I am in the market for a new game but struggle a bit to decide which one! Most of the reviewers on youtube I find obnoxious, trying to hard to be funny and often not really useful. How do you decide? Especially if you cannot play the game beforehand?
I take a very long-winded approach. I try to find a copy of the rules online, and then read through it (which is the first thing I would do if I had gone out to buy the game).
Then, instead of watching a review, I try to find a play through video to see how it plays out. The video isn’t completely devoid of colorful commentary or random banter, but it does give me a realistic expectation of how long the game truly takes.
I generally know whether I’d appreciate a game or hate it from reading the rule book. The video just saves me the cycle of buying, trying, and returning if I’m on the fence.
It doesn’t work all the time. Troy dices is a wonderful game, yet I have watch many reviews and had to read the rules many times before understanding what the game was expecting from me. And it’s only at the end of the game that things clack and I instantly wanted to play another round.
This is what I am a bit afraid of, too. Maybe I love the gameplay loop, even though the rules are just this dry mess, or the video just explains them without conveying how satsifying this or that feels.