I said a while ago that I thought many “big” games were being biased towards optimising the first play experience rather than depth on repeated plays, and this seems like an example; SVWAG reached the “low replay value” conclusion from the opposite direction (to over-summarise their response, no meaningful choices, mostly a memory game). If that’s what you want, fair enough; to me a board game shouldn’t be a thing that’s played out after eight games. (Yeah, not a fan of legacy either.)
I was surprised Quinns didn’t mention the “lose all your lives, restart from the beginning” of 1980s video games, but maybe he’s too young for that to have been a thing.
I do feel that the over-whiteness is the sort of thing you’d expect from a small operation, not the largest firm in the business; a big company should be able to afford one person to do what a standard publishing operation apparently can’t, take five minutes to look over all the art roughs and ask “is there a reason everyone’s white?”