I liked Bang! when I got it. I thought it was an excellent party game. But unlike most games, which have grown on me as I have played them repeatedly, I’ve been enjoying Bang! less and less.

The weaknesses which have become increasingly apparent over time:

• Player elimination. In general I am opposed to this.
• Player elimination… before that player ever gets to take a turn. I have seen this more than once. This is not forgivable. What’s more, the bonus for eliminating outlaws makes it more likely to happen.
• Wildly varying play time. From five minutes to over an hour. You can’t start a “filler” game and be confident of finishing in a reasonable length of time. Very frequently one player is eliminated quickly and the rest of the game drags on for over half an hour. Great if you really wanted to get some pizza instead of playing a game. Bad if you sat down to play a game with the intention of playing.
• Unhelpful card text. “But, ” you say, “the cards have those helpful little icons on them.” Except that still nobody remembers how Panic works, and oh yeah, the six or seven difficult cards don’t even try, they just have a little icon meaning “see rulebook text.” Which defeats the damn purpose. Especially when the rulebook is a flimsy, tiny-print foldout piece of paper.
• Did someone else say the rules were easy? Except that every character gets a special power, which isn’t obvious from looking quickly or from the name or from anything except reading the card carefully. And they can’t be ignored or glossed over, because many affect the way people shoot you. (e.g. the character that has a built-in Mustang, the character that allows you to steal cards when shot, etc.) So everyone is tired of listening to blah blah character descriptions before the game begins, and then once play starts people lose track and need to be reminded.
• Whoever gets blown up by the dynamite, loses.