JURASSIC PARK: THE LEGACY OF ISLA NUBLAR Is A Fun Legacy Game For Fans

Funko Games sent me a copy of their legacy game Jurassic Park: The Legacy of Isla Nublar. The game retails on Funko.com at a whopping $120 but comes jam packed with everything a fan could want in a legacy game. Each game play session will take place during the course of each movie with a few prequel type games to help you get accustomed to the game play. As far as legacy games go, this one is well made. It comes with tons of dinosaur miniatures, characters, and places featured across the movies. If you are a big Jurassic Park fan then I think this game is definitely worth checking out.

Each game takes place across 5 rounds. Each player gets a certain number of actions each turn depending on the number of characters. My recommendation is playing with at least 3 characters, that seemed to give me the best ability to get things done across the island. Each round will reveal some kind of objective whether that is finding Lex and Tim or collecting information on dinosaurs across the island. Each scenario will come with 4 round cards while your fifth round will be determined by your dinosaur deck. Each unlocked dinosaur has a special complication it can deal out for the game. For example, triceratops becomes sick and will receive damage if you do not end the round with a character in its space. Considering dinosaurs dying generate points for losing, this can be catastrophic depending on how your game has been going. In addition to the objectives on the round cards, each scenario comes with a booklet for additional rules and overall objectives. These tend to be things to do in each building such as collecting supplies in the visitors center and generating D.N.A sequences in the genetics lab. There is usually a lot going on each game to keep track of, but the game does a good job in how it introduces each element so that you are not immediately overwhelmed. You don’t start out with every building at the beginning and you are always given a round of playing with a building before deciding its permanent placement. Same with dinosaurs, you start with only a handful and your losses and successes will determine how many you can unlock. Gameplay can have some weird rules to get used to so I highly recommend keeping the rulebook close and giving it at least a quick glance before each game especially if it's been a while between games.

I really appreciate the way they made characters for this game. Since we all know the movies feature a different cast of characters, so does each scenario. The beginning games everyone unlocked is available to play, but the farther you get to more movie specific scenarios, there will be a list of characters you can choose from. But don’t throw away those character cards, you will still be able to utilize them as legacy characters. Each one will give you a unique ability and as you upgrade the characters, their legacy abilities also upgrade and get better. The catch is that each character can only be used as a legacy 3 times, so you need to be careful about how you use them. Each character comes with a card with some great artwork as well as a standee also featuring the artwork. 

The dinosaurs are really the main reason to play the game. The miniatures look great and come in easy to identify red and green colors. They also come with their own cards with stats for combat. Although the dinosaurs are not as strong as you might think they would be, you will be given chances to upgrade their defenses and health as you play, and you will definitely want to do that so your poor herbivores don’t get immediately decimated. There is a certain amount of randomness for the upgrades though. As you play the game you can do field research on the dinosaurs which give you research tokens. These tokens unlock the ability to scratch off areas of the end game folio that grant different bonuses. There are three sections to these upgrades and you are limited to which section you can scratch from based on how much research you have done. This can be great for those who get really indecisive about what they want, but can be frustrating for people trying to really maximize stats how they want. 

Overall the gameplay was fun. Each game you got to choose different bonuses to spend your budget on. You could build roads, build barriers, add electric fences, hire employees, etc. depending on how far into the game you were. Eventually, weather also becomes an issue in the game and can cause power outages for you to deal with. There’s also managing moving employees and other followers around the board as well as attempting to control the dinosaurs. Like I said, there is a lot to keep track of, but at the end of the day each layer is introduced gradually to make it easier to learn. The game is not impossible, but some scenarios are very challenging and everything can go sideways on you in the course of one round. But the format makes it easy to make each game feel like the movies. The game scenario for the first film makes you evaluate the island for safety and try to keep Lex and Tim safe while dealing with dinosaur insanity. The scenario for Lost World does actually make you deal with the mercenary group that came to the island. Each scenario tends to have scenario specific tokens and mechanics which keeps each game feeling fresh and different.

Finally, the game box. There are a huge number of tokens for this game. They do not initially provide a great storage option for them, so I recommend using the baggies that the starting dinosaur minis come in to help organize tokens instead. As you unlock dinosaurs you will make envelopes available for use which will help a lot as you accumulate a lot of the bigger character and dinosaur cards. There is plenty of storage space in the box itself which is great, but definitely come up with an organization game plan while you are punching out all the tokens because it will make set up and take down so much faster. One last thing that I think was really fun is they included a raptor claw to help with scratching off things to reveal new abilities and rules. Use the knuckle of the claw rather than the point and it works shockingly well. 

I really enjoyed this game. There were a few rules that were annoying to work with, but once you get the hang of the game it just helps add to the challenge rather than being something that will always get in the way of victory. It comes with tons of cards and miniatures and everything is well made. If you really like Jurassic Park and have been wanting to try out a legacy game, then I would recommend this one. If you don’t care about Jurassic Park all that much then this would be a pass, it’s fun but being a fan of the franchise definitely adds to the experience. Being a fan of Jurassic Park myself, I would give this game a 9/10.