How To Play: Let’s Go! To Japan

This game is about creating the most enjoyable trip to Japan. And to do that you want to have the most points scored by the end of the game. You plan out, or travel about, for six days maybe going between Kyoto and Tokyo or maybe just hanging out in one of those cities the whole time. And each day you want to do specific things, because they are going to potentially give you the most points.

The game at the heart of it is a drafting style game. You get two cards, to start, pick one to play to one of the days and then pass the other to your opponent for later in the game. Later on, those cards are going to be picked up and chosen from again, which might be you picking up four cards and selecting two to add to your itinerary in front of you.

Each day you can do three things. And those things are going to give you points, lucky cat symbol, as well as the one on the top of the stack of three is going to give you some bonus scoring. The bonus scoring has to do with how much you have enjoyed your time in Japan and what you’ve seen. Or maybe how much stress there has been. But there is no guarantee you will score it because you need to meet the condition for scoring.

There is more to the game as well. You get some bonuses depending on how well you plan each day. And you can find out about those for yourself. The main scoring and playing loop is there though. Whomever has the most points at the end wins.

What Doesn’t Work

There is an element of luck to the game. You see a limited number of cards throughout the game, especially in a two player game. The cards you pass to your opponent, some of those cards are going to get passed back to you. However, this often times just means that you need to pivot on how you are approaching some of the scoring objectives. The game encourages adjusting on your feet versus very long term planning. And it’s a fast game, which I think can often be a bit more forgiving when it comes to luck.

I also think for a fast game, the teach is not the fastest as you play. Getting down how all the various scorings and bonuses work is not the easiest thing. When you have them down it isn’t that difficult a game to play. And I think there are elements of the game that start to make more sense once you play a single turn, or maybe two. But that initial time teaching it is going to take a little bit of time and effort.

What Works

Scoring

Firstly, I think that the scoring is satisfying. You score for each day and you can score a lot each day which is a lot of fun. It’s one of those things where everything is going to give you a bonus of some points, almost. And it’s fun to see those points pile up, even if it’s not a ton of points, just knowing that you got points from everything.

Bonus Tokens

Next, I think that there are elements in the bonuses that work really well. I didn’t talk about it much in the how to play, but you are moving up tokens for different things like cultural events, food, etc. And those give you more points, but some of the bonuses also interact with them. You can gain research tokens which allow you to pick from more cards. Or you might pick wild tokens that you can use to trigger scoring. You might get luxury train rides that give you points and make you less stressed. These are a great way to manipulate the game.

Speed of Game

I also really like how quick the game is. And the game isn’t going to take much longer for more players. The element of the game that is going to take longer is going to be the scoring, though even that shouldn’t be much longer. It’s a drafting game so everyone goes at once which means that you are only as slow as your slowest player. And generally you pick between two cards, so it isn’t like there is a massive amount of decision making space all the time in the game.

Choices

Finally, I think that the game offers good choices. While the choices are more in the moment based off of the cards you see, there is strategy to what you are doing. And as you start to lock in some of the scoring for each day those choices start to take on more weight. You want to end up with a bunch of stress free bonuses to get an end of day scoring, well, need to start loading those up on previous days. Or do you need to grab a wild token to bump up your food score to be able to complete one. You need to plan all of that out the best you can.

Who Is Let’s Go! To Japan For?

Firstly, I think that it’s for most gamers. This is a nice game that is a branch between a game that has a ton of choices, but a mainly random game. And most gamers will enjoy that sort of game. But the theme is also good for non-gamers as well. Going to Japan on a trip sounds like fun. And Let’s Go! To Japan shows you a lot of what is out there to see. Plus, for non-gamers, there are limited concepts that they need to understand. But I do think it’s a bit complex for someone just getting into games to learn and teach themself.

My Final Thoughts on Let’s Go! To Japan

Firstly, let’s talk about the exclamation points. I think that this could be a series of games that AEG does. All of them might be similar in how they play with a minor twist, so we might see a Let’s Go! To Italy or Let’s Go! to Australia for example, and I’d be happy if that happened. This game is a good time, and for me hits that sweet spot of offering good decisions but not being too complex as you go along.

And I want to double down as well on the scoring for this game. I won’t lie, there is a good amount of scoring. But at the same time it is generally fairly easy to follow after going through it once. And by the end of the game, you understand the scoring well. It reminds me of another drafting game, Sushi Go Party! where often times it’s good to do a quick overview of the scoring, but it’s also as good to start playing, because it becomes more evident as you go.

Finally, probably the highest level of praise I can give a game. I want to teach more people Let’s Go! To Japan. I want to play it more and I want to teach it more. Because it’s a game that I suspect a lot of people are going to enjoy. And when it comes down to it, that’s what I want, I want people to enjoy games and find those games that work for them.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: B
Casual Grade: A-

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How To Play Grove?

Grove can be played in two different ways, so let’s talk about the basic way first. Grove is a 9 card game with an 18 card deck. You use half of the cards and you are trying to layer cards so that you match like trees. When you layer cards you bump up the value of the tree being scored in that spot by one. So if I layer a lemon tree with one lemon and a lemon tree with two lemons, I place a die with the three face up. Then if I layer again with a two lemon, I go up to five. The goal is to get the highest total possible.

However, Grove offers two things to not make a match. Firstly, you can layer glades over anything. So empty spots on a card. Over a tree of some time, you can do that and now put another tree down there. Or over a die, you can do that, the die stays, and you can grow that tree type again. Or there is a squirrel, it allows you to break a match completely, say oranges onto a lemon, but it kills that spot. And that spot as well as any adjacent scores -1 point.

Then you just add up the pips on the dice and that is your score. How you score doesn’t change with challenge mode, but challenge mode changes what you target to score.

Challenge Mode

The other way to play the game is a challenge mode. On the backs of each card is a scoring challenge. So you pick two out of the deck of unused cards at random and you try and score those. That can vary from two times the score of oranges, or have all the limes in play, or get three lemons next to each other.

Each challenge gives you points as well as has a specific point total on the card. So maybe you get two times your orange score and get three lemons or any fruit next to each other. The double your oranges is 44 points and the three fruit adjacent is, let’s say, 28, so you’d need to score 72 points to win the game.

What Doesn’t Work?

The challenges are hard, and while they tried to balance it, I think that sometimes you just flip a challenge card, especially like get all 15 dice into play, and that’s not worth it. It’s a lot of effort, you keep the score of the dice you have in play low, and you don’t get enough points to offset the low dice or the target score. Now, being hard isn’t the issue here, it is the balance.

The other question is how long does the game play work? Especially the base game, I don’t know that it is better than Orchard. If you are just looking at layering cards, I think that Orchard offers the same puzzle, without the glades and squirrel, just rotten apples, that creates a more interesting game play.

What Works?

Like Orchard, the game play is very fast for Grove. I have played it over 100 times in the month of January, I’ll probably play it over 400 times throughout the year. Why, I use it as a palate cleanse when I have a few minutes between meetings at work. Or over lunch as I want to keep my brain engaged and busy, but I don’t want to work through lunch. And it doesn’t take up much room.

I also really enjoy the challenges. Yes, some of them I feel like are less balanced. But my negative of how long the game play will stay interesting is really taken care of by the challenges. It gives you that extra puzzle to work towards. Yes, some might not be worth trying to score, but depending on the cards you get, it might be. It really depends and I think that it works really well for the game.

Who Is It For?

This is for the solo gamer or the gamer who is looking for that palate cleansing game. I use it after a long day or like I said at work between meetings. It is the same area that I use Orchard for. And I have two copies of Orchard, one for work and one for home, and I’ll likely do the same with Grove. But if you are like me and like small solo games, Orchard is going to be a good option.

Final Thoughts on Grove

Grove, I was worried when I backed it on Kickstarter. My concern were the challenges, was it going to make the game too complex. How was scoring going to work and would it take a simple experience and drive the complexity up. What works so well with Orchard is how clean and simple it is. Grove, in all fairness, does make you think more, especially with the challenges.

But the challenges don’t add in complexity to the game. It makes some choices harder, but the game is still as simple to get the table. And I really appreciate the twist now on the game. Like I said, if I play base game, I will play Orchard. It offers more satisfying game play for me, but with the challenges, Grove offers more puzzle to it than Orchard.

My Grade: A-
Gamer Grade: A-
Casual Grade: B-

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