Critical Products - product reviews vs critical reviews (Topic Discussion)

Tabletop Games Blog - board game reviews and discussions with a personal touch

I love Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory. It's an amazing economic simulation with huge ambitions. And yet, it rarely comes to the table. The reason is simple. It takes about half an hour to set up. You have to separate card decks, shuffle them, put a number of different components into different locations and do various other things before you can start playing. While Hegemony is a heavy game, it's not its complexity that is the problem. It's the effort of setting it up. That made me think about whether a critical board game review should consider this or if this is more the remit of a product review.

Read the full topic discussion article here: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2025/08/12/critical-products-product-reviews-vs-critical-reviews-topic-discussion/

Useful Links

• Stonemaier Games: https://stonemaiergames.com/
• Fled review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2025/07/26/fled-saturday-review/
• Mystic Vale review: https://tabletopgamesblog.com/2018/12/08/mystic-vale/

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