Stonemaier Games Tokaido Release – Is It Worth Getting in 2025?

Tokaido was one of the first games my wife and I purchased after getting married, and we’ve enjoyed dozens of games over the years. Our copy of the game is actually pretty beat up for how much we have played it, and I’ve always been in the market to replace it at some point. When I heard that Stonemaier Games had acquired the rights to the game, I was incredibly excited. With their track record of producing amazing products, I knew it was only a matter of time before this version was in my hands.

Last month, Stonemaier sent over a copy of the game for us to review, and we also purchased some of the metal coins to deluxify our copy. It has been at least a year since we opened our old copy of the game, so this was the perfect time to pull them both out and compare them side-by-side. The first noticeable difference is the box size. Thank goodness Stonemaier has made the box so much smaller. There are a ton of games in the box, but not a ton of components, and the old box was way bigger than necessary. In fact, I’d argue that Stonemaier probably could have made the box even smaller, although I know the team there enjoys using standard box sizes as it is something consumers desperately want.

In terms of gameplay, nothing here has changed. It’s still the same fun, collectathon experience it always was. You’ll move along the path eating meals, collecting pandora picture pieces, donating at temples, and more. Turn order is decided by who is furthest back along the track, which creates a wonderful “should I, or shouldn’t I” experience when you see something ahead you really want, but have to debate the benefit over the cost of skipping a few spaces.

In the Stonemaier version of the game, a number of quality of life improvements have been made. The score track now runs around the outside of the gameboard, which is a huge improvement over the zig-zag track the original used. I cannot tell you how many times a slight bump of the table or a loose sleeve pushed a scoring token out of position, and trying to remember where it ended up being WAY harder than it should have been.

Stonemaier has also put more information on the starting character tiles, outlining what each character begins the game with. This hasn’t changed from the older experience to this one in terms of items, but it’s now much handier to just read it along the bottom of the player tile as opposed to looking it up.

The patented Stonemaier linen-finish rulebook is also included in this release, and it appears as though a few tweaks have been made to the rulebook, mostly to create a more inclusive ruleset – not all players are male! – but also to clean up a few things to make it easier to teach and faster to table. I also really appreciate the crisp edges on the panorama cards. When laid down side-by-side as you play, the crisp edges allow players to really enjoy the panoramic pictures.

Ultimately, whether you upgrade to the Stonemaier Games version of Tokaido or not depends on how much you enjoy the experience. We love this game a lot, so spending the money and ‘renewing” a family favourite probably would have made sense for us. But perhaps you are perfectly fine with your copy of the game, and that’s OK too.

For those that haven’t played Tokaido before, this is an excellent experience that, despite its age, holds up well when compared to games releasing in 2025. And as a nice bonus, you can now get metal coins to replace the cardboard coins included in the game! So even if you are happy with your old copy, perhaps consider upgrading that experience a bit with some metal coins!