My Top 5 Overrated Games

Welcome to this week’s gaming post! Recently I published a list of my Top 5 Underrated Games, so this week I decided to follow that up with my Top 5 Overrated Games. I’ll preface that putting a list like this together is extremely subjective and is largely based on my personal tastes in board games. So without further ado, let’s jump into the games!

Uwe Rosenberg has designed some of my favorite euro games, and Le Havre was one of his first games I played. However, these days I much prefer some of his other designs, like Caverna or Agricola. There are a few issues I have with Le Havre; to start, the debt mechanism doesn’t make any sense. You can have any number of loans, and your interest every round will stay the same. One of the preferred strategies is to take a bunch of loans early, so you can focus more on getting your engine running, and then just pay back the loans by the end of the game. The game also doesn’t scale well based on the number of players as the number of ship spots always remains the same. Therefore, with more players, you might only get one or two turns in a round, while others get two or three. Also, I find the feeding in the game to be much more challenging than in some of Uwe’s other designs. I enjoy the buildings, but that alone isn’t enough to make me want to return to Le Havre anytime soon. There are plenty of other worker-placement games that I much prefer these days that don’t feel as punishing.

I’ll admit, I’ve only played Cascadia once, but after my initial play, I just couldn’t understand the hype for this game. The tile-laying aspect is fine, if nothing extremely unique or innovative, and the level of player interaction is essentially on par with multiplayer solitaire. The game aesthetic does look very nice, but there are other tile-laying games with more depth that I enjoy more, and if I’m looking for a gateway level game, I’ll turn to one of these instead.

Look, I love civilization themed games. I grew up playing the Civilization series on PC. But Through the Ages has so much extra baggage keeps me from truly enjoying its civilization theme. There are too many fiddley bits, too much “take-that”, too much downtime between players, and the game is far too long. The game also rewards experienced players that have memorized each of the Age decks who are able to plan around certain card combinations. I hear the digital version is better since it helps with the upkeep and games don’t take as long. However, just judging the game on purely the physical edition, I much prefer Nations’ more streamlined mechanisms. 

It almost doesn’t feel fair to include a second Uwe game on this list, but A Feast for Odin (AFFO) just doesn’t work for me. I enjoy sandbox games, but AFFO takes it a step too far. There are too many actions that are a nightmare for any susceptible analysis-paralysis player. And these days, they should just publish one complete version of the game that includes The Norwegians expansion, which helped to balance out the different strategies. However, at the end of the day, I don’t find the polynomial tiles all that satisfying or interesting.

I’ll admit, I haven’t played the second edition of Eclipse, but I personally have too many qualms with the game that I don’t imagine a second edition will fix. First off, Eclipse feels like it has a bit of an identity crisis. Not only is Eclipse a space 4X game, but it’s also a euro game…and also a war game. And the first edition was entirely too long for the payoff. However, my biggest gripe with the game is that the endgame feels like it boils down to whichever player can build the best ships. And if you play as the faction that gets weaker ships, good luck on winning unless you can either turtle up and/or convince the other players to not attack you. I recently played Twilight Imperium: Fourth Edition for the first time in six years, and after that experience, I’d much prefer to play that game over Eclipse any day.

Any game where I feel like I have to plan out my entire strategy from the first turn is not my cup of tea. Terra Mystica feels like a game that rewards players who are able to analyze the round goals and determine the best faction whose strategy best aligns with those goals. The mechanism that rewards players who settle next to other players is interesting, but it also creates competition for spaces when it’s not needed and punishes players that would rather go off and do their own thing. Also, I struggle to see how this game is any more thematic than your typical euro. For anyone that enjoys a game with no luck or hidden information, I get it. But personally, there are plenty of other games that are more enjoyable and don’t burn my brain nearly as much.

With that, I’ll wrap up my top 5 overrated games! Which games do you consider overrated? I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of the games I’ve mentioned. Happy gaming!

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