Kids Say:

“I always enjoy a game of Pandemic, but there were aspects of this one that I didn’t like as much as the other pandemic legacies we have played in the past, and my feelings about this game vastly shifted depending on my mood.”

“This game involved many stickers, none of which were sticky. However, I will say that adding stickers to the game board was fun (we start with a pretty much blank game board and add areas as we go). For the most part, we had the same objectives for the first half of the game. It felt like we were just playing and playing without much excitement, then in October-December, we got bombarded with new and interesting events.”

Micah, guest reviewer:

“Pandemic Legacy Season 2 was fun! Before this, I had only played the regular pandemic and this was a huge step up. I love the idea of releasing the map and needing to place stickers as you go. I loved playing this game and would definitely play again.”

Adults Say:

“Wow, the folks in charge of the Pandemic Legacy series, Rob Daviau and Matt Leacock, are darn good at their jobs.  Over the course of three legacy games, they have managed to weave a single, twisting, consistently engaging and stressful narrative arc that is precisely challenging enough to keep us constantly on the brink of victory or defeat, and consequently, riveted.”

“The recipe they’ve developed -- your intrepid band of [insert government/covert/outcast helpers here] must constantly keep the world from being destroyed by plague/weird people/other nastiness while at the same time searching for and ultimately destroying  the root of said nastiness -- is a total winner. And every legacy game adds a different, sometimes gut-wrenching frameshift  that changes your Pandemic-world view to produce just the right, ‘Whoa!’ moments. It’s intoxicating to play, and turns every session into a binge.  I mean, we have a Zoom Bar Mitzvah to plan in the space of a few short weeks, and our family can’t tear itself away from the Pandemic (with a capital P) world long enough to learn some Torah.”

“Though Pandemic Legacy Season 2 wasn’t my tippy-top favorite of the three Legacy games -- Season Zero has my heart -- it does add some delicious elements that are original enough to make this game a Must Play. Chief among them:  you, the players, get to rediscover and reconnect the world, which has fallen into a post-Apocalyptic, disease-ridden, desolate purgatory.  You get to uncover the last remnants of the world’s struggling cities one by one, and figure out how to connect them to supply lines.  You have to figure out how to keep them fed and healthy.  And as you might expect, the task gets harder the more you discover.  And as you go, you uncover more and more delicious details about yourselves, opening doors and boxes, drawing lines, applying sticker after sticker (OH THE DELIGHT OF STICKERS!) and scratching off hidden messages, abilities, and puzzles.  I’ll say it again:  intoxicating.”

“Once you open a Pandemic Legacy game, it becomes immediately important to you to play all the way through it. This outstanding game draws just a few critiques from the London house, and they all pertain to the physical game components.  First, as Kids mention above, the stickers aren’t sticky enough to stay on the player cards, and we find ourselves obsessively rubbing our thumbs over them while we play, hoping that one more rub will get them to finally stay down.  Although it’s a fine fidget, the practice makes us look more compulsive than we already are.”

“And, more annoyingly, the silvery scratch-off covering present on so many materials in this game -- while extremely exciting to rub off, creates an incredible, outsized mess.  Not only does the coating go everywhere (so we recommend scratching on a paper towel or other chuckable surface), it’s weirdly magnetic.  So, stray silvery dust particles settled on everything in the room in every game, no matter how hard we tried to mitigate them.  I hope they’re not poisonous.”

“Well done again, Rob and Matt. I feel like we should be on a first-name basis by now. We’re forever fans, and will wear our persistent silvery coating with pride. Pandemic Legacy Season 2 is another jewel in the crown.”