YMMV / Villainous (Ravensburger)

• Awesome Art: This game is gorgeous. With each character having a masterfully sculpted mover, and a unique card back and text border, on top of the original art emulating each character's movie style, every component is a treat to look at.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Ratigan's deck includes his pet cat Felicia, who can remove another Ally from Rattigan's realm once played, implying she eats them. Kind of dark for a Disney family board game. The fact that Bartholomew ^note the small mouse that Rattigan feeds to Felicia for drunkenly calling him a rat is a zero cost to play, low-strength Ally with no additional ability specifically so that he can be used as a sacrifice to play Felicia.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Few are fans of villains with lock tokens on their board (Captain Hook, Jafar, etc.) due to the reliance on the luck of the draw to find the ONE card in their deck they need to progress.
  • Ursula is generally considered to be the worst villain to play in general due to how complex she is. For starters, she has a worse version of the lock token system, as instead of working as described above, she uses a Stance System where the token switches between two locations, leaving her with only three locations at all time. Then in order to defeat Heroes (and you will need to do this at least once to get the Trident from King Triton), instead of the usual method, you must attach a Contract card to them and move them to the location specified on the card. On top of that, she has to have two separate items in one location at the start of her turn. The end result is a character that's generally considered borderline unplayable due to how much you have to juggle. Even Ravensburger seemed to agree, as a streamlined verson of Ursula was released as part of the Introduction to Evil set which, among other changes, removed the lock token entirely and retooled the contracts to make them work closer to typical Vanquish actions, resulting in a much more balanced character.
• Periphery Demographic: A tabletop game based on licensed Disney properties and made by a company (Ravensburger) that tends to skew towards younger and more casual audiences doesn't seem like it'd be a huge hit in the modern board gaming landscape, but the game's strong visual presentation and genuine tactical depth, helped by the wide variety of matchups you can make, has made it a surprise hit among older strategy gamers who otherwise aren't fans of Disney. The game also choosing to highlight many villains from older and lesser-known films certainly helps.
• Unexpected Character:
  • A downplayed example, but Prince John's inclusion in the base game is an odd choice since he's grouped with essentially the core members of the Disney Villains.
  • Who expected the Horned King, the villain from a movie Disney tries hard to pretend never happened, to get included in a game like this?
  • Madame Masque. Every character in the game thus far has first appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe save Taskmaster (who made his Villainous debut in 2020 before appearing in Black Widow) and M.O.D.O.K. (at the time his most recent use was his own TV series on Hulu and in Marvel's Avengers). Madame Masque, conversely, has made almost no major non-comics appearances outside of Iron Man cartoons^note Although her alter ego Whitney Frost has appeared in Agent Carter, the Madame Masque persona has not, so her inclusion in Marvel Villainous is rather surprising.
  • Seventh Sister is a somewhat out there choice as she was ultimately a rather minor villain in Star Wars Rebels and differs from the other two represented characters in "Scum & Villainy" (Boba Fett and Cad Bane).
  • In addition to the above, several expansions contain one character that is either obtuse or obscure compared to the other villains of the set. To name a few: Evil Comes Prepared has Ratigan, Perfectly Wretched has Pete, and Twisted Ambitions has Titania.