Legacy of Yu Review: A Fun Solo Campaign That's Easy to Solve

Legacy of Yu is a breezy, satisfying solo campaign that's easy to recommend—just don't expect it to stick around on your shelf for long.

What Is This Game?

You play as Yu the Great, a legendary figure from ancient China tasked with building canals to control catastrophic flooding along the Yellow River—all while fending off barbarian raids. It's a solo-only campaign game that spans roughly ten sessions, with a self-balancing system that adjusts difficulty based on your wins and losses.

If you want to see the game in action, here's my rules teach and live playthrough of the first session:

What Works

The setup and teardown here are remarkable. I'm not exaggerating when I say you can be playing within three minutes once you know what you're doing, and packing up takes maybe two. Even resetting the entire campaign only ran me five to ten minutes. For solo gamers who dread lengthy prep, this is a dream.

The gameplay itself has that addictive "just one more turn" pull. I never wanted to stop mid-session, and watching the game evolve as new cards enter the campaign kept things fresh enough to maintain momentum through to the end.

What Doesn't

By about session four or five, I had solved the game. I found a strategy that worked and spammed it repeatedly with almost no variation—and it won nearly every time. I finished the campaign with only two losses, both coming early before I'd figured things out.

The self-balancing system is supposed to add challenges when you're winning, but it never scaled fast enough to threaten me. What frustrated me most is that there's no way to manually increase the difficulty. Once I'd cracked it, I wanted a harder mode that simply doesn't exist.

Even individual sessions lost tension. I could reliably tell whether I'd won or lost by the halfway point. Losses came early and decisively. Wins became foregone conclusions I had to play out mechanically, which made the back half of most games feel like a chore rather than a climax.

Replayability

This is where Legacy of Yu falls short. Each session runs about an hour, and you'll finish the campaign in roughly ten plays. Once it's done, there's very little reason to return. The strategic path that works will keep working, and without meaningful variability or a higher difficulty option, a second campaign would feel like retreading the same ground.

Who Should Play This

This is an excellent fit for solo gamers who want a light, low-commitment campaign they can knock out in a week or two. If you value snappy setup, satisfying card play, and a complete experience that doesn't demand months of your life, Legacy of Yu delivers. But if you're looking for a crunchy challenge or long-term staying power, look elsewhere.

Final Verdict

Legacy of Yu is a well-designed, approachable campaign that I genuinely enjoyed—once. It's the kind of game I'm happy to pass along to a friend now that I've seen everything it has to offer.