? Well you need to have matching advisors to the card you are trading with. Oh, but you haven’t drawn any that match anywhere, and all the sites are filling up? Or the ones you do have don’t have any available favor? Tough shit. Lose.
I get that Oath is not necessarily a game you play to win, as the idea is you are sorta playing a long term campaign, evolving the deck and jumping around between chancellor, citizen, or exile depending on how things go, but the two games I played felt so unsatisfying, despite the occasional turn where I felt like I made fantastic moves. If I had that more than half the game instead of about 5% of the game, maybe I’d have liked it. As it is, I never intend to play it again.
Oh, and I know I may be stoned for heresy here, but I did not like Kyle Ferrin’s art in the game. I think his art was a great match for Root, but for some reason I found it somewhat obnoxious in Oath.
Also not really getting on with SotM, which I have only played in app form. Don’t really hate it or anything, it’s just not really sparking any interest though.
Personally, I think if you’re the type of person who listens to board game podcasts and posts on a boardgame forum then Pandemic is always going to feel too light (like Ticket to Ride). However, I played it very early in my discovery of the hobby and I thought it was brilliant and beating it for the first time is still one of my favourite gaming moments. I don’t want to play it so much now, but I’ll still defend it.
Puerto Rico and Archipelago are on my list, not because they’re bad games, just that they make me feel deeply uncomfortable.
I have never played Werewolf, but I just don’t get the appeal, especially during the first few nights were no one has any information and anyone who says they do has no evidence of their reliability. I don’t like watching people argue, especially from ignorance. If forced to play, I’d want to get eliminated early so I could go off and play something else.
I really appreciate that, thanks a lot! That’s actually the video I used to learn the game so we could actually tried it! It is indeed brilliantly done.
How do you mess up a manual THAT badly for a game that’s pretty straightforward?
I really, really hate Gloomhaven. It turns out I dislike the design ethos in many modern dungeon crawlers, so it might seem a little unfair to single it out, but something about Gloomhaven in particular really rubs me the wrong way. What’s funny is I could easily break down all the elements that put me off, and nothing would stand out as unique to it (compared to any other, similar games I merely dislike), so there must be something in the sum of its parts that irks me.
It’s one of those games that’s so resoundingly successful and well loved that I feel compelled to qualify myself any time I mention that I hate it. I’d never call it a bad game, but holy crap do I think it sucks.
I feel there are types of games, or game mechanics, that I dislike; and there are inevitably going to be “popular” games of those types which are maybe considered amongst the best exponents of those particular mechanics. I imagine most people would similarly have game types they don’t enjoy, so we probably all have games we could list here – and they’re probably all genuinely good games, so long as you enjoy that type of game?
The ones which spring to mind for me are:
Splendor. I’ve played this 3-4 times and never enjoyed myself at any point. This was a good thing, because it led me to realise that in general I don’t much like “engine building” in games – but it took a game which is purely engine building to make me recognise that this had been a strong factor in many other games I’d not enjoyed very much.
“Social Deduction” games. These simply aren’t fun for me. I don’t want to have to lie and trick people; I don’t want to have to figure out who might be trying to lie and trick the rest of us; I don’t want to arbitrarily select someone to be “murdered” that day; I don’t want to have to guess who the murderer is based on little to no information. I don’t enjoy any of it. I joined a game of “Two Rooms and a Boom” one time because there was so much buzz around it, in case that changed my mind, and it was easily the most tedious experience I’ve ever had at a games convention. Most of these games don’t even sound like games to me (which is probably a large part of the problem). A little ridiculously I actually own a copy of Avalon, but just the other day it I was thinking that I should get rid of it. I think part of me has always thought “maybe this would be exactly the right choice in some situation”, but I don’t think that’s ever going to happen.
Most games with auctions, except for High Society which is nothing but auctions and also, crucially, fast and silly. Add auctions into a longer strategic game though, and it quite likely ruins the game for me.
RoboRally. I think I’ve enjoyed every programming game I’ve ever played except for RoboRally (which I’ve tried enough times to be pretty sure about it).
And both last and, in my estimation, least:
Poker. You can probably file it under “social deduction” above, but I’m sure this particular title maximises the ratio of the game’s popularity against my desire to play it.
OMG Splendor. I forgot that one. I have been eternally baffled by the positive feels it almost universally evokes.
Lost Cities. Well, to be fair this is one that I “played out” but it only took about 10 games. I did enjoy games 1 and 2, then maybe 5-8 when I found the second layer of the game. Then…
You should try it on the app against somebody as bad at it as me, sure that would change your mind
You know what? I agree with every single one of your gripes against the game (besides the art, I do like the art; and I can see how disliking the art is way more powerful for a negative decision than liking it is the other way round) but that makes me want to try it again, but only in real. That and the fact that I only played as Chancellor both times, and when I was not very sure of what to do I was frustrated by what was the only stuff that was available to do. But a bit like with Twilight Struggle, I felt that being so bad at it made me want to get better at it? Call it masochism.
I definitely think that I would enjoy the game immensely more if I played it on the tabletop version.
Reading this thread, as @yashima already pointed out, is a peculiar mix of ‘oh my gosh I thought it was just me!’ and ‘wow, I never expected anyone could feel like this about a game I really love’. I’m glad we’re not arguing but able to express our opinions honestly without fear of things going overly negative or toxic. Thanks to @RogerBW for this little corner of the internet!
I’m going to agree with @Chewy77 and @COMaestro about Oath; I’m still not sure how I feel about the art but I agree that I prefer it in Root than here. The game itself I found extremely difficult to grok, and I was often confused despite the rules appearing relatively simple. I think the rule book is not very helpful here, at least not for me. I also suspect it was a function of playing by forum, which has only been intermittently successful for me. I suspect I’d like the game much more at a table but I’m unlikely to try it now.
Also really not a fan of social deduction games. They trigger feelings of guilt and anxiety in me which are not emotions I’m really looking for when I want to play a board game.
Oh, Love Letter. Another game I’ve never gotten any enjoyment out of, but which seems to mostly get a lot of love (and, nowadays, themed variants).
As with other microgames, I do appreciate it on some level as a game that people can take and play anywhere; but I just don’t think it’s a good game, so I’d never choose to play it unless it was the only (or, somehow, best) option available.
If Fluxx lasted only ten minutes (and sometimes it does!)…
There’s a whole class of games (largely heavy Euros) that I can admire from a distance, and many of my friends like, but I’m so rubbish at playing that I just don’t enjoy them. I tend to think of it less as “this game is bad” and more “the tuple of (game, Roger) is a bad one”.
I have a whole other list of games that basically amounts to “This is a good X minute game, too bad it takes X+Y minutes every time I’ve played it.” Battlestar Galactica is probably top of that list. I think it would be a great 45 minute to an hour game. Every time I’ve played it, it took 3+ hours and I didn’t enjoy most of that time.
