Got this game at Essen and played a few times, all of them solo so far.
Here are my views of the game so far and how it compares to other Uwe games.
As usual, Uwe prefers evolution to revolution and keeps things that worked well from previous game while adding enough differentiating elements so each one feels familiar yet unique.
The most similar game is clearly Glass Road but with only a couple of resources here: fish and wood (3 if you count money).
You have your plots to either build or have forests and a good number of building separated by type: A for immediate effect, B for an on-demand effect and C for victory points.
Instead of the action cards there you have a board of actions like A Feast for Odin but with just a few actions, in addition to the unique elders you can get for yourself (a bit like the buildings of Le Havre but other players can't use your elders).
I feel the elder action might unbalance the multiplayer since some players will have to wait several turns to get one.
Surprisingly, I don't miss the many type of resources of GlassRoad, in which often I get frustrated by how much planning is required; nor it fields short of actions even though it has a very reduced number compared to Fields of Arle or Odin.
The game is streamlined and for me has the right number of turns, I like having always 3 actions rather than snowballing like Odin or Agricola/Caverna. In GlassRoad I always feel I needed one turn more.
The novel concept here is the "shares", which I think is introduced to add a bit of extra player interaction but it opens another possible strategy even solo. However thematically it feels odd to me, when I see the box and the elders, what comes to mind is "family business", not "venture capital".
Speaking of the box, it is the box beautiful in my collection of hundreds of games. Might sound silly but sometimes a good illustration and bit of background music can contribute to the theme as much as the game itself.
About the solo variant, it's the usual beat your score with a target reference while incorporating the system from <PERSON> where you play each turn with a different color so you block yourself.
In the standard variant I didn't feel blocked at all, you probably want to alternate between turns and with the elders and the copy action it didn't bother me much. 579
That's why I appreciate he came up with a 3 color system which you can easy follow with a tile that keeps track of which color to play each turn.
He even added a campaign where you play 3 game without reusing building, which is forces you out of the same building patterns when you see building you know well.
When I was reading the solo rules I though I would create my own variant to add more interaction but now I probably won't. It would be easy add an AI randomly taking buildings and taking/putting fish on the table but It's very frustrating in this kind of game when somebody takes the building your strategy revolves around (unlike GlassRoad you cannot "reserve" buildings here) and the fish on the table interaction is not a big deal though it leads to a bit of "accumulation optimization" that suffer other games like Agricola solo variant.
My main complaint about the game is that the buildings don't have an illustration like they do in GlassRoad, Le Havre or Ora et Labora. It's not just the visual satisfaction when you end the game but also the quick visual reference once you know them.
I understand this is a bit of a compromise between using cryptic symbols with an illustration or proper text explanation.
The other obvious issue are the ridiculously tiny 1 coins but I use the metal coins from viticulture instead
-In general, I like this a bit more than GlassRoad for solo and I think I will also like it more multiplayer (in addition it allows 5 players). I get a similar feeling with less frustration.
-Also I like it a bit more than Cave vs Cave but that one is also quite good and it's cheaper and smaller.
-I like Fields of Arle a bit more because of the many professions and upgrade paths, here I have seen a few different strategic focuses (buildings, ships, shared, etc.) to combine with the Elders but I feel after a number of games my score is going to depend more on the buildings that show up (C scoring buildings are not revealed till later).
-Feast for Odin is a deeper game but I still find weird the "patchwork" system, this game is faster while giving me a similar feeling in terms of theme.
-While I feel Ora et Labora more satisfying in terms of accomplishment, this game has enough randomness and is faster to makes it more replayable for solo.
-For multiplayer, I think Le Havre and Agricola are still better (but not Caverna). 579