Kronologic: Paris 1920 - Board Game Review

[Music] welcome to allies or enemies I'm Jess and I am Sean and today we are talking about chronologic Paris 1920 and this copy was provided for review but the thoughts in this video are all our own and chronologic Paris 1920 is designed by Fabian Grell and yoanne Le chronologic is a competitive mystery solving game for one to four players it takes place in the Parisian Opera and you are racing to gather Clues and solve the mystery the fastest but before we get too into it let's look at how it plays at the start of the game you first choose one of the three different scenario boxes and then one of the five investigations from that box then you lay out the character time and room cards and hand each player a sheet a screen and a pen and you're ready to solve the case on their turn the lead investigator will choose either a character or a time and then Place One location card under their chosen card being careful not to reveal that card until it's in place this will reveal two bits of information the green box you share with all players and the white box you keep to yourself this info will all have to do with who was where and when and then everyone makes notes of what they've learned and the next player becomes the lead investigator if anyone thinks they have the answer at any time they announce that they think they've solved the case if they're wrong they're eliminated and the rest of the players continue trying to complete the puzzle if they're right they win and are Hil as the world's greatest investigator chronologic is designed by the same people who did touring Machin so if you're not familiar with turing machine it's a fairly complicated puzzle solving game where you're trying to use as few Clues as possible to try and figure out a code and this one is about solving a mystery using people who are moving around so I think it's a lot more thematic but you can see how it's done by the same designers yeah you can you can definitely see a little bit of shared DNA there um like you said tur machine is quite a bit heavier it's quite a bit more complicated and this is a little bit more accessible and I love turing machine I adore that game I play it all the time on BGA I know you're not as big of a fan of turning machine but I found that chronologic is something that I think we can kind of meet in the middle on yeah I like the Thematic elements I like the mystery solving and it does remind me of clue a lot of people grew up playing clue and I think it's going to be an obvious comparison it is different though there aren't weapons and in chronologic you're really trying trying to trace the movement of the people who are constantly having to shift rooms and figure out who's where when and that is kind of the name of the game here is you are tracking all of these different suspects and they always have to move every hour and they always have to be somewhere on the map and so you're just trying to figure out where they are and where they're going and I like that there are three different boxes in this and each one has kind of a different mystery so they're taking that like core puzzle which is a pretty simple puzzle where you're just saying you know who was or how many people were in this room at this hour or how many times has this person been in this room and all three of the boxes use that same basic system but they all play a little bit different yeah so the starting box is trying to figure out who poisons the detective so you're trying to figure out who is alone with the detective which I think is the simplest premise another one is about figuring out who has stolen like the jewels so you're trying to trace the jewels from like one place to see who was alone with them but it might get passed off to other people and then there's another one that is the Phantom of the Opera and so that is all about figuring out who is never with anybody else who's kind of sneaking around in the shadows and so it's kind of subtle differences between the three but they do feel pretty different yeah and they there are different difficulties for each of the boxes as well so within each of those Mysteries there are five different difficulties and I think the biggest change is what information you get at the beginning because for the harder ones you only know about like half of the suspects and not knowing where the other half are definitely means you need to figure out more clues before you have any idea of what's happening it really does feel different at those different player counts cuz at two players you're getting that secret little bit of information every second turn so there's always that one bit of information everyone gets that one bit of information that only the like current detective or whatever it's called gets and it feels like it maybe moves a little bit too quick at two players yeah I do like at more players you're getting fewer Clues it makes the game last longer and it is trickier to piece it together and to really decide whether to get new information or to go back and revisit so you have the same information as a clue that somebody already looked at yeah that definitely is a tricky thing because you think like that person definitely got like the exact bit of information that I think we all need but I feel like it's cheesy to go and just ask the exact same question that they just asked so I want to try and find it out another way yeah I feel like you're much more into figuring out what questions people are asking and why whereas I'm just really looking at the information I have and what I want I'm doing less of the metag game but I think this works for either type of player it comes with 15 cases and I would say at two players each case takes us maybe like 15 minutes whereas at four takes about double that it felt of more of an experience at four players yeah it does and it it feels more like stressful about when am I going to actually try and solve the clue as well two players we actually invented a rule because it feels a little bit anticlimactic when somebody solves the puzzle and then it's just like oh I guess I won if they're wrong so we've got if they solve the puzzle you've got as many turns as there are stars for that puzzle so if it's like a five difficult puzzle and someone else gets it wrong you've got five more turns to get it right or else you also lose yeah because it is a race to solve it first so you are motivated to guess even if you're not 100% sure but absolutely at two players it was just kind of like well I guess I win there is also a solo mode in this and that is just a kind of how quickly can you solve the puzzle and there are a few different little rules in there but it doesn't change it very much at all it's just kind of a a bit of a kind of speed solving thing so in terms of components I think everything looks really good I do like the overall system of using the card and then like the thing that goes on top of it with the windows when we first saw that we thought we might accidentally get like secret information but it's actually really intuitive even when we played with new people Everyone automatically like just did it like upside down didn't see anything else and then those windows gave you exactly what information you need and pretty clearly too of like okay this is what you're telling people and this is for you alone yeah I didn't have any problem with that at all and I definitely did think oh I'm going to accidentally look at this for sure and it has not happened once in I don't know what we've played like 10 of the 15 cases now and it hasn't happened yet so I don't think it's going to happen I also really like the little boxes that each of the cases come in so they've got these little kind of foldy Tuck boxes that have the specific cards that you need for that case and then the little booklet for each case and I think those work really well and they just they look really nice yeah and there are plenty of sheets too there's probably like about double is what you would need which is nice meaning you can like play through it again I think one of the tricky though is on the sheets and on the map is just the symbol for the different locations and maybe it's just us but we didn't really find them intuitive anytime someone said like the grand Gallery we're like okay which one's the grand Gallery I do wish the grand gallery and the words for the locations were written on either like the big map on the sheets yeah that would probably be helpful cuz I think half of them like we're good with dancing music and Stage I don't even know what the other three are called and the symbols don't really connect to them in my mind so yeah every single time somebody says one of those three the grand foyer were like uh which symbol is that okay it's the kind of Housey thing so that could possibly be something that trips other folks up or maybe you just think my Housey thing is kind of like foyer and then you won't have a problem with it and it is written on the card as well so like you definitely can figure out which one it is and otherwise I think like the artwork is pretty solid for the different characters there's also a really nice screen that you put in front it maybe isn't quite tall enough I feel like I can see over but maybe that's just cuz I'm Too Tall but um but that does give you a little bit of an overview of everything so just to remind you what you can do there are not a lot of rules here to remember but it does remind you the other thing that I just a tiny nitpick is I hate the little golf pencil I just always want pencils to have Erasers on them but it doesn't matter you've got pencils in your house they've got Erasers on them if you don't like the golf pencils you don't need to use them between the cases because there's the three different types each of those do all feel different and even within the different difficulties it actually does feel surprisingly different case toase and the length of time will just totally vary it will depend on how many players you're playing with the complexity of the case and like just your general gaming group and at first I definitely thought that you could only play through each one of these once and then you would kind of know forever who what the solution was for each one of these different crimes but I'm really not so sure about that because each of these boxes has five different solutions and I I don't know maybe there's somebody there who's going to memorize each one of those Solutions and once they've done they just going to know that forever but if if I were to play play this again like 2 months later there's no way I would remember which one of those cases was which one of those cases and who was moving where or that I would ask the same questions or any of that stuff so I do think it probably has a bit more replayability than one might imagine but it is going to depend on who you are I played a lot of hockey my short-term memory is not terrific some other folks might be able to remember a little bit better yeah and you're right probably time does help so you wouldn't like solve it and then 2 hours later go to play the same case again maybe you could but other people would probably need like a couple months before trying again and then they wouldn't know but I kind of think of it a little bit like those escape room boxes where you can play through it once um but then you're not like destroying any parts although I I do think this is more replayable again given some time than those I think this game is for people who like puzzle solving games so if you liked turing machine I do think you would still like this but even if you didn't like turing machine I think this may open it up to a bigger audience yeah this is as we said this is definitely a lot lighter than turing machine but it does have that little like puzzly puzzle solving fix in there even though it is a little bit of a simpler system also if you grew up loving clue this might be a fit because it does kind of scratch that same itch like I would still play clue today I played Simpsons clue so many times the clue to the master clue that is that was one of my all-time favorite games of my childhood that's probably one of the things that kind of made me connect with this one as well yeah I think this would also appeal to people who like escape room puzzles because it is very much trying to figure out a puzzle but it is competitive it is a race to try and figure it out first so if you don't like working in a team this gives you the option to be the fastest and the the best solver but on the other side of that I do think for some folks it's going to be a little bit stressful because you may feel like oh if I just had two or three more turns I would have got to solve that puzzle and like I really feel like I want to solve that puzzle so it can be a little bit frustrating when somebody is when somebody is always solving that Puzzle first and you're just like oh one more turn and I would have got that but it is also like it's kind of a good kind of stress but for some folks that may be a little bit of a point of frustration the other caveat is that it plays quite quickly at two players so if you want the most out of the game then I would say it works better for three or four players but I was really interested in it and I'm interested to see what they do for the two followup ones that play take place in like 1450 and 2500 especially that 2500 one I really want to see some future stuff and you know what this is going to surprise anyone who watches this channel but I would love to see one with Dinosaurs and that is it have you played chronologic what did you think about it what are some other cool puzzle games that you might suggest thank you so much for watching please let us know in the comments what games you would suggest and as usual please like subscribe and hopefully we'll see you next time for another game [Music]