So, recently, as I’ve been posting out, I’ve finished a playthrough of Pandemic Legacy Season 1 solo on Youtube. You can find that on Youtube at Malts and Meeples or on the Nerdologists.

But, I wanted to go back to this game and write an updated TableTopTakes on it, because the two experiences were very different, but similar. I’ll explain what I mean in a second, but first, let’s talk about the game itself.

Pandemic Legacy Season 1 is based off of the base game Pandemic. In Pandemic you are a group from the CDC based out of Atlanta. You are trying to stop the spread of four diseases, red, blue, yellow, and black, before you run out of time, run out of disease cubes, or have too many outbreaks. At the start of Pandemic Legacy Season 1, this is what you are still doing. However, because it’s a legacy game, the game evolves over time. New rules are added, cards are added or removed from the decks, characters change, and stickers are added to the board. At the end of Pandemic Legacy, you end up with your own copy of the game that is unique from anyone else’s experience based off of a number of different things. But along with changing up rules, etc. there is also a story element that leads you through the game as you find out what is happening around the world and with the diseases. This story is pretty straight forward and you are always going to hit the same beats at the same time.

This story is where I want to start talking about the two experiences that I had. Mainly, because, the story doesn’t change. Even though the boards look radically different between the two games, the story, progressed in a very similar way. You hit the same beats at the same time, and while I got to skip a little part or two along the way because I was more prepared, the story as a whole didn’t change. Now, is that a bad thing about the game? Is it bad because there is a limited number of times you can play through because you remember the story? It was three years, I believe, between plays for me, and I remembered a fair amount of the story. Maybe not when it was going to happen in the game, but I remembered that it happened. It isn’t a great thing about this game, however, playing through the second time, the experience was still very enjoyable. It was different though as I wasn’t always waited with baited breath for the next bit of story.

Pandemic Legacy Season 1 (and Season 2 for that matter) really come down to being so much of an experience. Even when you know the story, you are still wrapped up in what you know is going to be coming. Plus, the tension that you can get even from the base game if the epidemics come up just wrong is still strong in this game, if not stronger. The game builds up to the point where you feel like if something wrong happens, it’s going to get out of control fast. And I don’t think that you lose that experience either playing it a second time or playing it solo. I think had my first play been solo, I might have done better than we did but probably a few more rules would have been missed. I also think that the tension might have been lower the other way around because while I wouldn’t have spoiled anything, I could have lead people in the right direction and had more group input. Or I would have had to have sat back and that might have caused more tension, because I could see wrong choices or poor choices being made.

One big difference between the two games was that the first time through, there were four players. When I played solo, I was the only player and I controlled two characters. Controlling two characters is pretty easy, and it worked well. You’re able to coordinate a bit better than with four characters because you aren’t sending your characters away at random. I also tried not to play on “easy mode” which would be using the Medic and the Dispatcher who are a powerful character combination. Even with that, I would say that coordinating two characters yourself is notably easier than playing with four people each controlling a single character. That’s not a downside to either experience, but the game dynamic changes with the number of players you have, and in a game with tough decisions, both ways can sometimes be an advantage.

With all of that said, do I think I could play it a third time? And I think that I probably could. I’m not sure I could sit down and do it now, it would seem like something I just finished and know too much about, because that’s an accurate statement. But, sometime down the line, I could see coming back to it with the right group, especially if you’re introducing it to new players. To kind of take the role of the rules expert who can run the set-up and keep track of the book keeping aspect while sitting back and enjoying the game or helping as needed in decision making. It would be a good way to introduce a more complicated idea of a game, though the mechanics are pretty straight forward, to a group of people who might not play as many games.

Overall, it was a really enjoyable experience going through the game again. I think I had basically as much fun the second time as I did the first time, and when it’s just me playing it, it’s easier to coordinate it getting done. Pandemic Legacy Season 1 is a game that can benefit from having a tighter timeline, though, since it’s based off of months, you can certainly do what we did the first time and try and play once a month. If you are looking for a campaign style game that is very accessible, I think that Pandemic Legacy is a great option. And while you can’t play the game again when you are done with it, the price point is good and the hours of entertainment and the experience are fairly valued.

Overall Grade: A
Gamer Grade: A-
Casual Grade: A

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