I liked Puerto Rico. I also liked St. Martin and St. Croix.

But Puerto Rico (the game) seems to take the best elements from Die Handler and
Princes of Florence and put them in one game. A very satisfying gaming
experience.

THings I liked about PR:
- No yawning. THere is little to no downtime in PR since everyone goes on
everyone's turn (mostly)
- No first-mover advantages. There are multiple paths to victory (The CORN
strategy is a winning one?!?!) and the player order does not seem to matter.
- No dice. THis game has a very low randomness to it (just placement of
plantation tiles is random)
- Pretty pictures. PR has nice bits and color scheme (the color scheme is one of
the things I really dislike about Pussies of Florence, but the blues and greens
of PR are very pleasing to the eye)
- A bit gamey. THis is not a game you will introduce your family to on Christmas
day. That is a good thing as I like meat.

Things I was not crazy about:
- Longer to take out and set up than some games. PR is difficult to set up
because with varying number of playuers, you have to set up different numbers of
EVERYTHING (colonists, plantations, personalities, etc)
- Game length. THe game is a little on the longish side. But then again, we were
playing with Adam! Seriously, even with experienced players, PR will be close to
90 minutes.
- Unintuitive rules -- if I didn't like the game so much, I might accuse it of
being fiddly. This game needs to be played a few times before you can PLAY it.
An example of unintuitive rules: the existence of the "San Juan" region seems to
be an afterthought in the design.


Matthew J. Horn
Sr. Technical Writer
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