Is Everdell fun?
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- Everdell was Ryan's 2018 Christmas present. Is it tree-worthy, or a hot steaming pile of coal? Here's the lowdown!
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Anytime I watch a game review that goes into a rules explanation, I usually can't keep up and it's a chore to stay attentive. I really like your format of video with pros and cons. And I still get a feel for how the gameplay works without knowing the rules. Looking forward to future content!
I usually don't comment anything, but I really like the format of the review - how you pair the good and bad things about the game staying honest and realistic. Looking forward to play this, partly based on your review.
Also your comment about procrastination is sooo true!
I won a game where I completed my 15 card tableu, got 74 points and wasn't even at Autumn yet! Everyone finished their seasons and I just moved onto autumn and sent my workers on the journey placements.
I also really like your format, honesty and clarity; I’m now thinking...hmm Everdell is definitely next on my list to play/ purchase.
Thanks
Played Everdell once and I loved it. Decided to buy it, but now i'm just waiting for covid to end to bring friends over and enjoy that awesome board game with me.
Ugggggh. i'm in the exact same place.
Would love to see Find the Fun with Dungeon Petz
It's not really elimination...it's just finishing your turns first. It's not like you get knocked out by another player or anything like that. You just managed your workers to end up with less turns, which isn't always terrible. Some of the more expensive end game (purple) constructions can cost 9 resources, compared to like 2-5 for most others. If you manage to build say two of the end game purples, you would probably have 2 less turns, and 2 less constructions than them, but also probably more points. Unlike a game like Agricola, you are NOT penalized for empty city spaces (having less than 15 cards in your tableau).
This is like a letter of the law/spirit of the law kind of thing. The problem with player elimination isn't that certain players don't get a fair shake. It's that everyone else gets to play, and the eliminated players have nothing to do, so they wander away from the table and rummage through your underwear drawer looking for loose change and incriminating photos while you're distracted at the game table.
Dodge ball has the same kind of player elimination you're claiming Everdell has: everyone gets the same opportunity to make good, but some people just play better than others. That's not the issue. The issue is that some people sit out while the rest play on. (hand over heart) And that's what Player Elimination means to me.
You've convinced me to buy this game, thanks 😉
Nice vid! Concerning the player elimination part. When playing with more casual players my experience is that they don't mind well intended advice now and then. It's part of the learning process. Also when possible I just try to point out the best options, so that they can make the definitive choice themselves. This should mitigate the last part a lot imo.
Oh, absolutely. i play with my kids all the time, and if i don't do this, they get trounced!
Great job Ryan. We've just added Everdell to our growing collection of family games and love it. Thankyou for the review and the how to play.
When I started playing board games (2 years ago) and I saw this game, I told myself I must have this game. Unfortunately, I missed the 1st kickstarter. When the expansion came out, I automatically backed. I never regret that decision ever since I got the game. I got the expansion at GenCon, though. Me and my wife love this game. Everything you pointed out was straight on. My only complain is the solo mode. Rugwort is hard to beat especially in year 2 and 3. Great job on this video!
Thanks, Maui! i haven't tried the solo mode, but i did once play a multiplayer game with the Rugwort promo cards, and found the "trade hands with another player" card a little harsh. In the second round, the first player was down to 2 cards and i, as 4th player, had a full hand of 8 cards, and then he used Rugwort to swap with me. Ouch. (i still wound up winning that game tho ;) i didn't mention it in the review because those cards are optional promos.
Hey, I just want to say I love your videos and your How to Play Concordia video was how I found your channel. Keep up the good work!
Thanks so much! It's always helpful to know how people discover the channel.
Boardgamegeek brought this game to my attention the other day, and I ordered it immediately. I'm glad to see someone (you, that is) sho enthused over it, and geeking out over the fact that it's just so darned CUTE. When we play Photosynthesis, we still exclaim over its beautiful design; appearance won't make a crap game good, but will make a good game even better!
Great review. We’ve played a few times now and love the game. We’ve discovered some of the bad and use it as a learning experience (city full of 1/2 pt cards at the end of summer ugh). We use small bowls for the pieces. We made some that sort of match the theme.
We've had so much fun with this game. It is incredibly fun, last Saturday we were in tears laughing just joking about the mining mole or the barge toad (the names in Spanish are hilarious) and my parents who don't play board games keep joking about the names, everyone is impressed with the tree and the theme just grabs everyone, it works so well.
Why are the names in Spanish hilarious? Are they puns?
@@NightsAroundaTable no they aren't, but there's just something funny about how they sound, we only play games in English, this is the first time we play something in Spanish.
I almost bought Everdell a few days ago, but then I made a complete 180 and went for Caverna... XD Everdell is very cute, it is on my "of interest and will probably buy if I get my partner's approval" list.
i hope you enjoy Caverna! It's been on my list of games to cover for a while now!
I love Everdell and I really like your video format! Thanks! 😍
I really like your Venn diagram of fun and good. I am going to start using that to eval my collection. Do you have a top 100 list.
Not yet, but i'm working on it!
@@NightsAroundaTable How goes the top 100? Seems you've been working on it since last decade :P
@@shelby142 And it may be another decade yet!
You could always do a top 50 or even top 20 instead. Gives u more time to explain whats good about each game.
Love this game! For the game pieces, try cutting out a small piece of that grippy stuff that you line drawers with. Works for me.
i've been using neodymium magnets on a metal table.
Really nice review format! Subscribed :)
I'm attracted to this game, but the player elimination turns me off... Does that work as "real" (I mean frustrating) player elimination, or not?
Thanks so much for subscribing! In my opinion, the player elimination isn’t nearly as much of a problem as it is in games like Monopoly, Bang, and King of Tokyo. Very rarely have i seen anyone get knocked out so early they leave the table and knit a whole sweater while everyone else keeps playing.
Hey! I was wondering what other games do you think are a mix between a good and a fun game? Thanks!
Hi Ryan, thanks for this video, I'm certainly interested in Everdell.
My key remaining issue is how interactive is it? I really don't like multiplayer solitaire OR interaction which is just a race or first to take a spot/card.
I'm not talking about take that, but clever interaction like:
- hansa Teutonica
- brass (parasitic dependency)
- keyflower or Cyclades (clever auctions)
There's only one take-that card in the game. You'll recognize a mechanic from Keyflower here: you can build things to your tableau that other players can take advantage of, and you get some sort of kickback. In Keyflower, you get to keep that player's meeple to use in the next round. In Everdell, you get a coin (which is essentially a point).
The rest of the "interactivity" is similar to what you'll find in other worker placement games: while some placement spots can accommodate multiple players, the best ones are exclusive, so there's a race to reach them. There's also competition for the events and special events.
But the keenest area of competition is in the central meadow area. You can either spend resources to build a card from your hand, or you can build a card from the collective pool of 8 meadow cards. There's definitely some interactive tension around who takes what and when - especially in the summer season, when you get to grab two meadow cards for free. And when the meadow gets "stale," there's always renewed interest when someone deliberately (or inadvertently) churns it, which can unlock a whole pile of daisy-chaining opportunities for your and your opponents.
So i wouldn't AT ALL call it a multiplayer solitaire game. There's a decent amount of getting in each other's way and paying attention to what everyone else wants, and is likely to shoot for.
@@NightsAroundaTable Thank you so much for such a detailed reply!
You've convinced me to back the latest KS, the Complete Collection seems a pretty good deal, and worse-case scenario, if we don't like it, I should be able to sell it for minimal loss.
Thanks again :)
@@salmanqaisar7377 It's a fantastic deal! i'll have paid about 3-4 times that much for everything, by the end of it.
Great review. Love the pros and cons. I don’t feel that Everdell has a big problem with player elimination. It will definitely happen during Autumn whether you’re a noob or not but it’s not so bad because you don’t get eliminated because someone eliminated you but that you made some poor decisions which will excite you to do better and play again. Plus this game is so beautiful with so many cute critters why wouldn’t you want to play again. It just puts a smile on your face.
I also love the tableau engine builder and worker placement mechanics. So which one do you like better Everdell or Wingspan? I find they are similar but not. What do you think?
Yeah - that's exactly it. You didn't get knocked out - you knocked yourself out. It's a key difference. i still have not played Wingspan... i came close last weekend at a friend's house, but we went a different direction. The closest game to Everdell that i've played is Race for the Galaxy. Someone also compared it to Imperial Settlers. i've only played that once, but i can see why they say that. i just found IS had a little too much down time as the other players waited for you to pull off all your combos.
Nights Around a Table I haven’t played Imperial Settlers or Race for the Galaxy but I have played Roll for the Galaxy. The only thing similar for RftG is making combos with the tiles you buy off the dice rolls. The hidden dice and choosing the same dice your opponents have to move to a space mechanic are what makes RftG fun and exciting and different from Everdell. You should try Roll for the Galaxy if you like dice chucking but if you like cards then Race for the Galaxy is better.
I mention Wingspan because they have some similarities to Everdell. Wingspan has the bird house dice tower and Everdell has a 3D tree, the production quality for both are superb, they both have tableau engine building you can daisy chain combos, but the worker placement is opposite, Everdell you start off with 2 workers and end up with 6 in the end (I’m not sure of the end worker count but it’s more than 2) and in Wingspan you start off with a lot of workers and end up with less in the end (I’m not sure of the exact Wingspan worker counts because I don’t own the game and only played once). Interested to hear your thoughts once you play Wingspan.
@@sarahjoylagunzad6159 Race is more like Everdell in that you're building a tableau, and you have to decide which cards are "currency" and which cards you're gonna build, but it's more pronounced in Race because there are no resources - the cards ARE the resources.
i'm all over Roll! Here's my unboxing:
ruclips.net/video/YiN5ZhnUI2Q/видео.html
And a How to Play video:
ruclips.net/video/AJTB9rkQqi0/видео.html
i'll definitely let you now what i think once i get to dem boids.
The tree is great for keeping that giant stack of cards situated. I don't know why everyone says it's "useless".
Agree! But the game is definitely a table hog.
Beatrix Potter?, For me, the artwork reminder me of The secret of Nimh. Movie of 1982. Loved it as a kid, still love it now.
*reminded
@@jgruyters They both have cuddly critters, and mice wearing clothes (a la Redwall and Nimh) but Bosley's style is more painterly than in Nimh. Bluth's Nimh characters are more flatly rendered because they're animated, and it's not cost effective to spend too much time painting a cel.
@@NightsAroundaTable and it was 1982
@@jgruyters Well... the year doesn't really impact that. It's just a factor of time and money. Check out Bill Plympton's shorts from the same decade. Each of his frames is a lot more worked up. He just had different financial constraints than Bluth who, along with Bakshi, seemed constantly cash-strapped and who regularly cut corners.
Now that computers are involved, you can achieve a more painterly, worked up style in animation through the use of shaders. Klaus is pretty incredible.
@@NightsAroundaTable
True, for me, what stuck in Nimh was the overall feel. I watched this at a very young age, bring from 1982 myself, I was probably around 6 years old and I loved it.
When playing Everdell, espacially the darker cards, I get a bit of a throwback to that time. I love it even more for it.
Ciao! Congrats about this review that I consider Fun!😊
About bang: the same authors made Samurai Sword that it s similar to bang. Instead bandits renegade and sherif there are Ronin, ninja and shogun
The difference is that all player stay on the table til the end of the game cause the match end when one player lose all the honour points (you have life point and also honour points). The winner is the team with the highest number of honour points.
I really recommend this game.
Thanks for the recommendation, Stefano! i had never heard of Samurai Sword.
I just played my first game with my wife and we both enjoyed it very much. It is such a delight to look at it ant the gameplay was rather quick and provided interesting choices. I absolutely agree. This game is fun and I can see us playing it for quite some time and adding it to the rotation.
Concordia is fun for me as well.
i'm with you. i *enjoy* playing Concordia once i'm sitting down in front of it, but it doesn't beckon to me alluringly from the shelf like Everdell does.
Many good games use this "player elimination" method like Terraforming Mars, Imperial Settlers, etc. You are passing because you cant do any more, then waiting everyone else passing to move along. In Everdell its a one step better, because you would only wait for others at the endgame, not in every round (generations in TM).
Yes, and it's handled even better in games like Concordia and Obsession, where the pass/play setup is cyclical rather than linear.
Oh man, video 2 for me. I absolutley love the bit at the end where you talk about a game being "good" vs "fun". I am always down to play fun games, but my wife will only play them if they are good, party games forget about it! I shall continue down the Nights rabbit hole! (see what I did there, heh heh)
Thanks so much, John! i've started a quest to reach 100K subscribers... if you could hit that juicy red Subscribe button for me, it would help a lot!
The very next Find the Fun video, which should be out this Friday, delves further into that "fun" vs "good" delineation. Show it to your wife! i'd love to hear what she has to say.
Love the scales. Tapestry probably meets your venn diagram of fun and good game. Same artist too, your boyfriend.
Weirdly, i didn't care for Bosley's artwork in Tapestry, and i can't put my finger on why? i don't know if he had a different colourist in Everdell or what... but i'm not nearly as smitten by his work in Ducks in a Row or Jurassic Parts. But that mayoral tortoise on the cover of Everdell: Bellfaire? Oh MAN!
@@NightsAroundaTable :) Took me forever (5 minutes) to figure out the real name of "Ducks in a Row"! :) Maybe you're just not in to humans. Don't tell your family. The last part of your comment says it all "oh MAN!"
@@antgerfitz All from memory! (What's it actually called?)
@@NightsAroundaTable Ducks in Tow :)
The seating limitation is not too terrible since it is only a 1-4 player game. If this allowed 5 or 6 players it would be a major problem. Great video btw.
Thanks, Alex. Agree - more than 4 players would make it a real pain. It *just* fits on my standard non-elite dining room table, but we've felt a bit cramped on other tables, like the one in my friends' Toronto condo.
Hope to play Everdell for the first time very soon…
How exciting! i'll be livestreaming a playthru later this week:
nightsaroundatable.com/2021/07/19/16595/
@@NightsAroundaTable I know! I’ve set a reminder! Looking forward to it. :)
During the first kickstarter many of us, myself included, raised the alarm about rolling twigs and were assured that it wasn't going to be a problem, but we were right. During the second kickstarter they replaced the twigs in the reprint with less rolly kind and I bought the add-on of new twigs to replace mine. I thought they were a bit overpriced, but still worth it.
i sprung for the super-deluxo version in the second Kickstarter, so the planed twigs are (not) rolling my way. Thanks for advocating for that!
@@NightsAroundaTable Did you also get the wooden Evertree? It's awesome.
@@knighthawk3749 i didn't! Stopped just short of that. i actually haven't disassembled my cardboard tree since i first bought the game, because i worry about it breaking down. But that wooden tree... mighty temping.
@@NightsAroundaTable One trick you can do that will help. Take some clear glue and brush it along the edges of every piece of the tree. I also recommend you do the same with Pearlbrook board.
@@knighthawk3749 Why glue the Pearlbrook board? Isn't it just a flat board?
Everdell looks amazing. Thank you for sharing this video. I need to take another closer look at this game. :)
People on Reddit were really down on it because... gasp.. luck!!! Obviously no game can be enjoyable if there's a random card deal.
@@NightsAroundaTable Reddit!?? There is no Reddit where we're going... ;)
@@TabletopGamesBlog (that's a relief)
What a cute daddy. Thanks for the review. I'm trying to convince myself to get this solely based on the art, but for some odd reason I feel like once I've set it up and got done with a game, I'd be disappointed. I dunno why.
Very interested on that intersection!
i think i need to start producing Venn charts for games then.
100% agreed with this review !!
Salutations. I do believe that Everdell is in the top 5 best looking board game ever made. Keep an eye open for Cycle of Prophecy for the best Sittings Settings in a board game award. Hehe. Let’s go.
I was all for it untill player elimination, it's hard enough getting together for a board game without someone dropping out early and sitting there. That's not a good feeling.
Right - understood. i only found player elimination to be a problem when players' skills are really mismatched. That's when you get board game newbies charging headlong into fall, and experienced players taking a lot longer to play because they've done a better job of optimizing their turns.
Player elimination is really the wrong term to describe the mechanics of this game. Every player has to use one of 3 actions each turn: 1. Placing a worker, 2. Playing a card, 3. Preparing for season (gathering all of your previously placed workers back to your worker pool, only feasible 3 times during the game). If you have placed all of your workers and can’t play another cards (due to a lack of resources or space), then you have finished the game. Some people need more turns to do so. But that’s not really a player elimination.
@@Ramthul You're correct that it's not player elimination in the strictest sense of the term, but it has the unwanted effects of player elimination: one player sits around doing nothing, while the other players continue to take turns (usually because they've done a better job at playing optimally).
I really like your thoughts about this game :) pretty similar to mine.
Thanks for your videos!
Thanks, Joshua! My pleasure.
I disagree with your assessment of player elimination. One player falls behind is not the same as being "eliminated" from the game.
Those players who finish the last season earlier than others are eliminated from the game.
I find Everdell beautiful to look at on the table, but wow I cannot stand the game itself. Good on all of you who enjoy it - really doesn't work for me. Glad I tried it though.
The game definitely has its detractors! But yeah... hard to fault it for its artwork.
I wouldn't call it player elimination, more like player downtime.
Are you sure you’re playing it correctly? If a player moves into the next season, he doesn’t wait for everyone else to catch up. He plays through summer while everyone else is still in spring. He could be completely finished and twiddling his thumbs at the end of the game while all other players take many more turns. He’s eliminated. There’s nothing for him to do.
He isn't "eliminated", he just finished first. Everyone gets ALL 15 of their worker placements, no matter what. This doesn't mean you lose or win any more or less. If you go for more expensive cards rather than cheap ones, you would expect to have less non-worker turns. Any way you look at it, you are never "eliminated" from taking all of your actions. You are always guaranteed all 15 of your worker placement actions, and you are never held back from taking any other actions. Many, many games share this, where you can take as many turns as you want until you "pass", (Clans of Caledonia, Terra Mystica, etc...), but in those games you get a table-wide reset every round, unlike Everdell. Either way, everyone always gets all 15 worker actions.
@@adameves5970 Looks like you're hellbent bent on arguing this points throughout the comments section. Yes, all players get the same number of worker placements. But in Everdell, one player can get far more individual turns than the other players, and that can lead to an endgame scenario where one player plays for 15-30 minutes longer than others. i've seen it happen in Everdell, but i've never seen it happen in Terra Mystica. As i said in the other comment, if one or more players gets to sit at the table and play a good deal longer than others, the non-playing players have effectively been eliminated. "Don't get to play with the others" = player elimination by any reasonable definition.
I don’t think luck is a con in this game: you have a lot of cards in front of the tree that everyone can access, that combined to your hand is a gigantic pool of chioice.
The number of people who knock this game (but not other games) for it luck is overwhelming. i've only ever felt punished by card draws in maybe 2 games, and i've played it a bunch. Still feels like my fault for losing.
How much luck means “frustration” and how much is necessary for “variability” is of course subjective, and when cards are involved of course the game is not completly deterministic, that would’ve been chess. I like games where luck is involved just a little bit, but there are always actions you can take to mitigate a bad draw, and this game feels to me like i have a lot of choices every time, and it greatly rewards strategy and optimization. Also the interaction, even if indirect, is always present.
@@druidobianco9734 Same. And you can find similar luck-mitigating opportunities in great games like The Voyages of Marco Polo, where you can spend resources to change your dice pips to correct a bad roll.
I still wait for the Kickstarter plus Expansion
🤭
As do i. Which was enough to make me not want to post this video. But my love cannot be denied.
(Which country are you in, btw?)
@@NightsAroundaTable
And right you're.
I'm happy you did
😎
Hope you still going on.
@@NightsAroundaTable
I life in the Netherlands.
@@NightsAroundaTable
Before kickstarters i look at a lot of Englisch and German runntroughs an revieuws.
Because there is so much. And i and my playgroup love quality, exclusivity and origal gameplays.
@@AK-uk5lf Hmm. When do you expect it? It is supposed to be here in Canada before the end of August i think.
A rubiks square??
gett outttttt
These jokes are pearls before swine!
Is Everdell fun? Really.......????? Is the earth round? Do chickens lay eggs? Does the earth revolve around the sun?
Player elemination? There is NO player elimination. If someone ends first, it's not player elimination.
Ha! i'm with you. Player SELF-elimination, maybe. :)
@Jawby It's passing because you simply can't do anything else. And you can't do anything else because you played poorly. And you blame luck because you can't admit that it was your own fault. :)
Dude, using up all your actions quickly is not "player elimination." Wtf
Any game that makes people sit out with nothing to do while the rest of the players continue to make moves constitutes player elimination in my books - even if it's player self-elimination. Let's get mad and swear about it!
Nice again! Are you thinking of making a negative review maybe? Maybe surprise negative? :)
Give this one a shot!
ruclips.net/video/GWkVr0i_l9w/видео.html
I must be the only gamer that thinks metal coins are highly overrated.
What's with the eyelids?!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthelasma
So my girlfriend and I just played it blind. We never heard of it before she picked it up randomly at a board game cafe. We also didn't really like it. There wasn't much wrong with the game but it's just....it felt a too restrictive. Not a lot of resources to build anything in your hands. No way to develop any strategy before your essentially forced to discard them just for a pittance of resources. We also felt that it had a very slow start/middle with a more engaging amount of activity in the end, from only one person as the other is finished already.
I've been checking other reviews after I got home curious if we played it wrong, or if there was something we didn't get. It seems that we played it correctly but for some reason we are the only ones who didn't love it. it seems that everyone loves this game but us and I'm not sure why.
Is there something we missed? is it just not our style? did we play it wrong?
Of course, you like what you like, and you’re under no obligation to enjoy a single thing merely because somebody else does. Totally fine!
But in defence of the game: one thing i like about it is how insanely tight that first season is. You look at the reward, which is activating “all” your green buildings, and you think “how am i supposed to get ANY green buildings??” But i figure it’s in the game, so it must be possible... r-right?
And here’s the thing: it IS possible! Very possible! And so incredibly rewarding when you pull it off.
The things you found hard about the game ARE hard, but they are fair, and surmountable. And in my experience, the lopsided ending doesn’t happen often enough for it to be a deal-breaker. Usually, players finish within a few turns of each other, especially when they are comparably skilled.
Man... having two weird things so obvious on your face, I bet makes a lot of non blind people ask you about them. You probably are bored as shit answering their question. I mean after the first 10.000 people, this kind of boredom could bring tears. Now...seeing me understand you this much, having so much connection (I love Everdell too), I hope you should feel a lot less annoyed when I ask this: man, what are those things near your eyes? Please don't give me the joke you probably use. Give me the truth. Ok give me the joke also, I want to know them both!
They’re no joke - i hate ‘em. The nicest thing anyone’s ever said about them is that they look like dragon scales. They’re called xanthelasma.Right now i’m waffling between getting them surgically removed (i have an appointment on Monday) and doing a dodgy home chemical peel that has worked well for some people. But i don’t wanna be too reckless, you know? Messing around so close to my precious eyeballs?
@@NightsAroundaTable I would say get them surgically removed. I mean they don't make you look bad, I bet you just have to explain a lot. I know since I once broke my hand and I had to repeat the story to every person I met for a month. And I thought that was thougher than the pain of the broken hand. :))
@@MihaiMihai-fw7do It's a bit tricky because of the on-camera stuff. They date all the way back to 2005, when i was on camera at YTV doing Nintendo and Xbox promos... i didn't get them removed then, because i couldn't go on camera if my eyelids were gored. Same situation now: i worry about recovery time in a very busy period when i have a lot of stuff to shoot, including pickups where my face needs to match other segments in the video, you know?
Wait, is the artistic designer really your boyfriend / husband / partner? I'm not sure if that was a fan-boy joke or not. Because if he is, wouldn't that significantly bias your liking (and selling) of this game?
Despite us both being married to our wives, Bosley is my absolutely unwilling Internet boyfriend, and the sooner he realizes that, the happier we’ll be together - with him drawing cuddly animals for me until we grow old and die. CALL ME, ANDREW! *HEARTS*
Haha, ok, I see :-D it all makes sense now. PS: just ordered the game, you convinced me.
Beautiful artwork, but extremely clunky in regard to strategy. Too much random draws. The worker placement function doesn't really matter as the randomness of cards is far more important. There are also very few ways to interact. If your starting hand is no good, you're stuck. Get lousy hands or bad draws and there's no fixing it.
Unbalanced cards, a lot of luck in the draw, forced combos. Little to no interaction. No one used other peoples actions cause there were too many cards to keep an eye on.
I think there is a real issue with being able to read the cards, there is a lot of important tiny text that is difficult to read. Where the tree is impressive visually it actually works against trying to read the cards in play (and is very inefficient). I feel that the way the seasons work makes the game a bit unbalanced, allowing the workers to sit in and block key spots for way too long. The randomness of the cards can have a huge impact on gameplay, if you draw a bad hand in startup you may have a hard time being competitive (if you draw awesome you can have a huge advantage). If a player finishes at the end of the last season early it can be a long wait before the game actually ends.
To make it worse, some cards add annoying take-that effects. I lost because of one of them, as the card (worth negative points) was played in an opponent's tableau and it took my last available building spot. Being artificially limited to 15 cards and not being able to discard from your tableau even at a cost, except with some rare card effect, is a flaw in itself. Luck of the draw is huge, with card combos and public goals depending on specific cards.
Hard pass.
There are tons of mitigating factors to counter each of your criticisms. i won't list them all, but there are places to ditch your cards, and ways to draw new ones. There are cards that don't take up room in your tableau, and others that destroy or remove cards to make more room. There are ways to protect yourself from the skunk. i've played lots of games, and have only felt hampered by the luck of the draw in one of them. It's very much a game of opportunism and making your own luck.