by clivej
Yes, it's mechanically possible to play solo; every player always knows what any player knows.Have you already played Pandemic? The Season One experience starts out as regular Pandemic, but rapidly becomes a lot more.
Arah wrote:
Overall what is its narrative strength and puzzle challenge? I also like Mansions of Madness and puzzle games, so I wouldn't mind a mix of both, as long as this game excels in at least one.
Note that there is a considerable degree of randomness. As with regular Pandemic, quite a bit of the skill is in capitalising on good luck, mitigating bad luck, playing the odds. Don't expect a "puzzle" in the classical sense.
Similarly, one of the parts of Season One that a lot of people (including me) really like is that the Legacy structure means you have to make thematic decisions: you choose now, and only later find out what the consequences will be. That's also not like a "puzzle"; it's a different kind of fun.
How strong is the narrative theme? Will I miss any particular narrative experience if playing solo?
Don't expect the evolving gameplay to form the plot of the world's greatest novel. Don't expect plot to overwhelm gameplay. The narrative theme is compact, but well done and quite effective.
I can think of one way in which the experience would be slightly blunted by playing solo.
How challenging is the game? I enjoy challenges.
How long is a piece of string?
One amusing and novel difficulty you'll face is that, unless you compare with other groups, there's not really any absolute indication of how well you're doing. Say it's June and you have five Fallen cities and have Lost two Characters - is that good or bad? Obviously, fewer Fallen cities and Lost characters is better; more is worse, but...
To some extent, therefore, you end up setting your own objectives, and the game self-levels. Meanwhile, as fast as you perfect your technique, the game moves the goalposts. (-8<
One possibly unwelcome challenge: there are a lot of rules. By the end, the range of possibilities for what to do on a given turn is immense. We found it was definitely helpful having more than one person thinking about the alternatives, so that we didn't overlook anything.
As an extreme example, there was one particular move on one particular game where we thought we were going to lose, but really wanted to meet a legacy goal before that happened. We sat there pondering for ten or fifteen minutes whether we could do that and what the collateral damage would be, before I suddenly remembered a player action that had been introduced a few months earlier and we'd never used at all. It was just the right tool for the job on that one occasion, then we never used it again all season. Things like that are more easily overlooked with just one player.
Overall would you recommend playing it solo?
I'd recommend playing as a group, if you can. But it got to BGG #1 for a reason, so I'd recommend playing it solo rather than not at all. (-8
Should i get S1 or S2 first? Is the story from S2 a continuation from S1 or are those independent stories?
Definitely S1 first if you've played regular Pandemic at all. S1 starts out very like a normal game of Pandemic; S2 is altogether more strange.
You don't have to have played S1 before S2, but S2 does contain some S1 spoilers.
Beyond that, I've not yet finished S2, so can't compare them for you, but I do note S1 still has the higher BGG ranking. Absent any good reason to play S2 first, you might as well start with S1.