Machi Koro (regular and Legacy) is a dice game. A pool of available cards is placed in the center of the table, each card representing a structure players can build in their own personal city. Each structure has a number from 1 to 12, corresponding to a number that can be rolled on one or two dice. On your turn, you roll and buildings generate money (and other things) according to the result -- which you then use to buy buildings for your infrastructure. Some buildings generate only on your turn, when you roll their number. Others generate resources for you on every turn, even when an opponent rolls the number. Still others "attack" your opponents, making them pay you on their turn when they roll the number. The gold you accumulate lets you buy more buildings, expand your city, and ultimately reach the victory conditions for the given game.
Machi Koro Legacy turns this experience into a 10-game campaign with a light touch of a story. I won't spoil it for those who might play it; suffice it to say it has a Japanese fairy tale quality to it. It's also completely linear -- the players make no choices that affect the direction of the story as it unfolds in 10 chapters. I wouldn't automatically say this is a negative for the game, though. Indeed, many legacy games do not branch their narratives in meaningful ways. (And some legacy games -- such as Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 -- catch you up in the twists and turns of the story even though you're not directly controlling them.)
Still, the story of Machi Koro Legacy is so perfunctory as to be forgettable. It's basically just fluff to loosely justify why this "Machi Koro with an expansion or two of extra mechanics" is doled out to you slowly rather than immediately when you open the box. There aren't many true surprises; things revealed in early games generally telegraph (quite loudly) the sorts of elements that will be added in later games.
Then again, involved stories aren't usually required for my gaming group to embrace a board game. Compelling mechanics are usually enough for us, and unless the flavorful terms are rock-solid fits, we'll overlook them. So Machi Koro Legacy's simple story wasn't really a big concern for any of us.
The balance issues were. Two keys ones were really a drag on the experience. First was the inherent advantage of going first in the game -- and the fact that the winner of the previous game was always the one to go first in the next game. First to roll means first to buy. First to buy gives you the first choice of the best thing to buy -- and with 5 copies of each building available, they do not divide evenly. Ultimately, at the end of the game, going first gives you the first chance to win -- because the game ends immediately when someone reaches the victory condition. During multiple games of our campaign, two or three players would be at a point where they would win the game on their next turn... but the player going first in the round would win that race simply because they took the first turn of the game.
The second problem was one particular building that didn't seem fairly balanced to the rest. (The Furniture Factory, for those who want the specifics.) The building was easy to build a combo for at the very start of the game, was more likely to be rolled on the dice than other powerful buildings, was too cheap for what it did, and often generated twice as much money as the next most potent option. The vast majority of our games were won by the player who got the most Furniture Factories. (And we couldn't just "buy them all up" to counter this strategy, because see above: there are 5 of them, so they don't divide evenly among the players.)
So ultimately, whatever novelties Machi Koro Legacy had to reveal over its 10-game campaign were ultimately countered by a few imbalanced elements. It kind of all zeroed out, leaving... something I'd give about the same marks as regular Machi Koro. Which is to say, I'd give it about a C+. (Maaaaybe a B-? I did, after all, complete 10 games of it.) I could see this potentially being a game that might ease someone into the experience of legacy games for the first time. On the other hand, there are far better examples that would do a better job of convincing someone legacy games are a cool thing worth experiencing.
Before I sign off, I should probably address the fact that one of the designers of this game, JR Honeycutt, has been accused of sexual abuse. Very recently (within the last week), and very credibly -- the accusations have clearly comported enough with Honeycutt's demeanor that nearly every person and company who has worked with him has issued a public statement cutting ties. Rob Daviau, Legacy game designer extraordinaire and co-designer of this game, has acknowledged that Honeycutt does receive residuals from the sale of Machi Koro Legacy -- but he has also pledged to donate money from his residuals on the game to a charity that helps those who experience abuse. My group played this game before these allegations had become known; our decision on a purchase had already been made. But this may be information you want to consider before purchasing a copy yourself.
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