Puerto Rico
The players are plantation owners in Puerto Rico in the days when ships had sails. Growing up to five different kind of crops: Corn, Indigo, Coffee, Sugar and Tobacco, they must try to run their business more efficiently than their close competitors; growing crops and storing them efficiently, developing San Juan with useful buildings, deploying their colonists to best effect, selling crops at the right time, and most importantly, shipping their goods back to Europe for maximum benefit. A novel game system lets players choose the order of the phases in each turn by allowing each player to choose a role from those remaining when it is their turn. No role can be selected twice in the same round. The player who selects the best roles to advance their position during the game will win.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Game for Young Adults/Adults–Family Entertainment
My 16 year old played this game several years ago and asked me to purchase it. That in itself says a lot. I watched him and his group of friends/cousins play this game….really enjoyable. It is now on our family game night list. I would recommend this game; I am glad I was able to find it on Amazon…great purchase!
5 Stars Puerto Rico & San Juan
Puerto Rico are great strategic game. The card game San Jun for two people is based on this game and is also excellent. My teenage daughter loves them both. Enjoy!!
5 Stars Great Game!
This is a great game. the game play is faster than Catan and everyone gets to play every round.
5 Stars Great board game but somewhat complicated
Puerto Rico is an excellent board game for groups that gather in the 3 to 5 person range. The great thing about Puerto Rico is that there are very few random elements to the game, meaning that there’s very little luck involved for any of the players. Yet, even with so few random elements, no two games really play alike. Players strategies are deep and players may find themselves switching stratiges mid game due to other player’s stratgies, or board events taking place.
The concept of the game is fairly straight forward. Players develop their island with people, buildings, and crops. Each turn, each player chooses a role to play on the island (trader, or settler, or mayor, and others). Each role has an effect for each player, either furthering their island development, or earning money for the island, or earning victory points to determine the winner at the end of the game. Play continues like this typically for about 15 turns (when one of several end game conditions is met).
As you might be able to tell from above, this game is pretty complicated and not designed for people new to board games. There are lots of rules and lots of reasons why to be one role or another on any given turn, resulting in a little confusion for new players. Despite this, this game is quite fun and the outcome of the game is unknown to everyone playing it, even late into the game. I would recommend this game to anyone comfortable with more complicated board games, but if you’re new to “euro style” board games, then you might want to look elsewhere first.
Average Playtime: 45-90 minutes (say 70 minutes typically)
Minimum Age: I’d say 12.
Turn length: about 1 minute per turn
5 Stars Great Game
Puerto Rico is a great game. It’s very much a strategy game — almost everything in the game is due to the decisions that you and others make, rather than chance. However, you don’t have to be a great strategy player to enjoy it. Gameplay is fairly short (an hour, maybe?), though it does take longer at first while you’re trying to figure out the game.
Don’t be discouraged by the directions. They are ridiculously long and extremely detailed, making you think this is a complicated game. It’s not. It actually took us longer to get through the directions the first time than it did to play the game! Once you’ve played it, you find that it’s a game with simple, straightforward rules.
Filed under: Classic Board Game Reviews