It has its downsides. A lot of games really don’t work at 2p. Pret a Porter learning game was eeesh! So bad.
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I’ve certainly learned that the hard way on more than a few occasions. Many, many excellent games have left my collection due to poor 2P gameplay.
I wanted to teach and learn Crystal Palace but I was so bored through explaining all the rules that I just gave up. I could feel my exasperation rising and added to that the concept of not really being able to grok what is good in a play through really hinders the on ramp for a game. I mean in addition to learning the game you then need to teach the game then play the game. You put three hours just to get to a point where you might have enjoyment if you add one hour more. Nope.
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I usually teach myself by playing a two handed solo or a straight solo if possible. I find games hard to learn that start off by saying: here are the rules btw if you want to play with with two or solo you first need to learn rules and then a new set for the low player counts…
(Loot of Lima just greeted me with that exact phrase)
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I do the same thing, even if the solo variant has very little change from any 2P modifications. Something about going two layers deep in terms of rules exceptions is just one leap too far.
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I’m usually a pretty quick study a board games; I’m no good at them, and I very rarely play with any sort of strategy in mind, but I usually grok the rythm of games rapidly and start to enjoy playing them soon.
I’ve been learning the hard way that I struggle to understand board games much more when playing assynchronously online; this is not ideal given the situtation we’re in. Even with games which I know relatively well, like Firefly, I struggle to keep track of the overall board situation and end up micro-focussed on my own turns. With games that I’m completely new to, like Oath, even with extremely kind and patient support, I feel adrift and uniquely stupid in a way that is very new to me with board games.
I wonder if this unpleasant feeling is what puts some people off playing board games at all? Certainly if it was my experience in the meatspace I suspect I wouldn’t be such a huge fan of them. It’s a strange feeling that I’m determined to push through because of the joy I know games bring, and because my previous experience of painful play and feeling a little dumb has later blossomed into games which I really enjoy and feel competent at (Magic being my main exemplar of this).
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I don’t have much to say here other than making a solidarity post. I’ve been watching miserably for the last 14 months as my regular gaming buddies all play online (we’re active on a Discord). I absolutely cannot bring myself to play games online for pretty much exactly the same reasons you describe.
If I didn’t have a partner who enjoys playing (more than she would otherwise like, surely!), my entire last year of gaming would have been sad, multi-handed solo learning games.
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To learn new games without being taught, I need to hold the pieces in my hand. Also I learn by playing not by studying the rulebook. Sure I read it but I skip over half of it as soon as I think I have grokked the flow of the game.
I cannot learn a game in TTS without a huge effort.
I can play games online but unless someone else teaches me I have had to learn them on my table.
Learning with the bits definitely works better than without, for me. TTS in turn seems to work better than BGA/Yucata, because whoever’s teaching can move the bits around to say “and if you do this, that will happen”.
I’m not a big fan of learning from video but I know that for some people it can work very well…
I admit I enjoy learning through video, but it is definitely with limitations.
I also admit the trickier way for me to learn a game it is to read the instructions manual without the game in front of me. Specially if there are not ay visual clues.
I believe every way of teaching/learning has its pros and cons.
Having a long/complex game in front of me, probably a let’s play a few rounds would be the best way, but it is tricky because of the time it can take (and extend the play) and because when you are starting to grasp things, experienced players tend to go: Oh, you’re Ok, and all bets are off. While you are just grasping the concepts, and just learned what to do in a turn, you become sort of cannon fodder more often than not.
Having a two handed play, while it is very good to learn at my own rate, it is also great for me to misinterpret rules, or simply miss them. As my usual corrections from a few other members here when I used to play Gloomhaven solo about a year ago can testify.
I think what works for me is a combination of preparedness, plus having a good teach. Although I admit I understand teaching games well is difficult, specially to people that you don’t know, or aren’t usual gamers, so I always appreciate it, no matter how well it went.
And more often than not, we tend to not prepare and just turn up for a games night, making it a bit more difficult for the teach.
I introduced Azul: Summer Pavilion to my (barely boardgame playing) partner. The original Azul seems to be a really good gateway game, and A:SP has a lot of the same advantages (GORGEOUS heavy pieces, fun “choose a whole stack but you also get the ones you didn’t want from it” gameplay).
But I think the scoring in A:SP was designed to give fans of the original Azul some extra complexity, and trying to teach it to someone for a first play is… very hard. She went from excited to defeated by the rules in about ten seconds. I was okay (ish) at learning it, but it lost her quickly. And given that choosing which colour to get in order to score the most points drives your entire strategy for the game, it’s too fundamental to be the bit that players have trouble with.
On a separate point there have definitely been more complex games that I needed to hold in my hands to learn where I couldn’t have done it with just an online version. Yeah.
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Azul 3 to me feels like the eurogamers Azul it’s definitely more intriguing (but less immediately devious)
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I’ll usually leaf through the booklet just to get a quick feel for the game, then read it attentively with the components to really understand what they’re talking about, and then play a dummy game solo before I’m ready to teach. Some games are harder, like Arkham Horror (3rd Edition), but only one has caused me to seek outside help (in the form of a video from Nights Around The Table).
That game was Race For The Galaxy. That manual is a horror show, probably the worst I’ve ever seen.
Very good game, but it’s hampered by an absolutely horrible manual.
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I never read the manual for Race ftG because I learned the game stumbling through the app. Probably one of the reasons I still sometimes play quite badly despite dozens of games 
I initially found the phase selection difficult to process and teach but now that I have played more games that have that… it isn’t that difficult anymore.
Yeah, it’s actually a pretty simple game, it’s just explained badly.
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You and I have very different definitions of what makes a bad rulebook.
Race for the Galaxy is written in a very technical way, but I wouldn’t say that makes it bad. I read it a very long time ago, but from what I remember it was clear and complete.
The bad rulebooks I’ve read have been way worse. The worst are probably rulebooks that fail to answer simple questions that arise on a first play.
I found that it lost itself in exceptions and examples while attempting to explain basic concepts. That made a very simple set of rules impossible to follow. Of course, everybody’s different and that’s okay! 
I may have just been lucky in that every other manual has been very clear, so this one stood out in a bad way. Or maybe the second edition one’s worse than the first (or the French edition’s bad).
RftG for me had the problem of a great mass of symbols, each of which has a specific meaning which one can look up on the reference card, and then one has to look up the meanings in the rulebook to find out what they actually do. I’m not generally fond of icons anyway (they’re harder to design well than most people think), and the second level of redirection made it a slog. (Also, it was in a noisy boardgame café, which exacerbates any problems by impairing concentration.)
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Going on a specific tangent here, apologies in advance.
I think we probably have similar tastes in manuals. For example, I think Cole Werlhe’s approach to manual design is just about perfect (assuming he’s precise in his language which is, thankfully, usually the case). The two-book approach makes learning digestible, and the “law” usually eliminates any ambiguity. I’ve often wondered about whether this is an alienating approach, though. I’m not sure how many folks are prepared to apply the kind of grammatical rigour needed to parse the “law” end. There are enough rules questions for Pamir and Root on BGG [which are actually answered clearly in the rules] that I feel like, at least anecdotally, that speaks to this concern.
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That’s true, the iconography definitely made it harder as well. We comparatively had a much easier time learning Terraforming Mars because every card tells you exactly what it does, with the icons only supplementing the text.
EDIT: This was a response to RogerBW. Forgive me, I’m still learning.
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