We’re back to board games, and I wanted to write this one because I wrote about Aeon’s End Legacy. In particular with my game play on Wednesday, I talked about if it was a good Legacy game. But let’s tackle what I look for when it comes to a legacy game in general.

What’s A Legacy Game?

A Legacy game is a non-replayable campaign game. Basically you are possibly unlocking rules, changing the state of the game board, character boards, or components of the game as you play through a series of games. The experience of the game is mainly going to be contained in those plays of the game. Some are not playable after the fact and some are playable. And a lot of them have you destroy game components.

So, for some examples, Pandemic Legacy unlocks new rules as you play through up to 24 games, once you are done, there are no rules to continue playing because it wouldn’t be easy to play base Pandemic on that board. Charterstone on the other hand you can play after the fact. As you unlock rules, you end up with a game that is customized on the board but that you can play again. Gloomhaven is not really a legacy game because while you put stickers on the board, the game is completely resettable with minimal effort or you can easily ignore what is on the board.

What Do I Look For In A Legacy Game?

1. Good Mechanics
2. Evolving Mechanics
3. Story
4. Unlocking New Content/Story
5. Unlocking or changing state mid game session
6. Unique Characters

Good Mechanics

This basically means that I want a fun game. If the game doesn’t work, isn’t balanced or isn’t fun, I don’t want play it. While I pay attention whenever anyone puts the word Legacy on a board game, I still want it to be a good game. This will obviously differ for people depending on taste, I might not like a euro legacy game as well, for example, but you might be. So good overall game play that is fun.

Evolving Mechanics

I also want the game play to change over time. If I start with the game and nothing changes except adding a few stickers to the board, I’d be less interested in it. As much as I want story in a game, for a legacy game, how I play needs to change as well. This can be different objectives, but I like it when they add in rules.

Story

So, I just mentioned story, I want an interesting story in the game. Both Pandemic Legacy and Aeon’s End Legacy might not have a ton of story to read, but you get it from the game and from the cards in the legacy deck. But the story also needs to make sense. For Seafall the story is too scattered and in Chartertone, it is less story more just random text with tiny choices on them. So give me a story that makes sense, and just enough to keep things moving.

Unlocking New Content/Story

Obviously, I want to unlock new things as well. I like it when I can unlock new pieces for the game. Pandemic Legacy has some great moments across all the games where it just says, here is something new. Aeon’s End Legacy gives you story and moments where things change, you open up something new and there are different cardboard tiles that you use. But also just additional story, stopping and reading a card, or discarding a card you won’t read are a lot of fun.

Unlocking Or Changing Mid Game Session

I also really like when that story happens during the game. This isn’t something that I need, but something I prefer. I like when I stop and open a box or read some story cards during the middle of the game. There is just something exciting knowing you unlock something new. The idea that when you start a session the story might be different or how you play might be different by the time you end.

Unique Characters

Finally, I like feeling as if I am unique in a game. This is generally true, but I think it helps out a lot with legacy games. It is one spot where you can add in stickers, powers, give new or more options and you feel like you are different. I generally want this in a game though. If I am playing a character, give me something unique to do. And I appreciate it when I can become more unique as I go.

Are All Criteria Equally as Important?

No, I don’t know that all of them are. For me the story, the game play being fun, and the progression of the mechanics are what is most important to me. I think the unique character gives it a cooler factor to what is going on. Also, stopping mid game to unlock something is really cool as well. But I don’t think that is a requirement for a good legacy game. Aeon’s End Legacy is a good legacy game but doesn’t unlock anything during the middle of a game.

Let’s Do An Example

We’re actually flipping the script from sometimes, and I’m going to go with Seafall, a legacy game that I thought was okay at best and sometimes just bad. Let’s see what that one got wrong from my list, or got right.

Good Mechanics

To start off, we are going to go with a negative here. The base mechanics of the game are fine. They are fairly luck dependent on rolling dice, and really too much so. The level of mitigation just wasn’t there. So things that took a while to work towards could just be destroyed really quickly. And other things, that you developed throughout the game could just be there for points and you’d never use their ability.

Evolving Mechanics

Now, they did add mechanics throughout the game. But I’m not sure that the ones they added in were that great. The base mechanics of the game stayed the same. So as the board became bigger and you pushed out further in your exploration, everything just took longer. So while we got new advisors, new decks of cards to use, and new islands to go to with new symbols and spots on them, they didn’t evolve in an interesting way.

Story

This is also a negative. The story was supposed to be an interesting pirate story. And I think that it could have been. However, the story was all over the place. You would explore a location and get random story. It was only the few times when you opened up something big that you’d get a big chunk of new story.

Unlocking New Story/Mechanics

That actually brings me to the next one here, how it unlocked. We got a major piece of story and then got the hints of that major piece of story after the fact. Because you could pick the passage for the type of spot you explored, story was not really in order. And because of that, unlocking story was weird. It was also weird how you could unlock three things in one game and then nothing for the next five. There was no progression between games really.

Unlocking or Changing Mid Game Session

This it got right, actually. You unlocked a lot of big stuff during the game. In fact, sometimes you could unlock a lot of it, which made already long games go even that much longer. That wouldn’t have been that big a deal, if the game had been very interesting. But you had a chance to progress story and find out cool things as you played.

Unique Characters

Finally, I think they did a solid job with this. Everyone started out with their own ability. You got to keep an advisor as well. But unlike something like Aeon’s End Legacy or even Pandemic Legacy, you never really built it that much further. It was basically how you built out your ships, which could have been interesting, but it wasn’t. I wanted to upgrade my town as well, not by just giving me an extra point, but letting me keep a building. Make the buildings harder to get but when you get them, you get to keep them.

Seafall almost was a great game. There were just too many things that got in the way of it. And it was also a game that said it was for a lot of players and honestly, might have been best at two or three. Though, you’d get through the story way slower. I think there is a good game potentially hidden in there, but it needed more focus overall.

Will This Work For You?

I think, like the campaign one, that this actually works pretty well. Keep in mind that all parts aren’t made equally. If the game is good and engaging then it’s more interesting and I’m willing to put up with less in other areas. But generally, I want to feel a consistent sense of progression throughout the game.

What is your favorite legacy game? Or do you not play legacy games?

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