Each player receives a peg board (think Battleship, but not hidden). Dice are passed around the table. On your turn, you roll dice to generate building actions and resources, which you then use to place 3D plastic buildings on your peg board. Your buildings feed citizens in your infrastructure, generate additional resources, and meet conditions that give you victory points. But beware -- the dice can also inflict complications on both your cities and your opponents'. Planning for inevitable setbacks is part of the strategy.
I've actually never played Roll Through the Ages, so I can't say how closely this new game adheres to the original or how much has been changed here. I can say that there are things to like about what's here. There are a lot of interesting strategic choices to be made in this game, from what buildings to aim for to how to position them on your board, from rethinking your plans when your rolls don't quite support them to planning ahead for inevitable disasters.
The pace is very brisk. Players actually roll all their dice together each round -- secretly, behind a screen. Only actions are sequenced around the table, which saves everyone time and keeps you active in play for more of the game. The box claims a 45-60 minute play time overall, and that actually feels true even on your first playthrough (after the rules explanation, of course). If you were to play this regularly, I suspect you could get even a four-player game down close to 30 minutes, with the right group -- the choices are there, but they're simply not that difficult or daunting to make.
But I do have some reservations about the system. There's a scarcity among the game's buildings, limited numbers of each type, that I don't think meshes well with the dice mechanic. While there are ways to mitigate unlucky rolls a little bit, it's still possible to have a turn (or two in a row) that really blocks you out of taking important actions. On such turns, it's easy for the other players to swoop in and build the last available building of a particular type, closing you out of it entirely through no fault of your own -- just bad luck. And while it is nice this game plays fast, that also means that it may not last long enough for good luck to come along and balance out the bad.
The game's components leave much to be desired, too. The peg boards have informational tracks along the top, but the embossed labeling of the tracks is too faint to be readable. Fans of the game do paint washes on their boards so they can be functional; subsequent printings added stickers to put over the top, since the components themselves weren't doing the job.
And yes, there are all these elaborate 3D buildings... but it's hard to believe they really add much to the experience beyond inflating the price of the game. It feels like a roll-and-write when you play it, whether or not you know it's based on a pre-existing game of that type. The limited number of buildings might be a little tricky for a roll-and-write, but other than that, you could easily have just done this game drawing on paper with pencils. The building minis all have pegs on the bottom to work with these boards too, so it's not like you could buy this games because you want to swap the pieces into some other game just because you like the look. It's all sizzle, no steak.
Era: Medieval Age is not a bad game. But it honestly makes me more interested in playing Roll Through the Ages than playing it again. At a lower price tag, I might call it a B- or so, a "try it, see if you like it" kind of grade. But at a $70 MSRP, I think I'd have to give it a "caution against" kind of grade, a C+.
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