This is a long haul, forty five to sixty minutes per player is basically accurate in my experience, which means a four player game is an entire evening’s commitment and not something I reach for on a weeknight. Two player works fine, honestly better than fine, since the downtime between turns drops enough that it stops feeling like homework, but I’ll admit the game truly shows its teeth solo, where you’re racing your own conservation score against a shrinking deck with no one else’s plan to react to.

The card engine is the whole draw and the whole friction point at once. So many cards, so many interlocking triggers, this action fires that action which triggers a third, and the bookkeeping load is real, I still catch myself double checking a chain of effects on later plays. The upside is the decision space genuinely rewards forward planning without punishing you for adapting when the market doesn’t deal what you wanted. I’ve bumped my own rating up over repeated plays specifically because of the solo mode, which I didn’t expect to prefer over the multiplayer version going in.

Component quality earns its reputation, but I’ll side with the reviewers who find the sponsor and animal art inconsistent card to card, some genuinely gorgeous, others flat and a little too close to trading card filler for a game at this price point. And the theme, however pretty, is doing less mechanical work than it looks like it’s doing, you’re building an engine that happens to be zoo shaped rather than a game about actual conservation tradeoffs. Doesn’t stop me from reaching for it. Just don’t go in expecting Wingspan’s gentleness, this is a heavier, longer, hungrier animal than that.