I have a theory that when it comes to ratings and reviews, some games benefit from a first mover advantage. For instance, Dominion was the first deck-building game many people played. As a result, Dominion is also the bar a deck-building game must clear in order to be considered "good". There can only be one first time of discovering the pleasure of deck building, so it's hard to stack up against the classic of the genre. If you disagree, maybe you haven't played enough Dominion to learn all of its tricks.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://jlericson.com/2022/10/28/race_for_the_galaxy.html