Uprising Curse of the Last Emperor, 2 players

Played Uprising two players with a friend. It's settling into a game I want to buy but not a complete doors blown off masterpiece like Spirit Island with me---which ain't nothing!

We had some fun twists in this game, with my friend taking a heavy early setback but managing to rebuild a respectable position---we won by 5-6 points each over the Legion. It's an unusual co-op in that it makes you feel far worse than you are doing. I think that's because it looks pretty ameritrash inspired/adjacent, and those games are usually about KOing some bad guy at the end to reach the peak of your curve. But this game is squarely a VP game, and you can get hit pretty hard in the final cycle and still win if you've balanced the enemy scoring and done plenty of your own. In that way, it does share something with euro-leaning Spirit Island---winning a fear victory in Spirit Island while you are being absolutely overrun can be a little weird. The game is designed and balanced so that you can get hit in the face or deal with a tough roll and still win on normal; a lot of these sorts of games are not so you have to fight the feeling that you should quit and rerack and play through.

Anyway, I'm a little higher on it than my friend, but I think the game is quite well designed and a lot of little flair my friend and I appreciated---the Courtesan came out and chased him, which is fun little mirror matchup designed to make you feel good by showing off your cool powers while I faced a one-two of The Coven who I dispatched easily but not before they blanked all of my powers, which led to a complete overrun by the Mage Breaker in the enemy phase of that turn who took my first haven.

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