The game is boring. After about 3 hours, each "turn" consists of taking one of three actions: Put a token in, try to make tokens, or pass. Complexity is added by having to make this choice for each family member.
As a "board game", it fails. I would never play this with any of the people I board game with. It has the thematic elements of a eurogame, with the random luck of an ameritrash. Basically, they combined the least successful facets of each style of board game into one product that would never come down from my shelf. But that's being generous, because the only thing that makes this a board game is the artistic style. If I were to compare its mechanics to actual board games, I would list games like Monopoly or Snakes & Ladders, as opposed to Battlestar Galactica or Ticket to Ride.
Incidentally, if you are interested in 7 Grand Steps for its board game comparison, Steam is offering Ticket to Ride for about a third of the price, and it goes on sale every few months.
In terms of the unique stories it is trying to weave, it fails. I was unable to grow attached to any character (except for one which failed spectacularly, and only because the failure was funny). Their fates were mostly out of my hands, and in the hands of the random tokens I was stuffing into the appropriate slots. The choose-your-own-adventure segments often aren't - the random ones you get have only one option, based off of the pre-defined personalities you select when your character "comes of age". The others (the ones you get as a reward for collecting the clay discs on the board) are every bit as intuitive and logic-based as they were in Space Rangers 2, but a lot less interesting.
Incidentally, if you're interested in 7 Grand Steps because it promises neat choose-your-own adventure, Steam is offering The Walking Dead for just $10 more, and it goes on sale every few months.
As a family simulator, it utterly fails. Members of your dynasty don't actually interact with eachother (at least not in any way that is either interesting). Instead, your children either form close bonds if you make them all do the same thing, or form rivalries if you make them do different things. For people who haven't played yet, I'll remind you that making them all do the same thing means you either give them all a token, tell them all to make a token, or make them do nothing. Once a child "comes of age", their parents disappear entirely, and their siblings take on an entirely peripheral view (most of them also disappear, except for those who either adored or hated you as a child). I kept thinking about how much I would rather play Crusader Kings the entire time.
Incidentally, if you're interested in 7 Grand Steps because it markets itself as having Family Drama/Strategy, Steam is offering Crusader Kings II. It does cost more ($40 instead of $15), but it goes on sale every few months.
The biggest flaw with 7 Grand Steps is that it appears to be loaded with feature creep, but also paradoxically has almost no actual features. More effort seems to have gone into describing how cool 7GS is then in actually making it so. I alt-tabbed out of the screen at one point and discovered that even its executable was a description of the features the game is supposed to have, like a twisted mockery of its own failure to deliver. It also bodes ill that the game is described (even in its Steam folder) as "Step 1", implying that future installments (possibly 6 of them) were already planned before release.
I like my current system, so I'll truncate it with some of the other marketing bullets on the Steam page.
If you're interested in 7GS because it offers "Grand Legends", GoG is offering King of Dragon pass for about a third of the price.
If you're interested in 7GS because it offers "Ruling Games - City Administration, Warring Kingdoms, Imperial Senate", Steam is offering Rome: Total War for two thirds of the price. Get the entire collection for $3 less than 7GS.
The top and bottom bullets "Core Mechanic" and "The Challenges of an Age" don't actually make any sense when taken out of context. If you try too hard to imagine what they mean, you'll probably be wrong.
Apparently the game does change a bit once you're further in, and you get menus for kingdom management and the like. I spent about 3 hours over two sittings, and haven't found them. According to the developers, a game lasts for about 15-20 hours. The thought of spending another 17 hours playing this game makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry myself to sleep. But I don't have to. Because it's basically a less ambitious, less toiled-over version of the family mechanics in CKII dragged along by a push-your-luck minigame, so I can just go play that instead!
I honestly feel dumb for buying 7GS. It was early in the morning, and the internet told me it was good.
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Topic: 7 Grand Steps - A Generational Strategy Game (Read 4890 times)