So this was another of the titles in the digital board games bundle I bought a while back. I have no idea why it’s the official board game instead of the official digital game but it’s obviously the official adaptation of the famous Carcassonne board game. Though I’ve played the physical version of this once or twice I’m not actually very familiar with it as the version that I have is the Hunters & Gatherers standalone spin-off game.

By default this version makes only the base game available and if you register an account with Asmodee, you get the Abbot for free as well. You can buy access for a few other expansions but they’re still only a small fraction of the expansions available for the physical game. You can play online against other player or against the AI and there are several AI personalities to choose from, such as the Builder that presumably likes to build cities and the Aggressive one which likes to claim tiles fast. This version implements some cool features which you can choose to disable or enable. One is to highlight dead spaces where are impossible to fill in with any of the tiles still available. Another is to freely browse through the remaining tiles at will. Needless to say enabling these streamlines gameplay considerably but may be perceived as a violation of the spirit of the original game. You can even choose to disable scoring fields entirely which makes the game much simpler.

Still this is just Carcassonne and even with all of the bells and whistles, it’s not a complex game. The AI is decently good, being clever enough to use tiles to block you when needed. But once you get the hang of things, routinely beating it isn’t too hard. I like how adding more players changes the game, making things more chaotic as each desperate tries to claim as many things as possible quickly as each player won’t have enough moves to complete huge cities. Conversely going with just two players makes for a leisurely game, allowing you to max out points for monasteries, gardens and cities.

Overall this digital version makes for an okay casual game but Carcassonne just isn’t deep enough to be very engaging against the AI or even online against other people. It’s still best as a party game with a table full of real people and I have a hard time imagining who would be spending endless hours on this digital version.