Ave Roma (A-Games) Review by Man Vs Meeple

As mentioned by some other people, I've played several 4 player games, and it has never taken more than 2 hours. I think it's a simple matter of player AP, and how many players you have with it. There is a lot going on in this game, many things to calculate so it would be an easy game for AP to thrive.

I also had to read through the rules 3+ times, I'm still "Unsure" if I'm playing the Advanced game correctly, the rules seem to be ambiguous. I believe there were some translation issues, due to the game coming from a non-English native speaking country. I feel the Advanced play only clogs the game up, adding more variety and a TON more "clunckiness" which only slows things down further.
I would recommend avoiding advanced play, and just adding in the Mini Expansions if you need more meat in your meal.

That being said, I really enjoy this game also.

Maybe I am playing it wrong but didnt feel like the length is that big of a deal. The game has ended on the Area cards and there is no way to shorten that. Once an area has been visit twice the card is removed and replaced.

The game has some interesting mechanisms, but it feels like some parts are only there to make the game more complex. I agree with the comment that an experienced developer could have helped streamline the game experience and make it play better. The main essence of the game is recipe fulfillment (buying cards), with a complex array of mechanisms used to obtain the resources to fulfill those recipes. I like that the senator cards allow you to customize your own endgame scoring. I think it is a good game that could have been better with some additional work.

Hmm, I didn't really like it, but it didn't go nearly as long for us. In a 4p game, we almost nailed the 25m/p in our first play and we went right into the advanced rules.

I definitely liked the worker placement concept, variable value workers with drafting for them each round, but that's about the only good thing I have to say about it. I really hope to see that used in a future game.

1) The art is nice but way over saturated on the "good" side, while being laid out oddly on the other. I like the round board, but perhaps that it's not how we're used to evaluating a board state, we all found it a little wonky.
2) The graphic design is a mess. The set collection symbols (which I'll get to later) are too small, the iconography is good, but difficult to parse on cards with a lot of information and it's difficult to see differences between coins and resources from across the table.
3) There is way too much set collection going on with no easy way to organize your cards to see what bonuses have been achieved and what hasn't. Actually, I like the card play generally, but I found the set collecting part unnecessary. The mechanism is too light to fit with the rest of the game and makes Card draw randomness too impactful when it wouldn't be otherwise.
4) The turn order determination is so important, yet it feels so arbitrary. There is a nice feeling that the workers are not inherently more valuable one way or the other based on their numerical assignation, but the turn order mechanism makes it important.
5) Thematically, and perhaps mechanically, it didn't make sense to me that the benefits of the buildings and military were effectively the same. The costs, of course, are different … and the set collection is handled differently, but I already addressed that I found the set collection dull, so it didn't help make a favorable impression.
6) As for the costs, I found the resource management (including money) too loose for what is supposed to be, as you say, a medium-heavy euro. There are too many resources, which all do the same thing anyway. I did like the surplus mechanism, but I found surplus goods to be incredibly valuable in recipe fulfillment, but fairly easy to come by. Money, too, was a bit too candy store-ish for my tastes and none of us were really clawing for money at any point during the game.
7) The variable player boards, speaking of resources, is completely meaningless. I'm not sure why that was even included in the design. It seems almost like a sleight of hand trick to make you think it's adding to the game's variety/replayability when it isn't at all.

I really thought this game had some good ideas, but (like most Kickstarter projects from independent designers/publishers) really could have been aided by an experienced developer (Peter Egbert, for example, or any number of European publishing houses). Even though it wasn't 3 hours for us we found the "heaviness" of the rules/mechanisms a bit of a cloak over top of a much less weighty gameplay decision space. With some of the above things addressed (which, I understand, are subjective, but allow me to make my point), I think this game could have promise to meet demand in the market for midweight 90-minute Eurogames. As it is, I don't know who the audience is, which is too bad because it's unusual to see something truly unique in the worker placement arena. I just hope to see it implemented in the future in a game I can enjoy.