Can you save the meeples? Waters are rising, artifacts are being lost, it's a race against time... You and your fellow leaders are needed to save the doomed city of Atlantis. Only the craftiest, most strategic team will win this co-op adventure using simultaneous worker placement to divide and conquer the onslaught of waves. Will you lose gold, ore, libraries? Can you recruit new Atlanteans? Who will saaaaeeeeavvee this city? (Jewel voice for children of the nineties).
Cat: This game is absolutely stunning. The graphics and intensity in the colors on all of the pieces were just stellar. I loved the hologram component for the two player mode. All of the character cards had great detail and were fun to just read and look at. I liked the gender differences and options; although the abilities were the same for the genders, the different representations added variety to the playing.
Can we talk about meeples and pieces for a second here? Oh my goodness, I absolutely LOVED the resources. The atlantium bars, the crystals, the ore, the gold. So much detail went into making these things. And the meeples! Oh my! I loved how the different colors had a different shape to each of the leaders. It made it fun to look through.
Spider: I loved the art and the component quality was excellent. I just thought it had striking table presence. It seemed like a game that once you see it, you have to check it out. The beauty of the game really helped keep me interested. I thought the meeples were really cool, each color was a different shape. I thought it was a staple of a good, modern game. The resources were really cool. The textures, colors, shapes, feels really made the game immersive.
The flow of the game was really cool. Each play through started like it was going to be easy, but inevitably it always came down to the wire. Flipping the tiles after each round in addition to the misfortunes made it a lot to keep up with. I feel like there is probably a lot of deployability because of the different characters you can play. There are a lot. We only really played the two player setting with someone always being the artificer. Every game could have been wildly different. I always like that in games when you switch perspectives and character abilities. Alternatively, you can switch up the difficulty levels because of the component variations. There seems to be a ton of unique setups in the two-player mode, so that added a ton of replay ability. The setup was daunting at first, but it did start to come together and it was easy after the first couple of play throughs.
I really liked the push your luck element. I felt it was really smart. Because the tiles out at the edges had the highest return, but you know everything is going to start flooding. You will lose them anyways; if you draw a misfortune then you're toast. Should I place them at the edge or go for less of a return. It brought electricity to the game. If you're not a fan of luck within games this is probably not the game for you. A lot of it is based on how the dice roll. Especially with the wrath of the gods. The tension was good in a co-op game, but if there were more players and versus it would probably suck. When you have a bad turn it does feel catastrophic, which is perfectly the theme.
Cat: Flooding the tiles did catch my attention and made me play in survival mode. I found typically loading up with more people to place at the beginning helped mitigate the early flooding, but you're having to balance that with the need for resources to start buying components. There's a lot to manage and this game is easily one of the harder ones we've played thus far.
Spider: I loved the co-op nature of the game. It was super active and we were really engaged with each other. We won and we lost. We got a taste of a basic game and after we got the hang of it we tried the higher difficulty game.
Cat: I loved playing this game as two player. I really felt like we started to groove with the mechanisms and understood our characters. I chose to typically play the astrologer (I loved being able to place some Atlantans and my leader after the misfortunes). Whereas, Spider excelled with the artificer. He just totally new when to utilize which component to save our butts!
Spider: To me, the game struck the perfect balance of luck and strategy. It was really smooth in this game and it was because of the theme. You could feel the water creeping up. Like, "oh my god, the water is creeping up, we're going to die." It definitely needed coordination and discussion in a simulated natural disaster. There wasn't a round where we didn't talk the entire time. The cool thing is that it didn't cause arguments, we didn't mess up each other's turns.
I like how you keep increasing the number of tiles you flip after each turn. I would like to try different characters and optimize library cards. I like the hologram player was added in as a third player for the two player game. I thought it was really smart how it wasn't predetermined. That role went back and forth between the two players. It was visually appealing and the aspect of one time use characters was cool.
Cat: So, I felt this was one of the hardest games we've played to date. There was a lot going on. Although, I do feel that same way almost every time we learn new mechanics, it's the hardest one. It took me at least three play throughs to really understand the order and how to make the most of the situations with characters I had. I felt that I couldn't use the same strategy every time so that was a benefit; it kept the game interesting. I had to keep thinking to be productive.
As still a relatively novice gamer, I found the rulebook frustrating. I felt that the organization made it difficult to find answers to the questions I had. I would say this was my first foray into really having to watch playthroughs and read through the entire rulebook in detail before enjoying the game. It will definitely influence how I approach more complex games like this in the future. So, for that reason I see the complexity as a benefit. I just wish the rule book made more sense.
Pros:
Beautiful artwork
Great pieces
Fun balance of luck of strategy
Variability in game play
Cons:
Instruction book
Overall Ratings:
Spider: Four Spiders
Cat: Three Cats
