Matthew BaileyToday we’re going to be looking at Star Realms: Rise of Empire, a campaign legacy version of the popular game Star Realms that I’ve reviewed before and that myself—particularly Jack—really, really like. We’re also quite big fans of legacy games, so when we realised there was a legacy version of Star Realms, it was an absolute no-brainer that we were going to buy it. Unfortunately, it’s not quite everything we’d hoped for.
Firstly, this game does play like Star Realms, so if you’ve never played Star Realms before, I’ll put a link to our review of the original game, which was very well received, in the comments section below.
Star Realms while not obviously, is extremely playable for kids and I would say most kids over about 6 should be fine with it.
Now, Star Realms normally is generally best played as a two-player game, but it can be played with a larger player count. And this is where the first kind of weird thing comes in. I don’t know how I feel about it—the box itself states that it’s playable for two to six players, but the actual campaign aspect can only be played with two. That means you have to play 12 games—ideally with two players—and then you can play the kind of “final state” version of the game with more. So really, this is a two-player game.
The game works much like normal Star Realms does, but you start the game by picking either the Trade Federation or the Star Empire as your starting faction. They both play pretty similarly to begin with, although along with your base starting deck, you also get two extra cards specific to that faction.
You can also get cards from three other factions along the way, and part of the mechanic of the game is that you can turn some of these cards into joint-faction cards to give them the benefits of those factions, as well as stuff that synergises with your own faction.
And this is where the first bit of imbalance comes in. Having played through this campaign, I am not convinced that the two factions are very well balanced—with the Trade Federation being much, much stronger than the Star Empire. The main reason for this is due to the flavour of how their mechanics work. The Trade Federation’s main mechanic is essentially gaining authority (which in Star Realms is basically healing), meaning that if you get a good deck—even a reasonably well-made one—you can heal yourself throughout the course of the game quite comfortably. Whereas the Star Empire’s main mechanic is making the other player discard cards, so that when it comes to their turn, they have fewer cards in their hand with which to work. But in reality, over the course of a whole game, fine, I might have fewer cards and I might be chipping away at you slightly slower—but I can heal myself up pretty confidently. So for a slight negative, one player has effectively way more health than the other player.
This became more and more apparent as the games went on. Annoyingly, I chose the Trade Federation when we didn’t actually really know what they did—and as the games went on, my lead in how much I beat Jack by got stronger and stronger. He beat me pretty comfortably in the first game—and actually, if I’m being honest, Jack is probably a better Star Realms player than I am—but I managed to beat him overall just because my faction was quite a bit stronger.
Don’t get me wrong—we really enjoyed playing it. As you go through the game, on each game you get to use stickers that let you customise cards as you buy them. This allows you to add your faction’s mechanic onto the cards—meaning I got to add healing stuff onto the cards, and Jack got to add discarding stuff onto his cards. This further highlighted the imbalance in mechanics, as after we’d played a few games, Jack actually started trying to get some of my cards when they came out in subsequent playthroughs, just so he had a bit of healing in his deck. And this really shouldn’t be the case.
Don’t get me wrong—we enjoyed it. But—and this is where my second kind of issue comes in—I kind of felt like we just played 12 games of Star Realms. Actually, that’s a lie. We played 11 games of Star Realms, and then the last game is a bit weird. It’s fine—but a bit weird and totally different to anything else.
When I play legacy games—the most recent legacy game I played before this was Ticket to Ride: Legacy – Legends of the West—each game was essentially Ticket to Ride, but they added meaningful extra mechanics each time. So you had something new to learn, and you really felt like things changed as the game went on. Whether that was a new focus on the way you built your routes, or whether it added a whole extra mechanic with dice and a different deck, or whatever it might be—every single game felt a bit different, and felt like something new and interesting was coming. And you wanted to open up those packs to see what was next.
Star Realms, though, just feels like playing Star Realms. Each game, you get some stickers and you can customise a few more cards—but nothing really radical is changing. Nothing massive is coming out that makes this game radically different to just playing Star Realms. You know, this is an expansion to Star Realms that I’m playing multiple times, as opposed to the interesting legacy experience I really hoped it was going to be. Now, yes, once or twice in the campaign it adds a new card type that gives you a few new mechanics, but this really isn’t anything groundbreaking. Nothing’s really happening game to game. In fact, in the first four games literally nothing changes—you’re just customising your cards as you go. And if I’m going to be paying like three times the
price for the legacy aspect, I really feel like I want more than this.
Now, I’ve sounded really negative about this. Actually, I did enjoy playing it—but that’s because I like Star Realms. Would I recommend you go out and buy this? No, I wouldn’t. If you’re interested in Star Realms, get Star Realms. Just get a normal deck of Star Realms. I would recommend—especially if playing with kids—getting the set that comes with the board. That’s probably going to cost you a little bit more, but that’s probably the best way to get it.
want to try this out, you’re going to have an okay to good—you’re going to have a good time—but it’s just not worth the quite a bit extra cost for the legacy aspect that, if I’m honest, doesn’t really bring anything to the table.
I really hoped this was going to be something amazing because we are big fans of Star Realms. But sadly, this is a little bit overpriced and just not worth it above the base game—and is really a sorely missed opportunity.
