by Roykhn
Hi everyone! first semi-review im doing on this site. Im quite new to board gaming (although i have a decade old background in wargames, just recently found my true love lies in cardboard xD).And... i have a confession to make.
I bought Tokaido purely for it´s looks (i´m a graphic designer and illustrator, and i fell in love instantly) And i must admit i didn´t really enjoy my first playthroughs of the game. I found it too light for my tastes, and the strategic value that it has is not all that obvious at first glance. I was actually really sad that a game so beautiful had left me so... bored.
I gave it a few more tries with my gaming friends and still, no click.
Then finally, one day i played it with people who aren´t really gamers (yet), including my girlfriend and brothers and something magical happened! We all picked a character, and inmediatley made a tiny background for them. I was a starving painter (had the free panorama at inns), and i played a very thematic game! spending almost no money (except to eat) and focusing on the paintings.
My girlfriend chose the Geisha and played the game like an... escort (as Geishas once were)... Basically she went for every single encounter she could and made "friends" all game.
And my brother played a very wealthy Tax collector basically getting as much money as he could and eating as much as he could.
In the end, these stories organically flowed throughout the game, and we really had a blast adding little details both funny and completely sad about our characters. At that moment i fell in love with the game. I saw through my own prejudice and found a great engine for generating fun experiences. The journey is really all that matters (literally in this game) and the strategy and puzzle still shined through.
I now play this game regularly, and even the gaming group likes it after we introduced this "narrative" style of play. I deeply recommend this to anyone who is on the fence about the "game" aspect of Tokaido. With more playthroughs comes more fun, more stories, and at the same time more understanding of it´s subtle but nonetheless important strategic aspect.
This is one i´m keeping!
Thanks for reading!