Legacies Review

How will you be remembered?

Legacies from Brookspun Games is a heavy euro game where you are attempting to leave the most successful legacy. You do this with one of ten different characters by playing above board (peaceful) or underhanded (aggressive) essentially giving you twenty different play styles for the game and creating successful relationships with other characters and players along with a little market manipulation and choosing the best successor for your empire. On your turn, you will choose to either play a card from your hand or from the market. Every card is a multi-use card so you will need to make a lot of decisions every turn. If you choose to form a relationship with someone, you will immediately reap the benefits. You can buy and sell stocks, gather resources, use those resources for heirlooms, and even more. There's a lot that can happen in one turn. You can also choose to do the global actions which are one time use per era cards that will help you do some really powerful stuff. It also will let you choose the current event for the era which can be a huge turning point for you. You will also need to choose a successor every round which can provide you with special abilities moving forward. Play will continue like this until the end of the 6th generation where the player who has amassed the most fame will be the winner.

The Good: Legacies has so many cool concepts packed into it. It's a heavy game for sure that is also a solid brain burner but once you have a solid feel for the game it really isn't too bad. I love that there are so many different ways to play this game and so many strategies you can try out. The solo mode is also really well done. You can add as many bots as you'd like which may make things a bit complex but I love that it's an option. Having the ability to effect the round with the global events is a really cool concept as well. It almost feels like a race to get to make that choice and if you don't win, you'll always have the foresight into the next round to start preparing for that event. It's really well thought out.

The Okay: This is not a game that you can teach to just anyone. There are a lot of nuances to the game that newer players may not be able to grasp right away. I wouldn't deter anyone from playing this if they wanted to try it out though just be prepared for a lot of questions and a long time sitting at the table. I know I had to read through the rulebook a few times before I really felt comfortable with the game but once I had it, I was hooked.

The Not So Good: This is a real table hog so you need to make sure you've got the space for everything. I rotate between a kitchen table and a small folding table and it doesn't work well on the folding table. I'm also not a huge fan of the money tokens. I feel like some of them look a bit too similar. I think that they were geared more towards the deluxe edition with the metal coins/bars but the cardboard ones left me a bit disappointed. Especially when you deal with the increments that this game deals with. You'll be really wealthy at the end of the game (hopefully).

Final Thoughts: If you haven't already figured out by now I loved Legacies. I may not always get to play super heavy games like this but when I do I absolutely adore them. These aren't even the type of games I'm really very good at but I love how many crunchy decisions need to be made every single turn and figuring out how best to optimize your strategy while not allowing the other players to get ahead. If you're looking for a game that you can play over and over again and want to really stretch your brain, I could not recommend Legacies enough.

Thanks to Brookspun Games for sending me a review copy.