LogFAQs > #932446582

115. The Godfather: Corleone's Empire (2017)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Worker placement, area control, set collection, pickup-and-deliver
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 4
Game length: 75 to 105 minutes
Experience: 2 plays over 2 sessions (2017, 2018) with 4-5 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - You play as one of the mob's five families of New York (in the universe of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather). During each of the four rounds, you dispatch your underlings (and family members) as workers into different territories, attempting to complete jobs (shown on draftable cards), collect contraband goods like guns or liquor, bribe officials to give you better abilities, or establish control over those territories. Endgame points are awarded for success in completing jobs and in controlling areas the most over the course of the game.

Design - The Godfather looks nice to play, and its ruleset is pretty slim for something of its relative weight. The decision space is broad but not overwhelming and with manageable depth - it has over a dozen options on any given placement, but you have relatively limited opportunities to place your guys down, keeping the game to sensible length. Being an area control game, there's also a strong interactive element, where you have to decide where to pick your battles and when you should fortify your hand and collect the contraband you need instead.

Experience - Like with so many area control games, and especially area control game hybrids, I sucked at this game, and that might have something to do with its placement. Area control is naturally competitive and interactive and take-that-ish in a way that many of the games I play are not. It's incredibly difficult for me to balance short-term attempts to hold or take territory with less interference-prone plans that (incidentally) bolster your ability to compete for those areas later in the game. Using the "gun down" mission cards can make enemies of other players, and while it was funny, it also felt pretty bad from an in-game perspective when I (in last place) attacked third or fourth place, and then on the final turn, he chose to attack me instead of somewhere he could possibly gain more.

Future - Because of the meanness in The Godfather, I'm hesitant to want to play it again. It's not the most punishing game, clocking in at under 2 hours with the group I've played it with, so perhaps with less aggro/zero-sum focus I can find some more enjoyment. But then, the friend who owns this keeps getting new games...
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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness