Author Topic: Pandemic Season 1 vs Season 2 (spoiler free)  (Read 1530 times)

Offline dirk2112

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Pandemic Season 1 vs Season 2 (spoiler free)
« on: March 22, 2018, 06:32:05 AM »
We finally finished Pandemic Season 2.  Now that the dust has settled, I feel as though I am ready to compare both games without spoiling anything.  If you do not like base Pandemic, neither of these games are for you.  Go to another thread.  Seriously why are you still reading this?

Which game is the better game?
By far Pandemic Season 1 is the better board game.  That is mainly because it plays exactly like base Pandemic with a small expansion added sporadically over 12 months.  Pandemic Season 2 is a lot different than base Pandemic and quite frankly not as good.  If they made a base game version using the Pandemic Season 2 game-play, I would have no interest in buying it. 

Which game is the better experience?
By far Pandemic Season 2 is the better experience.  After reading the above, you may be confused, but stay with me here.  The story and the Legacy aspect of Season 2 blow season 1 out of the water.  There is more variety at what you can do and discover.  Season 1 has a big mystery, whereas Season 2 has a bunch of smaller mysteries.  Instead of finding everything out at the end, Season 2 lets you solve bits and pieces throughout. 

Would I play either game again?
If a group of people wanted me to join them for 12 months of Season 1,  I would be in.  I would not play Season 2 again.  Even though I know  what is going to happen, I could enjoy season 1 again.  I can't enjoy season 2 because I know exactly what will happen.  I hope that makes sense.

Difficulty?
I think at 4 players S1 is easier than S2.  At 2 or 3 players, the opposite may be true.  It also depends on how you play.  Rahdo and his wife played exclusively with 2 characters and powered them up.  They made the game very easy and lucked out that neither of their characters died.  We played very conservatively, spread the character use around, and had a much harder task. 

We lost 3 games in both Season 1 and Season 2.  We scored much better in Season 2 though.  I feel the scoring in Season 2 is more fair.

Biggest Improvement
Searching is done a lot better in Season 2.  In Season 1, it is really lame.

Missed Opportunities
After playing Season 2, I feel like a lot of things could be better.  Nothing below is a spoiler unless you count things you can see on the back of the box. 

#1 I think if would have been cool if it took place on another planet.  The problem with Earth is that I know what it looks like.  If you are going to hide part of a map, make it something I am not familiar with.  If you must use Earth, maybe fool the players by making them think they are in Memphis Tennessee, when actually they are in Memphis Egypt. 

#2 I haven't played Charterstone yet, but Charterstone gives you a double sided map.  You can buy a refill pack and play the game again for much cheaper.  It would be cool if in Season 3 the map was double sided so you could play again.  It would be also cooler if the different boxes contained different stickers so that the maps differed.  I am not saying the gameplay has to change, just the appearance of the map.  Perhaps map A would be Venus and map B would be Mars.  They would share the same city names and colors, but different locations. 

#3 Go back to the how cities fared in the first game.  In season 1, you have to really pay attention to certain cities.  For us London was destroyed and was never coming back again.  We had to avoid that city and come up with logistical ways to work around it for every month after it fell.  In season 2 London fell, but it was no big deal because you can bring cities back.   I think this is the worst change they made from Season 1 to Season 2.   




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