Not OP: I played it with my girlfriend exclusively so far, so I only have 2P experience. The game perfectly introduces new mechanics over time. You start with the basics - you only score with quests (special tiles that you have to add regular tiles to, to finish them) and your biggest city/forest/field/river/railway, that’s it for the first game. You’ll most likely score less than 100 points in the first few games, but you’ll still get “progression points” that’ll unlock new mechanics after your 2nd or 3rd game.

These mechanics allow you to score progressively more points and make the game more complicated as you go on. We got a new mechanic from the progression track or the challenge cards (which you’ll unlock with the track) pretty much every round. These new mechanics are usually a new special tile with extra scoring opportunities (which also means you’ll be able to place more tiles as you go on).

We finished the progression track and almost all challenges after 14 rounds I think. After that you can play for highscores or reset the game and start over from the beginning. This also leads to one of the best features: the included insert is beautifully organized. You have a slot for the quest tiles, for the regular and special tiles (with room to spare for the new tiles you’ll unlock), the quest markers, all the little tokens you get, the reward boxes and the tracking/scoring sheets. The reward boxes have a card that tells you what belongs into it if you want to reset the game. It is just so well thought through. It takes only 2 mins to set up (you have to shuffle all the tiles, sorting the quest markers and placing all the challenge cards so you remember them is optional but doesn’t take long) and 5 mins max to put away.

I would recommend playing with one group/partner until you are finished with the progression track. Sorting out all the tokens/tiles/challenges you have unlocked with one group but not the other is possible but would add considerably to the setup or put away time.

I can wholeheartedly recommend it, maybe with the caveat that you should make sure that each player draws their own tile and has the option to make placement decisions on their own (they even say so in the rules that the drawing player has the final say). For us it became a really cooperative experience and we actively thought through our options. It is one of the few games I can play several rounds after another because it is fast enough for the “one more round” effect, but strategic enough to keep me thinking.