Star Realms: Rise of Empire

My friend and I have completed the campaign for Star Reams: Rise of Empire, so I'd like to offer my thoughts. 

If you have played Star Realms, then you have a sense of how this game works. This cuts both ways, of course. because on the upside, the game is easy to learn. There are minor tweaks to how gameplay works, but that's all they are, minor.

Which is, of course, the downside as well. Rise of Empire doesn't do anything new with the game that isn't already being done. Adding three new shades of color isn't a gameplay twist, folks. It's just extra instruments.

Which is fine if the song is still good and if you like Star Realms, then the song is still good!

But one other drawback is that while the trade deck is shaped by your choices, the story the game is telling the players is a nothingburger. Sure, the winner of the last game gets to make some choices about what will modify the next one (will Vipers give you +1 gold or let you draw and then discard?) but that's the extent of the choices.

The story itself is on rails and the winner or loser of a game doesn't change where it all ends up. 

Now, I had fun with Rise of Empire but that's because I'm already part of the game's ecosystem. But I didn't come away impressed by it, and feel like they could have done something to expand on what the game played like, if they had wanted to. I certainly don't think this expansion will convince anyone who isn't interested in Star Realms to care about it. 

I definitely think that people shouldn't pop for the reusable version of the game; there is nothing to be gained, in my opinion, from the ability to re-use stickers and modify games every single time. Ugh. 

But if you like Star Realms, then yeah, Rise of Empire is a solid time.