CATAN - Console Edition Reviews

CATAN - Console Edition: A review

Let me preface my review by saying that I am a huge CATAN fan. I've played the board game since the 90s and regularly play in tournaments, also on national level. You can imagine that I was pretty excited being able to play CATAN on the Xbox.

After spending ~25 hours playing the Console Edition, I can safely say that this game is more enjoyable for casual players that want to kill 30 minutes; "professional" players that want to play regularly should choose other options. But more details below!

Graphics
From a graphics perspective, the game is nice to look at. The board tiles are nicely animated and clearly distinguishable, the waves surrounding the island calmly reach the shores, and so on. Animations are smooth and there are no noticeable glitches or graphical bugs.
However, there is a lot of missed potential when it comes to graphics. The most annoying issue may occur when rolling dice: As the dice as always rolled over the playing area, they will land on top of the board tiles. When the dice fall e.g. on forest tiles, they partly disappear below the tree tops, so that it's impossible to identify which number has been rolled before the game moves the dice to the side of the board.
The camera can't be moved freely, but is limited to certain zoom levels and angles. Even with the smallest zoom and the widest angle, a player's hand cards will cover parts of the board; some harbours are only visible when the hand cards are not shown.
There's also very limited variety regarding board design: Different seasonal themes (winter/fall/spring) are only available as paid DLC; there is no other variation of tile design. There is also no variety regarding the game pieces: The board game either comes with wood or plastic pieces and even offers e.g. viking-themed pieces as an add-on; none of this is available in the video game.

Graphics: 2/5

Sound
The sound is fitting to a board game: Not too spectacular, but ok as background noise while you're focusing on the game. Over time, it gets repetitive, but that won't bother those who like to play only one or two matches at a time.

Sound: 3/5

Gameplay
While the core mechanics capture the board game well, there are many flaws that make the gaming experience less enjoyable, some even limit player's choices compared to the board game.
As standard setting for multiplayer games, the trading and build phases are separated, i.e. players need to make all their trades first before they are allowed to build or buy anything. Although this was indeed a rule when the board game released, it has been dropped since. It is per se a nice feature to have as an option, but having it as standard setting seems strange.
When resources are stolen by the robber, the game sometimes displays which resources where taken. Although this doesn't seem like much, it might give players an unfair advantage.
Trading is another mess: When a trade is initiated, one needs to wait for all players to reply; there's no way to cancel the trade or accept an offer before all replies are received. A player can make counter offers, but there's no option to make a wildcard trade, i.e. offering or requesting a resource and waiting for trading offers from other players.

Other that those obvious or not-so-obvious flaws, there is a lot of missed potential: In multiplayer for example, there is no way to interact with the other players, be it by voice / text chatting or sending emojis. There is also no way to kick or block unwanted players. Additional game modes like Cities & Knights have to be purchased as DLC, the very popular Seafarers expension is not available at all (yet, at least). Other variants such as 5- to 6-player games or even 2-player games do no exist either. Similarly, there are no statistics - the board game of course doesn't have statistics either, but it would be a nice addition on par with other digital CATAN games on the market.

Gameplay: 2/5

Achievements
All of the achievements can be obtained by regular play, with some of them requiring a certain amount of luck. There are also some somewhat grindy achievements that require you to e.g. build 50 settlements or 200 roads, which could take dozens of games to achieve. There are no creative achievements requiring you to do something out of the ordinary. Luckily, all achievements can be achieved in local games, so one can simply create games with four local players and 'create' the winning conditions.

Achievements: 3/5


To sum it up, the game is an ok adaptation of the classic board game, but falls short in various ways, such as graphics and gameplay issues and lots of missed potential. If you own an iOS or Android mobile phone, I recommend you get one of the various CATAN games available there; those might have their own issues, but offer a lot more options and possibilities than the Console Edition.

Graphics (20%): 2/5
Sound (10%): 3/5
Gameplay (50%): 2/5
Achievements (20%): 3/5
Overall: 2/5