Puerto Rico - Review

ODBG 0014 - Review of Puerto Rico

What is Puerto Rico?

You are the Spanish colonising Puerto Rico to get resources back to Spain by growing crops in your plantation and processing them with buildings in your city.

In short it is a competitive worker placement, resource management and mild tableaux building game.

Good things about Puerto Rico

Whilst controversial, it does its theme well - whilst the theme of the game is controversial because it is about the Spanish Colonisation of Puerto Rico with slaves, it doesn't glorify or vilify it - rather it is a representation of historic events. As a representation of this, it's done well in that the focus of the game seems to be why and how the colonisation was done rather than being for or against it or highlighting the detail - it focuses on representing it from the Spanish (at the time's) point of view.

City building - the way the plantations and actions you could take connected to different buildings in the cities was integrated really well allowing for a lot of flexibility in creating a city where the buildings create an engine working together. Doing things to enhance your production, income or end game points. Whilst looking complicated it was actually really simple and easy to understand.

Quick paced - due to the limited number of actions, Puerto Rico is a really straightforward game where each player does the same actions but gets slight benefits for choosing them. I think that quickens the pace by limiting choice in that you often have to do actions if you are able to.

Bad points about Puerto Rico

The controversy isn't worth it - I was interested in playing it because I wanted to see what it was that made the game so controversial (duh a key part of it is about slavery), but more so to see if the implementation was controversial and I don't think it is. This game could easily have been reskinned with a different theme as it has in its newer release. I think the theme was chosen because it was a bit of history the designers were interested in (before you ask, no I do not believe the designers were interested in slavery) I think that it was the period of history where the Spanish (The British and French too) were colonising the world it is an interesting part of history however controversial.

Poor choice of worker colours - Choosing brown.

The artwork - Not spectacular but conveys what the focus of the game is about - getting resources back to Spain.

Summary of Puerto Rico

The mechanics are done really well, the game play is really smooth, but if you like complex worker placement building games this isn't right for you. It is a medium game that's really easy to play and something really quick to teach. I imagine that it would be enjoyed with Family and friends because you can have short “comfort” breaks without holding the game up too much or increasing its running length.

If you don't like the theme, don't buy it or play it, choose something else. There are other games that have worker placement, resource management and tableaux building. For example I think Scythe has similar elements but not the same player interaction and competition.

I'm looking forward to trying the re-skin Puerto Rico 1897 to see how different it is and to see if or how my review will differ. It raised over $5,000,000 so a lot of people clearly enjoy it and want a copy.

Overall I think it's good. But there's other games I prefer.

Thanks for reading

Sam

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