Love Letter Kanai Factory Limited Edition Review

Once upon a time there was a little card game called Love Letter. It wasn’t the prettiest card game in all the land, but it had the kind of comely beauty that comes with a middling price range: simplistic portraits of castle members roughly coloured-in on each card.

The aim of the game was to get a love letter to the beautiful Princess by passing it around her servants, working it closer to the top. This involved valiantly drawing a card from the deck of 16 – each card depicting a member of the Princess’ castle, from the lowly Soldier all the way up to the Princess herself – and either discarding it or the card currently in your hand.

For each card also had a rank – from one to eight – and the higher the number the closer said servant was to the Princess, thus providing the best chance for your letter to reach the Princess before the opposition’s. The player with the highest number when all of the cards were drawn then won the round, with a game completed when a player won four rounds.

But fear not that it was so simple, as peril awaited the unlucky lovers. For you see, each card also contained a special power, unlocked when that card was discarded. The brave Knight allowed the user to compare hands with another player, with the lowest ranked player then out of the game, while the grand General allowed you to change hands with another player. Love Letters then was a delicate balancing act, weighing the cost of a high ranked card against its usefulness in defeating other cards.

Yet, like all great tales, Love Letter had its own dark secret. Advertised for two to four players, with the minimum amount a round could be over in one or two hands, sometimes the game was over on the first card. Likewise, one of the higher card’s powers was to knock the holder out of the round if their total came to over 12, common in a three or four player game, a certainty if there was only two of you. It all came down to luck of the draw.

And that was its greatest problem. For all of Love Letter’s attempts to add strategy – with the special powers moving it beyond finding the highest card – it always came down to luck. Most of the powers were fairly useless; with such short rounds there was never a need to see other players’ cards, and while it was nice to think tactically and bluff your opponents, it all ends so quickly that it’s almost pointless. Thus ends the tale of the Love Letter.

VERDICT: Play this game once and you have seen all there is to see. When a regular pack of cards can provide so many different games, paying for 16 cards that, despite pretensions of skill, rely solely on luck grates just a little. You may get some enjoyment out of it, but I highly doubt the “hours of fun” promised on the box.