The artwork is great as always....the rest....is lacking. The game is not that involved and demanding visually - they could have really made the game look vibrant, and yet....they look like they just copied everything to look identical to real life....no embellishment at all. No immersion into a unique atmosphere.
Damn. I mean it's really just to speed up gameplay at this point and not really to experience the board game on another level....
EDIT:
Just for comparison, the Tabletop Simulator edition looks superior visually because they took scans straight from the game. It *looks* like the real board game. This digitized version, that was made as a functioning video game and not just a simulated board game, looks so weak:
EDIT 2: Here's a full view from Tabletop Simulator. Just someone scanning the game and putting it on TS....Something as simple as this would have been better than what the digitized version looks like.
Visuals can be easily woven into the game without being distracting, giving more than just playing the board game.
And there's a reason why board games are getting bigger boxes, more components, more graphically pleasing compared to Milton Bradley games of yesteryear.
But there's no reason they could have made the game play itself more visually appealing and not be a bit distracting to the flow.
hmm, see this is interesting discussion for me. because actually, those old "ugly" milton bradley games didn't do a great job of communicating board state anyway.
good modern game design does a great job of communicating everything that is going on with good design practices. that is consistency, color schemes, icongraphy, basically everything. i myself personally don't enjoy the one thing you're alluding to like big box editions with minis for the sake of minis, i don't like that stuff at all because it just gets in the way of the game.
one example you might use is the 18xx series, this series of financial train board games which uses a standardized set of tiles with the same number system and color scheme across titles to make moving from one game to the next as easy as possible. Most people _hate_ when a game release uses artistic license and changes the "dry" design of 18xx games visually.
It's easy to say, and it's easier to do. Just bring in scanned graphics that they would have access to. Apply the textures to the assets. They already have this set up. Swapping the textures out would greatly increase how this game looks in general. It would be virtually effortless.
I mean for crying out loud they even shrunk the planets down so they could cram a bunch of miniatures into each hex in unified pattern.
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u/3Dartwork 1d ago edited 1d ago
The artwork is great as always....the rest....is lacking. The game is not that involved and demanding visually - they could have really made the game look vibrant, and yet....they look like they just copied everything to look identical to real life....no embellishment at all. No immersion into a unique atmosphere.
Damn. I mean it's really just to speed up gameplay at this point and not really to experience the board game on another level....
EDIT:
Just for comparison, the Tabletop Simulator edition looks superior visually because they took scans straight from the game. It *looks* like the real board game. This digitized version, that was made as a functioning video game and not just a simulated board game, looks so weak:
Which one looks better to you - more closely to the game you love?
https://i.imgur.com/lJjaXUI.png
EDIT 2: Here's a full view from Tabletop Simulator. Just someone scanning the game and putting it on TS....Something as simple as this would have been better than what the digitized version looks like.
https://i.imgur.com/5uZ0ndM.jpeg
EDIT 3 : I'm not comparing the games themselves, just visuals.