Matthew BaileyI really like the game Tsuro, and it was actually one of the last games we featured in last year’s Summer Marathon. Tsuro is a beautiful and simple game based on the kind of string mazes you often found in puzzle books or comics when you were a child. At the beginning of the game, each player chooses a different colour and starts on the edge of the board. On your turn, you place one of the three tiles from your hand, which must continue your journey across the map. Essentially, what you are trying to do is stay on the map for as long as possible, because if a player places a tile that moves you along a line to the edge, that’s the end of your game.
The pieces are wonderful, and it’s all very beautiful, so I thought I’d finally get around to trying one of the other games in the series – Tsuro of the Seas.
The game itself is essentially pretty much identical, but instead of Chinese dragons flying through the air, you are controlling a boat drifting along streams in the sea, trying to avoid Daikaiju (sea monsters). The core of the game works exactly the same, but at the beginning of your turn, you roll dice to see whether the sea monsters are going to rotate or move. Some may not move at all, and some may rotate or travel across the board. What this essentially does is add a random element to the game – something drifting around that might suddenly eat you up or mess up your path.
The problem is that the original game is such a perfect, simple, beautiful strategy game that this version kind of completely ruins it. All three of us who played it hated it and didn’t want to play it more than once, which is very unusual for us.
You can have the perfect plan, beautifully laying your path, but all of a sudden, because of a dice roll, that’s it – game over. And that’s not fun. One of the main things we always say, and I always preach about at Little Board Gamers, is that I’m not a big fan of games that are pure luck. And the only thing worse than games that are pure luck is games that actually have a fair bit of strategy and thought – but then that gets ruined by pure luck.
Add to that the fact that I don’t like how the sea monsters can completely destroy your plans, and it’s also a massive faff to move them and check whether they leave the board at the beginning of every turn. Tsuro is brilliant because it’s quick and snappy – you can play a couple of games in no time. But this one? Every single turn, you are rolling dice, then checking how the monsters move, and it just drags. Some move, some rotate – it’s not enjoyable and really slows down the general flow of the game.
I really wanted to like Tsuro of the Seas, as I love the original, but I genuinely can’t think of any game where I dislike the changes in a sequel more than this. It gets zero from me. Don’t get this.
PLAY THE ORIGINAL INSTEAD!
