Tikal II
2-4
13+
60+
Become one of four fearless adventurers in a tropical jungle!
Explore a lost temple and discover treasures that no human has laid eyes on for a thousand years. Rack up the most points by uncharted areas of the temple and bringing back unheard of artefacts.
Tikal II is the sequel to the award winning ''game of the year'' Tikal. Where Tikal had you exploring the jungle, in Tikal II you will explore a temple in the Lost City. Tikal II manages to be familiar while still being an entirely new game.
Features
-Strategy game for the whole family
-Lots of tension
-A sequel with new gameplay
images © Asmodee
User Reviews (3)
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My whole family of 4 sat down at GENCON to play this game. We spent 20 minutes learning the rules and then another 30 minutes playing. We didn’t finish the game. After a few turns each we all looked at each other and it was clear that we could be spending our time playing something else.
Tikal, the original game is one of my favorite games. It was explained that this game is not that one and I should not compare them. So I kept an open mind but if you didn’t want comparisons then why call this one “Tikal II”?
There are 3 main ways the games are alike:
1 – The setting is similar. You are in a jungle exploring a temple.
2 – On your turn you lay tiles that give new access to areas of the board. The final board can be different each time you play.
3 – You collect treasures that you later redeem for points.
The games are not alike in that you don’t have action points to spend each turn. Instead you have a selection of actions bundles. Each bundle has 2 or three things you can do. But once the bundle is used its gone for half the game.
The only other major way the games are not alike is in the way you move about the board. You collect different color keys and depending on which keys you owned determined where you could go. This was I didn’t like the most. The problem was it seemed like it was pretty easy to move just about anywhere you wanted to go every turn if you only put a small amount of thought behind it.
I liked the mechanic for how much the treasures are worth at any given moment. It was a bit random and a bit press your luck. When the not so often opportunities arrived to sell your treasures you could wait for them to be more valuable or take the value they were worth. Once you sold them the value indicator would rotate changing the future value of all of them.
I was disappointed. The game doesn’t have much tension for me. I am a fan of Wolfgang Kramer and I wanted Tikal II to be more great Tiakl fun.
I have read many reviews on this game, before I got it. On this site, and others. Most of the reviews were lukewarm at best, but the game play sounded interesting to me.
I have now played this game 3 times. Once with 2 players, once with 3, and one time with 4 players. The game scales well by adjusting the number of turns (and turn options) based on the number of players. The scaling is simple and effective.
Tension in the game is created based on the approach you take to collecting victory points. You can focus on collecting and selling treasures, you can focus on finding bonus cards, you can collect tokens that allow you to travel through secret passages, and you can also focus on collecting keys from the temple. Whatever path you choose, you will be more successful if you do what other players are not, and not try to do everything.
Many reviews make it sound that there is no challenge in this game. I disagree. For those that only play it once, and move on, they are probably not seeing how the competition for victory points will escalate with more experience, and more plays.
Overall, I think this is a great game that only suffers from the Tikal II title. It is not Tikal. Calling it Tikal II for marketing purposes seems to have backfired in this instance.
Tikal II is a fine family game. There are enough decisions to make the game interesting. Short turns and a short playing time make the game good for families. However, nothing stands out about the game. The mechanics are ok. The graphics are good. Perhaps having ‘Tikal’ in the title of the game actually hurt this one as it simply does not stand up to its predecessor.