Azul: Queen's Garden (2021)

“Whilst Azul: Queen's Garden is a very different prospect to the previous iterations of Azul, it most certainly has a home with fans of slightly heavier games. If you like the beautiful visual style of Azul, but found the decisions to be a bit on the light side, then Azul: Queen's Garden is going to be well worth a look.”

Rahdo considers Azul: Queen's Garden to be the best Azul game ever, particularly appreciating its blend of Azul's signature tile drafting with mechanics similar to Castles of Burgundy, resulting in a fantastic and more forgiving gameplay experience.

The reviewers expressed enthusiastic praise for "Azul: Queen's Garden," highlighting it as a challenging and enjoyable experience that offers a fresh take on the Azul series while still retaining its core appeal. They recommend it for enthusiast gamers, with one reviewer eager to purchase the game.

The reviewer expressed a strong preference for "Azul: Queen's Garden" over the original Azul, finding its gameplay more intuitive and considering it a good version of the game.

“However, the difficulty hits just the right spot where you feel the challenge but also want to figure it out. So, although Azul: Queen’s Garden has lost some component elegance of its predecessor, it is a more than a worthy follow-up.”

“That gripe aside, Queen's Garden is a great addition to the Azul range of abstract strategy games.”

“Azul: Queen's Garden offers a beautiful and rewarding tableau-building experience with increased strategic depth, making it enjoyable for players who appreciate a more complex and 'thinky' game, even if the rules can be challenging to learn initially.”

The reviewer found Azul: Queen's Garden to be a more advanced and complicated spatial tiling puzzle than its predecessors, offering a greater challenge and satisfying gameplay despite some potentially punishing penalties and difficulties in distinguishing certain tiles. The game retains the series' visual appeal and excellent components.

The reviewer praises Azul: Queen's Garden for its beautiful components, rewarding scoring system, and engaging tile-picking decisions, finding the puzzle enjoyable to solve. However, they criticize the tile payment and placement rules as overly complicated and annoying, which can slow down the game's flow.

“The Tabletop Crier found Azul: Queen's Garden to be a challenging puzzle with pleasing aesthetics, despite some inconsistencies in component quality and the difficulty of adapting to strategic setbacks.”

Azul: Queen's Garden offers a more advanced and challenging spatial tiling puzzle with high-quality components and visual appeal, though its increased complexity can make tracking difficult and lead to steep penalties for missteps.

The reviewer found the scoring and component quality of Azul: Queen's Garden to be rewarding and visually appealing. However, they felt that the complex system for paying and placing tiles was often annoying, making the game harder to teach and less satisfying overall.

Tom Vasel found Azul: Queen's Garden to be the most complex and divergent entry in the Azul series, with a less intuitive gameplay flow and some component issues, ultimately concluding it was too 'thinky' for its payoff.

Tom Vasel found Azul: Queen's Garden to be a heavier and more involved entry in the Azul series, with some component issues and a clunkier teaching experience that made it a "weird intersection" for his personal preference, despite acknowledging its appeal to those seeking a deeper puzzle.

“I am unlikely to play this game again because it is just so heavy and often frustrating, without ever feeling as rewarding as other heavy games I enjoy.”