Horizons has the exact same rules minus blight cards and adversaries. The spirit designs are far, far better for new players than the original “easy” spirits. They corral the player into using them correctly, where the original easy spirits still had a super low skill floor.
I bought horizons just to integrate those new spirits into my regular collection. Their design is so flippin elegant. And their sheets being flat card stock instead of cardboard is a plus, not a minus - the original game frankly should have done the same to save box space. I replaced all my spirits with the foils they sold just to fit everything in a single box.
Wow, so many Catan inductees here.
For me it was the notoriously shitty Civilization (2002). I was around 11 years old. Any designer board game is incredible if it’s the first one you’ve ever played.