Review Details

King of New York

Product Review (submitted on October 10, 2015):

King of New York takes everything you loved about King of Tokyo and buries it. KoT was pretty complex to begin with, offering several different paths to victory. This made it pretty easy to learn and gave it a lot of replay value. KoNY, however, has just layered on more and more mechanics. In KoT, you could focus on combat, victory points, or power-ups. In KoNY, victory points are achieved by gaining fame and marching up Manhattan. Power-ups are available in certain boroughs but not others. Combat is no longer monster-on-monster. You now have to contend with building destruction and the army.

There's almost too much going on to keep it all in your head, which saps a lot of the fun out of the experience. Since press-your-luck games are inherently random-ish anyway, you can't do much to evaluate how your strategy is working. It all feels like a jumbled mess.

I played this with co-workers--computer programmers, mind you, so these are people who specialize in evaluating and following complex rules engines. At least one person never understood what was going on for the entire game. Those of us who could follow it had played KoT before and had some basis for comparison.

As with the KoT Halloween expansion, this feels totally non-essential. It adds nothing and distracts from the core elements of the game. Just play King of Tokyo instead.