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At the height of its power, the Roman Empire covered a vast amount of territory and brought major advancements in engineering, architecture, science, art, and literature. Corruption and economic crisis has made the empire unstable and paved the way for aggressive barbarian tribes to attack.
BadgerGatan
It's more Pandemic - the same core gameplay - but with dice, alliances, and the flow of barbarians. Unfortunately, this isn't a good thing. As far as the Pandemic experience goes, Pandemic: Fall of Rome is more complex and less interesting than other games in the series. The alliance system feels unnecessarily complicated and leans into one of the few flaws of Pandemic: sudden, unpreventable losses. Even then, a game where things go "as expected" is simply too easy. Complexity is not damning - for gods sake, Gloomhaven is one of my most-played games and a classic as far as I'm concerned - but complexity should evolve from the decision space, not from interpreting the game state. For the same reason route-building Euros with high player count are uninteresting in the last few rounds (read: 80 colored wooden pieces on a 2sqft. play area), Pandemic Fall of Rome has too much going on to really care about individual pieces. In reality, Rising Tide accomplishes the same "flowing diseases" feeling without an overwhelming decision space. Iberia is just as difficult, if not more, without being a visual nightmare. The dice add another unwelcome source of random chance which, while usually not problematic, makes decision space even less engaging. Given the choice between Pandemic: Fall of Rome and any other Pandemic game, the alternative will always be preferable. And for the first time in the series, I would probably not participate in Pandemic:FoR if there were another option at all.
aaj94
OK, Pandemic. On this site it needs no introduction. I know it is "the co-op" and has a great deal of historical weight (alongside [thing=823][/thing] and [thing=15062][/thing], it's in the big 3 of early co-ops IMO), but I've never enjoyed it. Sure, [thing=161936][/thing] was pretty great, but I got tired of the game system by [thing=221107]season 2[/thing], and I haven't played Pandemic since. That said, Fall of Rome adds just enough new to the system that it's still appealing to me. For one thing, dice-chucking and battling barbarians is exciting. For another, the 'migration paths' add some tension to the game and a natural flow to the increase of cubes on the board (in base-game Pandemic, the cubes could just feel random). On top of all that, I appreciate the translation of the theme to the Roman empire. It's all pretty natural, and given the events of the past two years, I'm inclined to a non-infectious-diseases version of Pandemic right about now. Something that I dislike in all of Matt Leacock's games is the alpha player tendency, and there's not much to fix that here. I know I can be this kind of player myself, and I hate that the game doesn't do anything to smack me down and keep the collaboration even among players. While it is intensely satisfying to dream up a last-ditch effort to 'save the empire' and win the game, it's frustrating that the game doesn't [i]force[/i] you to come up with that plan together. By comparison to some of my other preferred co-ops, Fall of Rome adds a nice, shorter option to bring to the table. It's far shorter than the two I mentioned before, but is a nice mid-weight option that's a bit longer than [thing=194879][/thing] or [thing=158900][/thing]. Not Alone is still my favorite co-op by a landslide, but Pandemic: Fall of Rome does enough right that I'm happy to keep it in my collection. It's Pandemic. I have problems with the alpha-player tendency, and just like the base game, I have questions about the repetitiveness of each game, but it's everyone's starter co-op of choice for a reason. I'm happy to rate Pandemic a [BGCOLOR=#99FFFF] [b]7.0[/b] [/BGCOLOR], and it probably deserves nearly a point higher if I could bring myself to forgive the past.
Aratar
Excellent iteration of Pandemic. Works better than Rising Tide and Iberia. The dice add a level of uncertainty to the planning that makes the game fresh.