Floodgate Games Epic Resort Board Game

Super gift

My wife and I really enjoy this game. It's light hearted and fun.

I would have liked this game a lot more if it weren't for one glaring flaw that is a very large part of the game's experience.In this game each player is managing a resort. Each resort has up to 3 attractions with spaces for a certain number of guests and depending on how many guests are at that attraction there is a sliding scale of the game's two resources; money and prestige. So the more money you have the less prestige and vice versa. More prestige gives you the ability to attract new guests and hire heroes and more money lets you get improved workers (used to staff attractions and keep guests there) and better attractions. The heroes are needed because occasionally monsters will attack and heroes can prevent those monsters from eating guests and damaging attractions.My biggest problem with the game is the combat, which is a pretty central part of the game. A lot of what you do each round is preparing to defend your resort from monsters and the monster deck itself dictates the game's end. However combat is super duper easy, you can almost ignore it and it will never affect you. This makes a game with no tension and almost no point to that whole piece which is a central aspect of the gameplay.When a monster attacks your resort first you can defend it with a hero. No matter how strong the monster is the hero only takes one wound. If there is no hero present or the monster does damage past the heroes defense (and if you are afraid of losing your hero you can always have him retreat to another attraction) then he will chomp on guests. Even if he does 7 damage and there is only 1 guest present he will still just eat that one guest and leave. And losing guests isn't inherently a bad thing, like I said there is a sliding scale of resources so with fewer guests you get less money but more prestige which is not a bad thing. Then if there are no heroes and no guests, again despite how strong the monster is, it will do one damage to your attraction. Attractions can all take 2 or 3 hits before being destroyed and there are often attractions that can self-repair or workers that can repair attractions, plus upgrading to a better attraction instantly repairs it. And that's not all, finally each player starts with 3 cards in their deck that can completely negate an entire monster attack.Other than that I kind of like the design of the game, there is variable setup with different workers you can use each time and a few different attractions with special abilities making for some different experiences. But when half of the game is about these monster attacks and there is almost no point to them I can't find enough in what's left to justify playing it.