by genesyx
First, a little confession : When I first started board gaming, I've never been a fan of Agricola. The thought of a board game with a farming theme and cubes for animals bored me to death
With time my taste for game grew, and I did my fair share of research on the farming game, and despite the great response I had from forums I'm still intimidated by its weight and cubey-ness. That's where All Creatures came in. First lets talk about the components. Absolutely stunning! Between the animeeples and the tiles picturing various buildings, you'll have an awesome looking farm that actually LOOKS like an animal farm instead of a garden of cubes. It adds a lot of flavor into the game, as i can now picture the progression of my little farm with ease. It's also easier to introduce/lure non-gamers into the game (well,compared to land of cubes at least), hence more playtime !It also has the added benefit of providing some animeeples in case you want to play original gric' but can't afford to shell out for the extra animeeples.
Gameplay wise, the game is as smooth as silk. Being a 2p only game means less downtime, and the alternating worker placement mechanic makes it even less. My first game with my brother lasted for about 45 minutes including setup and clean up. That's not to say there's no meaningful selection, in fact it's the exact opposite. Since the game only last 8 rounds, there's NO WAY you'll have enough time to do everything you want.
Also, due to the open knowledge of resources, it's very easy to block your opponent out of the moves they want. Sometimes it's better to take an action that doesn't benefit yourself just to deny your opponent the action. There was once when I deliberately picked up a pile of 5 sheep, only to let 4 run away and me with no space to breed just to deny my opponent from utilizing his newly expanded fences this turn. For me, the balance of having to block your opponent and make beneficial moves for myself makes this a game with enough depth and high interaction.
However, in the end what pushed this from a good game to a great one for me, is how close our scores were despite utilizing different strategies. In 1 game I grabbed a horse in round 1 and had them breeding in round 2, while my brother slowly gathered resources and expansion tiles while having no animals till round 4. Our game ended with 46-43, and I only won because he had 1 less cow and suffered the -3 penalty. In another game I went with the building route, where most of my points came from building stables and special buildings while having minimal animals, while my brother went with an all-rounder animal breeding with feeding troughs and scored big on the bonus points. We ended that 1 with 42-40. You might even be using the same strategy as last time, but due to your opponents actions adjustments HAS to be made. For me this is a sign of TONS of replay value.
A common con I see from people is that this game has alot less replayability compared to Agricola, but really, try comparing any game with Agricola and you'll see that alot of games have even LESS replayability. Value the game for itself instead of comparing it to its big brother, then you'll see just how replayable this game really is
All in all this is a very good game. It has the playtime of a filler, the looks of a filler, but deep down beneath its cute pigeys and harmless sheeps lies a medium weight euro with some serious decision making. Is it lighter than Agricola? Sure. Is there no point in owning this if you have Agricola then? I'm not so sure about that
For one thing I'm sure there's a larger crowd willing to play this game than Big gric' 
(This is my first review, so sorry if I got anything wrong and do tell me where can I improve
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