by ExcitingJeff
There was a time when I would have been impressed by Castles of Burgundy. After all, it has an impressive pedigree. I was initially attracted by its high rating on the geek and its presence in the Alea Big Box series. While I’ve not played all of the Big Box games, those I have played have mostly been great fun, or at the very least charming and clever. It’s also a Stephan Feld design, and while that name doesn’t immediately draw me to a game, I very much enjoyed In the Year of the Dragon, the only other game of his I’ve played. On paper, this should be an impressive game.Perhaps this game’s lineage worked against it by establishing unreasonable expectations. It’s entirely possible that if this game were designed by a no-name designer from a small publisher, it would have been simply mediocre, and not painful. But given the buzz surrounding the game, I expected a polished, attractive and innovative game, and I was disappointed on all counts.
This game was published in 2011, but it feels so much older. I couldn’t escape the feeling that everything this game does has been done before, and done better. It is difficult to judge this game as a cohesive artifact, as it feels like a hodgepodge of unrelated elements, so I’ll tackle those disparate elements more or less separately.
Let’s start with first impressions. I almost want to give the theme a pass, as I’ve enjoyed games with boring (or entirely absent) themes in the past. But dear God, are we building castles in medieval France again? In the past, when I’ve built castles in the medieval French city of Carcassonne, there was at least a jaunty color scheme and charming art that allowed the gameplay to shine through the lackluster theme. But here, the lack of luster is front and center; the game’s distinguishing characteristic is its overall brown-ness; it’s as though the graphic designers felt that the only way to properly convey a medieval feel was to make everything look like dirt and offal.
The art doesn’t really matter if the gameplay is solid, but again, I get a strong feeling that I’ve done all this before. Individual player tableaus? Check. An almost complete lack of meaningful player interaction? Check. Expanding your kingdom (or whatever) and selling stuff? Check. Trade things in to buy a zillion little buildings with more powers than I can keep track of? Check. Set number of turns? Check. A “staging area” that does very little other than slow down the flow of play? Check. Overly generous victory points that represent very little, but make everyone feel like they’re accomplishing something? Double check.
It’s as though Feld went through the list of things that worked in other big box games that were innovative for their time, smushed them all together, put his name on it, and waited for everyone to agree that the game is a classic, and somehow that plan worked.
Even the bits that aren’t incredibly derivative feel desultory. There is, of course, a “basic” game and an “advanced” one, which insults the intelligence of people who buy and play Eurogames. It’s a dice-based game, but players can alter the die rolls easily enough that the dice are effectively meaningless in many situations.
The worst thing, by far, is the length, especially with more than two players. I’m not averse to long games by any means; heck, I love Twilight Imperium (which also borrows a bunch of mechanics from games, but still manages to feel cohesive and coherent). But the hours required to finish a game of Castles of Burgundy, where the players haphazardly stumble toward an ever-approaching but seemingly never-arriving victory, seemed truly interminable. This game is not light, but it lacks the strategic depth that would justify such an absurdly long playtime. I could not imagine finishing this game in 90 minutes, as the box claims I should.
I recognize my tastes have changed since I first played all the games that this game emulates, and as I understand it, many of the elements I found trying about this game (the “participation ribbon” VP distribution in particular) are hallmarks of Feld designs, so perhaps I’m not the target market for this game.
The game isn’t broken; it’s just not very compelling in comparison to its peers. Many games offer a similar play experience in less time, and I can’t think of a situation where I would choose to play this over any comparable title.
That said, the other Feld game I’ve played (In the Year of the Dragon) is always thrilling, as I never know what to expect or prepare for. In that sense, this game is similar: I expected something interesting, and I found something workmanlike, but ultimately tedious and derivative.
