Matthew BaileyFOR THIS, I WOULD SUGGEST LOOKING AT THE PICTURES OF THE CARD AND TRYING TO RESIZE THE IMAGE ON YOUR PHONE/COMPUTER TO BE THE SAME SIZE AS A PLAYING CARD.
Originally, my plan had been to produce a review of the brand new starter sets for the equally brand new Godzilla card game. I very excitedly purchased both the Heisei Series deck and the Godzilla Minus One deck, and the boys were just as excited to play them with me.
But alas, there’s going to be no proper review of this card game. I’m already planning on selling both my opened Godzilla Minus One box and my unopened Heisei Series box because there’s a massive problem here and one I’ve never come across in around 15 years of regularly playing board games and writing around 600 reviews on Little Board Gamers.
The problem is this: the text on the cards is so small that when I’m sit at the table with them in hand, I simply cannot comfortably read it. Yes, I can read it if I really try, but it’s not comfortable to do so. I certainly wouldn’t want to do that for more than about 30 seconds, let alone for the duration of an entire card game.
Now, full disclosure… I wear glasses. But my vision is pretty good with them on, and I’ve never, ever had this issue with any other game before. I don’t need large print, and I don’t use reading glasses.
Even the boys, with their youthful eyes, agreed the text was too small, and they also found it uncomfortable to read quickly.
Another issue is that some of the text is printed on darker backgrounds, and while they’ve tried to add a stroke outline to help, it actually makes things look even stranger and harder to read.
I have a theory as to why this has happened. Because this is a Japanese-designed card game originally, and Japanese text takes up less space than English, when the game was translated, the English text had to be shrunk down to fit. That may explain it, but it’s still not ideal. If I’m struggling, I know a lot of other people are going to struggle too.
I was so excited to play this game – I absolutely adore the Godzilla franchise, and the recent Godzilla Minus One (see my pun with review number) is one of my favourite films of the last 10 years. But alas, I’m so disappointed that I won’t be able to review this as it currently stands.
I’ve sent a letter to the publisher asking for a comment on this issue and will update this review if I hear back. Hopefully, they’ll share some thoughts – or even better, maybe consider slightly larger text in the future.
Sad Times.
