Super Gamers Assemble for Tokyo Sidekick!

If you’re just teeming with power, speed, and concentration and you’re not sure how to let it out, then it might be time for you to start teaming up with a super sidekick and kick some serious butt! Join forces with other heroes and their sidekicks to prevent incidents and take down Villains, Supervillains, and of course the malicious, malevolent Menace. Do you have what it takes to save Tokyo from utter destruction? Let’s find out!

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What Is It?

A cooperative game for 2-4 players where each player controls 1 Superhero and 1 Sidekick. Players must move around the board as quickly as they can and work together to prevent incidents and defeat the adversaries overtaking the city. Throughout the game players will build up decks with power, speed, and concentration, and upgrade their abilities to become an even stronger team! Players win by defeating the the Menace, but can lose if too many incidents occur, or if they take too much damage.

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Who Is It For?

Players who like a good superhero theme will definitely be drawn to this, as the theme shines through. Fans of cooperative games who enjoying strictly working together (no hidden info or objectives) will enjoy planning turns to deal damage and protect cities from incidents. But, even if you’re not usually drawn to co-op, you might enjoy this because it has some other strong elements (like deck building and hand management) that allow you to focus on your own strategy in addition to the team strategy. Finally, I’d recommend it to slightly more experienced gamers (i.e. I wouldn’t use it as a gateway game) and ages 13+ just because there are a fair amount of things going on, and controlling multiple characters is not always easy for newer or younger gamers.

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Components + Quality

The game has a lot of cards, all of fine, average quality. I’d recommend sleeving the cards you build your deck with, if you can (they’re a smaller card size) just because you’ll be shuffling those the most. All of the powers/costs/text on character cards (heroes and villains) is clear and easy to understand.

The board is huge and pretty nice; everything is labeled clearly. The player and power-up boards are simple but give you all the information you need in a convenient way.

The tokens are average cardboard, all fine sizes for what they’re used for. The character standees are also average cardboard and are color-coded based on what kind of character they are, which is neat. There are also player-colored bases, which are average plastic bases, and helpful for quickly identifying which characters are yours.

My copy also included the acrylic character standees and they are incredible. Their images are detailed, they’re a really nice weight, and they look great on the table. Their bases are colored by character type, so there is no player identifier for these (i.e. the colored bases) but the characters all look very different, so it shouldn’t be hard to tell them apart. I much prefer these standees to the cardboard because of how nice they look, but they’re especially an improvement for the Supervillains because a lot of them are very darkly colored and the cardboard pieces have black backgrounds, making them blend in a fair amount. The clear acrylic alleviates that issue.

The rules are very detailed. They’re a lot to soak in at first, but they give you all the info you need from your first play without being confusing or convoluted. Finally, the box is huge (17″ tall!) but it looks awesome, and everything fits inside easily.

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PROS

• High replayability with a wide variety of heroes, sidekicks, enemies, and incidents
• The deck building element is cool and unique for a co-op game
• Characters all have fun backgrounds and the rule book also includes a convenient list of which characters pair the best; attention to details like this are always appreciated in my book
• The acrylic standees
• An optional scoring system is included in the rule book, which is a neat addition. No matter what you score you still win or lose, but it’s a fun addition for players who like to see how well they can do versus just winning

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CONS

• No hidden information means you could potentially have alpha-playing occur
• 2-player game seems much harder to win than 3 or 4; ramps up too quickly
• Randomness of the incident deck can cause the difficulty of the game to ramp up really quickly, almost forcing you into an early loss, or letting a lot of villains pop up because you were focused on resolving incidents

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Final Thoughts

In all honesty, cooperative games can be very hit or miss for me, and I tend to lean away from them unless they have a real-time element, or hidden information. This sounded super (ha!) cool, so I was really hopeful for it, and it delivered.

I thought that the mechanics were familiar and fun, but they also felt unique because of the various characters and how they worked together. I felt like the game was really difficult to win, but on my 3rd play my team finally got a groove going that lead us to victory, so it seemed that more experience with the game, and aiming for good combos with your heroes and sidekicks is the way to go. The randomness of some pieces of the game still means a win is never guaranteed, which is good, but it doesn’t feel impossible. (But that scoring scale is brutal, I’ve only been in the negatives so far…haha)

I think that if you like a strong superhero theme and have a group that enjoys working together to achieve a goal, this should be on your radar. It’s a really enjoyable game with smooth turns, a lot of variety, and great pieces. If that sounds cool to you too, check it out!

My Final Ratings:
Overall Game – 7/10
Aesthetics – 9/10
Difficulty – 4/10 (to learn/play); 6/10 (to win)
Replayabilty – 8/10

Additional Information:
Designer – Yusuke Emi (江見祐介)
Artists – ikuyoan, Matsu (松), Misakanyumen (みさかにゅうめん), Nuda, Shohei Tamura (田村正平), Tomoko Hirabayashi (平林知子), Yamazaki Suhama (山崎すはま), Yuuru (ゆうる)
Publishers – Japanime Games, Little Future (リトルフューチャー)
MSRP – $60.00
BGG
BGA
Website
Kickstarter (Starts August 18, 2020)

This game will have a complete tutorial that will be featured on Dized.

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*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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