Since the original Great Western Trail from 2016, there have been a second edition, variants like Argentina or New Zealand, and an expansion called Rails to the North. All of these easily take 3 hours to play, which doesn't include rules explanation time and the added delay when playing with new players. Which is why I never played any of these games, they are simply a bit too long for my game nights. Experienced players who don't suffer from analysis paralysis can certainly play Great Western Trail in under 3 hours, but for my typical player round the risk would be high to get kicked out of the game store at closing time without having reached the end of the game.

Thus the big advantage of Great Western Trail: El Paso being shorter, and I very much enjoyed my first game. Having said that, I have mixed feelings about other aspects of the downscaling strategy. They made the game not only shorter, but also smaller, and cheaper. The game board is made out of cloth, leading to the first time of me ironing a game board, as it gets creased when folded in the box. The cards are smaller than in the original game, and the money tokens are so flimsy cardboard that I used some metal coins I had in reserve instead. While all this make El Paso also a lot cheaper than its bigger brothers, the result was a bit substandard for my tastes. I generally prefer board games with quality components, tokens, and cards.

In Civ7, Antoine de Saint-Exupery is quoted as saying: “An engineer has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but nothing left to take away”. While I haven't played the other Great Western Trail games, I am certain that they do have a deeper decision space. But getting to a very similar gameplay experience with fewer game mechanics and rules is an achievement. And I can think of several other board games which would benefit from the same treatment. If a game has a weight of over 4 on BoardGameGeek and takes 4+ hours to play, you could probably turn it into a shorter and more accessible game by taking things away. And if that is well done, the fundamental game experience can remain similar, just easier. Which makes the game accessible to more people, and could therefore improve sales. What's not to like?