Splendor - The Cities (DLC)

Splendor is a engine-building card game at its core: you collect gem tokens, spend them to buy development cards, and those cards generate permanent gem income that lets you snowball into pricier purchases. The Cities DLC layers a secondary goal system on top of the base game, replacing the standard Noble tiles with City tiles that require you to hit specific combinations of card colors and prestige points simultaneously. It sounds minor, but it meaningfully shifts how you prioritize your build order, since racing for a particular City can pay off faster than chasing fifteen prestige points the old way. For anyone unfamiliar with the base game: Splendor is not a heavy strategy title. Sessions run fifteen to thirty minutes, the rules fit on a single page, and the decision space is deliberately narrow. You are choosing between reserving a card, taking two or three gem tokens, or buying something from the tableau. That simplicity is the design's strength, not a flaw. The Cities variant adds one more axis of evaluation per turn without bloating the ruleset, and for players who have worn out the base game, that is exactly the kind of incremental depth that justifies a DLC purchase. The digital adaptation itself is serviceable but unambitious. The AI opponents are competent at the easy and medium tiers, but they do not adapt their strategy based on which City is available, which means experienced players will exploit that blindspot repeatedly. The UI is clean and functional, tutorials exist and cover the new rules clearly, and online multiplayer is available if you want to play against humans instead of predictable bots. The mod ecosystem is essentially nonexistent, so what you see is what you get with no community content extending longevity. The Mixed review score on Steam is fair. Long-time Splendor fans who want a digital Cities experience get exactly that, but the port does not punch above its weight. Animations are slow and cannot be skipped on every screen, the interface feels dated, and the AI shortcomings become obvious once you understand the City tile mechanics. If you own a physical copy of the board game, you are probably better served playing it in person. The digital version earns its place primarily for solo sessions, remote play with friends, or quick lunchbreak games where setup time matters. From a pure decision-depth standpoint, the Cities variant is the most interesting ruleset Splendor offers. It forces you to evaluate not just your own build but which of the three available City tiles your opponents are targeting, adding a light reads-and-blocks layer that the base game lacks. That said, Splendor with any expansion is still a light casual strategy game, not a grand-strategy title. Manage expectations, go in knowing the AI has a ceiling, and you will find a competent digital conversion of a genuinely clever board game.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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