Complacent Gaming Syndrome: After whoever uses Builder in the first round, you can expect the Small Market to be gone, brought by first two players in the order. And if the players who picked Builder role didn't get the Small Market, then they went for Hospice. This happens in almost every game.
Game-Breaker: It's been proven by countless players and few advanced computer simulations that whoever starts with corn as their starting plantation field has sharply increased chances of winning.
Low-Tier Letdown: University building has an opinion of being a useless money sink. It costs a lot, meaning it is usually only viable where its role - adding a free colonists when building a city building - is no longer so crucial. Get it early by pushing through the Cash Gate one way or another, and it's fantastic. Get it by mid-game, and the best utility it will offer will be the 3 victory points.
Overshadowed by Controversy: While Puerto Rico is an influential eurogame, it has become hard to talk about it at length without getting into its colonialist premise and whether it's still okay to play the game in the light of that: the players represent the colonial governors of Puerto Rico, and while building plantations is a significant part of the game, it makes no attempt to bring up the exploitation of African slaves in such plantations, nor does it frame the colonial governors negatively. It doesn't help that the "colonist" tokens are dark brown colour and building additional plantations directly increase the size of the next shipment of said colonists - something that's been brought up right from the game's release in 2002.
