I think this must have taken a fair bit of balancing to get the rounds, cards and number of voter cards right. Those gamers who cannot abide memory games, to which club I belong, will be pleased to know Banana Republic is not too onerous in this respect. You can get by through remembering the seven voters and the important stacks which you are contesting. If that gets too much, and it can, try the variant of looking at a stack before you lay a card. This is a subtle change, but seems to pull it gently back from the memory game black hole.
Banana Republic is a very good little game.
It takes only about twenty minutes to play, manages to be different each time with rewarding tactics and presents what could be a tricky memory system as one that even I can handle, on a good day. It seems to work well with any number of players from three to five, but the more the better. No-one could argue that it represents a great leap in design but what it offers is clever, engaging and thematically sound. I feel, like Koalition, it will get played a number of times and is certainly one of the better games to appear at Essen. Mike Siggins On to the review of Hacker or back to the review of Star Fleet Missions .