These are my super biased initial impressions of my first five plays of Legacy of Isla Nublar and then some. In short, I loved the experience, my husband did not like it at first and was ready to quit by game 2, but he stayed in because I made him and it became more enjoyable and tolerable for us. My 15-year-old cousin joined in toward the end and he thought it was good, but prefers other board games. All three of us enjoyed Pandemic Legacy more. But besides some issues, the experience was a lot of fun for me. I would add that we play a lot of board games. The rules can be overwhelming and it takes preparation - I read the rules beforehand and it would take about 30 minutes to set up and closer to an hour to tear down and prep for the next game. Most people probably prep their games before playing so their time estimates might be reversed. There aren't a lot of videos for help and frankly they take up more time than you think. The rulebook is clear, easy to understand, but there are some rules that are not explicitly stated because of the nature of the game. But 90% of what you need is there. What is Jurassic World: The Legacy of Isla Nublar? This is a legacy game comprised of a prologue, 10 adventures, and a finale. A legacy game is a game comprised of multiple sessions, in which each session modifies the game state in some way, i.e. modified the game board, rules, components, etc. This is a game based off the Jurassic Park intellectual property for the movies 1-5. The game was developed before the release of the last movie, Jurassic World: Dominion. Players play as characters from the movie franchise. Retail Vs. Kickstarter Vs. My Modified Retail copy I was able to purchase a dent-and-ding retail copy of the game for less than $80. Both the retail and Kickstarter versions of the game start with 4 dinosaurs: velociraptors, brachiosaurs, triceratops, and t-rex, though the Kickstarter version comes with "additional" amber versions. While considering the Kickstarter I expected that the amber minis would hinder rather than promote gameplay. After playing the campaign, I think the amber dinosaurs would have been O.K. to use during the gameplay since players become familiar with those starting dinosaurs, but the green and red color help to quickly differentiate which dinosaurs to activate first and decreases confusion and game time. The amber miniatures were added because backers wanted more from the project which originally did not have any stretch goals or Kickstarter exclusives. Other exclusives included upgraded tokens. Initially while considering the Kickstarter I did not think it was worthwhile having upgraded plastic components for a legacy game which is usually designed to be played only once and afterwards thrown away/recycled. This game does have a Replayable Adventure, so it might be worth having but that's assuming you would actually want to play this game again and again when there are many other games out in the world you can enjoy instead. The retail version has cardboard tokens. They are thin compared to other board games but adequate. I used Mod Podge Dimensional Magic to upgrade my amber research tokens. I found that we handled the action tokens a lot so I also upgraded those tokens. The Dimensional Magic was applied to both sides which made the tokens easier to flip. I used coin capsules for the damage tokens to make picking up the tokens easier and to add to the tactile experience. Finally included in the Kickstarter was a box sleeve which is superfluous as well as an additional character: Blue. Of the Kickstarter exclusives, this would be the one I would be most interested in. I don't know how it was implemented so I can't comment on it. My modified copy also included stands for all the dino cards and the followers. This helped minimize required table space and improve visibility of the dinosaur cards. It also helped when we had a lot of characters/dinos/followers/tokens in one zone, though it was hard to tell the followers apart because the backings are similar. If the tokens were double sided that would have improved gameplay a lot for me. Despite this, I would recommend plastic stands for the followers, dinosaur cards, and other tokens. In addition, I used a draw bag for the consequence tokens to minimize set up time. Also because the board was so long it was physically difficult to get to the top part of the board the way our table is set up. I expect that the upgrades I did to my game improved the gameplay and minimized frustration, both of which are factors that affect our overall enjoyment and score of the game. Player and Character Count I had watched or read reviews and decided based on other people's experiences that I would only play this game with one other person. The issue is that there is a total of 9 actions for 2-4 characters, so in a 4 player game, each player would have 2-3 actions per round. What do I think of the Gameplay? The gameplay can be simplified to a) moving around b) herding dinosaurs c) doing mini games. I personally enjoyed moving around and herding dinosaurs. None of us liked the mini games. Unfortunately there are mini games in all the adventures. In our 2-player games, I managed the tokens and round cards while my husband managed the mini games. The game board takes up so much space it was physically hard to see all the rooms from where I sat. I did feel bad for my husband so I took on the later mini games since it would just be unfair for him to do all the work. The mini games are not difficult but they are tedious to work out solutions. I would recommend getting a piece of paper and a pen and work out the genetics tasks before starting the game. The genetics mini game in my opinion is not thematic - I do not think it gives a feel of gene manipulation from a biology perspective. They are essentially busy work that eats up actions so the game is "action economy" - figuring out how to minimize actions spent. At least for us, the mini games were not fun or thematic. Other legacy games have mini games which are more thematic and not as tedious. Having those experiences dampened our enjoyment of this game. If the mini games were modified or removed from the game then we would have rated the game so much higher. It's sad because I felt as if the mini games were more detrimental rather than something to enhance the game. The components for the game were helpful - we did not use reminder tokens to mark which dinos had been activated though by game 9 and 10 it got more difficult. The herd tokens were functional. The stickers worked well - I don't know why some are clear and others are opaque. The dice work well and are easy to read. The graphic design is well done and is clear and easy to understand. A lot of work was done to minimize frustration and improve the flow of the game. What do I think of the rulebooks and production? I thought the rule cards were cool at first. Then, I decided I don't like them. The rule cards are not comprehensive and it's hard for me to remember the headers of topics to look up. We never separated out the cards since that would increase the chances of them getting lost and takes up time. I wish that the rulebook was comprehensive; some rules were in the cards that weren't in the general rulebook. We ended up checking both the rule cards and rulebook anyway which added time to the gameplay. The rule cards are a nice idea and it would be interesting to see it implemented in other board games. The Adventure guides and rulebooks were very good. I was able to learn from the rulebook and play the game. For a legacy game, this is especially important because players will have limited access to instruction videos on how to play. I hardly ever watch How to Play Videos and my ratings of games are influenced by how easy it is to learn from the rulebook without any additional help. I did use the forums to ask some questions and other users have been very helpful. Each adventur
