Review: WAYFARERS OF THE SOUTH TIGRIS Gets A Little Lost
I love overly complex games. I love difficult and intricate rules. I love layers of strategy and unique mechanics inside board games. Wayfarers of The South Tigris is a pretty good game that offers a lot of unique combinations of mechanics and a high level of difficulty but sometimes overdoes it with its complexities and different gameplay systems.
The gameplay is simple in premise, players are purchasing new parts for their growing city and landscape through a series of different actions while keeping a record of their progression. But the way to achieve all these things is terribly complex. In some ways, it’s really nice to have a game that absolutely challenges my ability to juggle so many parts. But after a while, it suffers from too many mechanics that force a player to do one thing or another, instead of just relying on interesting choices and thought-provoking strategies.
Imagine a first-person shooter that has very basic controls and only one shoot button. But then, in order to shoot your gun, you must load each individual bullet, and whenever you load a bullet, there is another mini-game. And then, locking on the targets requires thinking ahead two or three steps. While this might be challenging and very interesting overall, it takes the thrill and enjoyment out of just running and shooting inside a video game. It loses a lot of its approachability and replayability because of the overly complex steps while trying to build a city.
It is a fine game overall and well-made and unique in many ways, but I can’t imagine teaching it to anybody that isn’t a huge board game fan who could easily manage multiple levels of mechanics. Each of the mechanics is well-made and pretty balanced and enjoyable, but far too many of them feel overdone, like one or two too many layers of icing on the cake. If you are a fan of the other games that fall under the Raiders series, this is a great game to check out. However, I could not in good faith recommend this to anybody that doesn’t have a strong background in board games and is willing to delve into the depths of complex mechanics for a relatively simple reward.
