Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 Review -- A Flawless Finale

Pandemic Legacy: Flavor 0 is the all-time legacy-style board game I've ever played and one of the very best games the hobby has to offer in general. At that place are several reasons why–which we'll get into very soon–but it'southward worth noting at the top that if you lot have the means, you should admittedly play Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock's latest masterpiece.

Now before excavation into why this game is so practiced, it's probably helpful to ascertain and explain a few things, starting with what a "legacy" game exactly is. A legacy board game is substantially one in which the game changes as you play. And so, the decisions you make in one game will touch the next. This tin take several forms; you might notice yourself adding new stickers to the game board, opening secret boxes to introduce new components, or even being forced to literally rip up cards and destroy them forever.

When information technology was showtime introduced in 2022's Risk Legacy, the mechanic was a revelation. However, it wasn't until 2022'due south Pandemic Legacy: Flavor 1 that the game type became a full-fledged phenomenon. Quickly, people realized that legacy-mode games offer new ways for designers to provide existent progression and tell intriguing stories through tabletop games. In short, it gave the industry a massive shot in the arm.

If you've never played the base of operations game, Pandemic is a relatively simple cooperative game about clearing the earth of deadly viruses for two to four players. Pandemic Legacy: Season ane took that aforementioned gameplay and layered on so much more. Season ii took the core gameplay and tweaked it in some major ways. For my money, information technology wasn't as successful equally the get-go game, simply was nevertheless a fun feel. The newest release, which serves as a prequel, is Season 0. Information technology does quite a bit to bring information technology dorsum to nuts, while besides pushing the genre even further in several areas.

"Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 is the best legacy-fashion board game I've always played."

Wreckfest | Stadia Release Trailer

Earlier you lot worry, I'm going to split this review into two distinct sections. Get-go, I'll provide an almost entirely spoiler-gratis review. Essentially, everything you meet when you lot first open the box is fair game. Everything that starts out hidden is off-limits.

Then, we'll dig a petty into spoilers at the end, though I'll nonetheless keep some of the best secrets hidden. So if you want to become in completely spoiler-free, make sure to jump out of this review once you see the articulate alert.

Non-Spoiler Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 Review

With that out of the fashion, permit's talk almost what Season 0 does differently to brand it stand above the other games in the series and genre. The 2d you open the box, you can tell this game is special. The game is ready in the 1960s during the peak of the Cold War. You play as scientists turned CIA operatives, and the game nails that vibe out of the gate.

The game board features java stains that brand it look like a map some cigar-munching big-wig has been poring over for weeks. The undercover compartments look exactly like you'd imagine classified documents would look in that era. And the actual components are absolutely gorgeous and fit the time period to a "T."

In base of operations Pandemic, the diseases are represented by simple, colored cubes. Because Season 0 is all about stopping the Soviets, they've replaced those cubes with cherry secret agent miniatures, which make information technology all feel much more thematic than other iterations. But the cherry on peak are the new character cards that each player gets.

Because you're playing CIA agents, you accept access to 3 different aliases per grapheme. This lets yous better infiltrate Centrolineal, Neutral, and Soviet strongholds respectively. So, the game gives every player their own beautiful passport to keep rail of each allonym. Smartly, they've included stickers that feature all kinds of disguises for y'all to use on your different aliases. These don't have any in-game ramifications, but it'south an awesome thematic touch that blew my socks off. It'due south not that stickers in legacy games are anything new; it's the implementation that fabricated me fall in love.

"…it's hard to remember [a tabletop game] that so perfectly implements its theme across the components and fine art like Pandemic Legacy: Season 0."

So, the game looks not bad; that much is certain. I've described tabletop games as a visual showpiece before, merely information technology's hard to recall one that then perfectly implements its theme beyond the components and art similar Pandemic Legacy: Season 0. Yet, only because it looks skilful doesn't mean it's a bang-up game. Thankfully, Z-Man Games' latest more than brings the goods.

As mentioned in a higher place, at its core, base Pandemic is a game about a team of scientists coming together to rid the globe of disease. You do this by slowly edifice up a collection of cards that friction match the color of the cubes for each illness. Along the way, yous'll run into Epidemic cards, which make the diseases even more deadly. Dealing with these while also trying to get enough of the correct cards into one players' paw is part of what makes Pandemic such a classic game.

Once you lot have five cards, y'all can go to a safe house and make a cure. When all four diseases are cured, you win. Equally you'd await, all this fourth dimension you're also drawing cards from the Threat deck, which is slowly infecting cities effectually the world. Again, finding that balance betwixt hoarding cards and dealing with infections is incredibly tough. If yous tin can't manage it properly, your team will chop-chop discover itself on the losing side. Each of the Pandemic Legacy titles takes this formula and changes it upward in interesting ways. That said, I think Season 0 does it the best.

The first big modify is how the game handles Outbreaks (or in Flavor 0's case, Incidents). In other versions of the game, an Outbreak occurs when more three cubes take to be placed in a metropolis. The base game's rules don't allow that to happen. Instead, it results in placing a illness cube in each continued urban center. If the city is continued to another city that already has three cubes in it, an Outbreak concatenation occurs. These can quickly dovetail into a loss for your team, making them something yous have to avoid at all costs.

With Season 0, Outbreaks are a thing of the past. Or, I guess technically the hereafter? Instead, when you have to identify more than than three agents in a city, an Incident occurs. When this happens, you draw a carte du jour from the bottom of the Threat deck and read the lesser of the carte du jour. Here you'll be told to exercise all sorts of actions, almost none of which are good.

"Never did a game feel completely out of hand or too piece of cake."

In some cases, you lot might have to add agents effectually the board. Others will force y'all to lose safehouses y'all've congenital on different continents. There's even a few that forcefulness the teams y'all've built (more on these in a infinitesimal) dorsum to HQ. Not only does information technology keep chain reactions from killing your current game, simply it besides makes everything more interesting. You never know exactly what'southward going to happen when an incident occurs, making it even tougher to "solve" the puzzle that is Pandemic Legacy: Season 0.

Some other change are the teams I just mentioned. Instead of only curing a illness, you'll utilize the cards yous find to build teams from one of the iii factions. These are represented by little cars that you can move effectually the board as yous like. When they're in a urban center that matches their faction, they tin remove the agents, making them a powerful asset. However, they mostly come into play with the objectives you have to complete.

And here is the change I like the most with Season 0. In combination with the classic Pandemic gameplay, the new objectives ensure that almost every game has you on the edge of your seat. Meet, Flavour 0 introduces the concept of Unknown Targets. Basically, some objectives have you shuffle all the urban center cards from a region and and so randomly choose one. No one gets to encounter what it is, but you have to figure it out and get a squad at that place to complete the objective.

There are a few ways to exercise this. Yous can discard cards to but await at the secret card, but that uses valuable resources. Some other requires you to simply wait until all the other cards from that region come out. Thus, confirming the location through the process of elimination. The final way is simply a bullheaded approximate.

More often than not, my group went with a mixture of the latter ii. We'd expect every bit long as we could to get pieces of information and so only hope we got information technology right. One time you make your choice, you put a team with the right faction on that city and reveal the menu. You can give yourself more chances by putting different teams in several cities, which is another tactic we used often.

"This is a fantastic board game that stands amidst the very best in the industry."

No matter how you chose to go on though, these objectives mean you lot're always sitting on that knife's edge between success and defeat. Never did a game experience completely out of hand or too easy. Certain, we lost a few games, but the dazzler of it all was that you always felt one motility or choice away from either victory or defeat. Information technology's hard to capture that in a board game, but Daviau and Leacock accept mastered it with Season 0.

The game even takes it one pace further and doesn't strength you lot to complete every object to keep. Of course, all of the Pandemic Legacy games push you along whether you succeed or fail, but Flavor 0 adds a 3rd option. If you lot can complete most of your objectives, you tin can move to the next month of content with an "adequate" ranking. This leads to situations where your squad has to make the tough choice to completely carelessness one objective in the hopes of pushing forward on others. Every bit with everything else, it strikes an incredible residual that makes you constantly assess and reassess your team's programme of assault. The drama these moments build is almost better than the crafted narrative that Season 0 is trying to tell you lot.

The combination of captivating gameplay and truly exceptional theming is merely ii-thirds of what earns this game a perfect score. The last piece of the puzzle is how well the team has incorporated its many secrets. Nonetheless, to speak about those would be globe-trotting firmly into spoiler territory. Again I won't spoil everything, simply if you lot want to go in mostly blind, here'south your exit ramp.

Earlier y'all leave, just know that Pandemic Legacy: Flavor 0 is an accented must-play, with the just caveat being that it is a little complicated. Newer game groups might consider starting with something simpler before hopping in. That said, this game has set an incredibly loftier bar that's going to be hard to articulate. Do yourself a favor and pick it upward.

*Spoiler Warning*

Now and so, let's talk spoilers. I'm non going to say much about the story; you should larn all of that on your own. Instead, I merely want to talk almost the masterclass Daviau and Leacock have put together in terms of legacy components and rules withSeason 0.

Substantially, they've taken but about everything great from past legacy games and escape-the-room games and implemented them in devilishly smart ways. For example, nearly legacy-style games have means to upgrade your characters as y'all play. However, Flavor 0 has some of the most inventive mechanics that I've seen. Plus, having iii carve up aliases you lot tin switch between at safe houses makes each player and then versatile.

Information technology doesn't end at that place though. Early in the entrada, the game forces yous to answer some questions, record them, and and so stash them away. Equally you play, your answers give you unlike restrictions that counter all of the new options you uncover through gameplay. So while yous're consistently getting stronger, the game is ever forcing you to adapt based on your own choices. In some means, it'due south kind of similar to an RPG that levels its enemies with yous. Until those restriction handcuffs come off, you never feel more than powerful than the board. It's an exceptional pattern.

And the crowning touch of Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 is one of the best surprises I've e'er seen in a lath game. I'm very hesitant to spoil it for you lot. Let's just say that my wife who played 16 games with me over 5 days asked at the start, "what if they somehow have a second board or something?", and was proven to be something of a Nostradamus. Look, I've played tons of legacy games and escape-the-room games, and the implementation nonetheless left my jaw on the flooring. Information technology's not that this surprise brings something completely new to the tabular array, it simply implements information technology and then perfectly and thematically that you almost accept to stand up and cheer.

*Finish of Spoilers*

All of these secrets and more combine with an already stellar base game to make something that easily surpasses its predecessors. Not merely that, but I remember Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 is the best legacy game I've e'er played. For reference, I've still to play The King'southward Dilemma and consider Gloomhaven and then far across the idea of a legacy game that I wouldn't include it. Otherwise, I've tried or completed nearly everything else on the market place. So, I don't take my praise lightly; this is a fantastic board game that stands among the very best in the manufacture.

Safely said, if you have the means, Pandemic Legacy: Season 0 is something you must go your hands on. It is 2 practiced designers at their absolute best, capping their trilogy off in the best way possible. The quality of the components speaks for itself. Season 0's gameplay is my personal favorite variant of Pandemic that I've ever played, and the legacy aspects are a perfect implementation of all the fun tricks the genre has come up upwardly with to date. I would hesitate to go and then far as to say information technology's my favorite board game ever. Notwithstanding, I think when the die settles, it volition firmly exist in my top five of all-fourth dimension.

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