One of the primary tasks of a critique is to outline a game’s potential. What does the game enable us to do, if players are willing to work with and towards its design. More so than the personal preferences of the critic, a game should be evaluated on whether it delivers what its presentation and rules promise.

Gods of Rome presents itself as what veteran gamers refer to as an area majority game. In it we place our player tokens on various areas on the game board, in order to outnumber the tokens of our fellow players. Do it at the right time, and you score points. After a few rounds of this, you might even win the game as a whole. Conflict, in such games, is inevitable. Many players appreciate the resulting tension and emotional intensity these conflicts come with. Area majority games are – above all and despite their abstraction for tactical and strategic reasons – an emotional game genre.

So it helps when the game’s rules don’t stand in the way of those emotions. To do that, they have to combine transparency with elegance. The consequences and risks of each decision must be apparent to everyone at the table. At the same time, the rules must feel coherent. As if they were built on an inner sense of logic, that once grasped you can use to your advantage. Gods of Rome unfortunately only manages one of those requirements. Tragically, it is the more challenging one, meaning that Gods of Rome doesn’t quite reach the heights it could be capable of.

Gods of Rome’s rules structure is elegant and quickly outlined. On your turn you have five different actions to choose from. One is a necessary prerequisite to score any points at all. The other translates your presence on the board into those points. The three other actions change the spread of player tokens on the board. The first of a number of clever design decisions allows us to bolster those three actions, effectively offering us six different actions to affect the board state. One of those bolstered actions lets us permanently turn one of our single actions into two. So what started off as a small array of options, naturally expands during play. This player-driven development of your personal action selection is so neatly designed, that it’s a joy to try it out and see what happens.

Three times during the game, players will trigger a scoring turn (which is different from the player-activated scoring action). This makes it easy to split Gods of Rome into three distinct acts. In act I, you set up your strategy. In act II, you put that strategy into motion. But it’s the last act, sadly, when Gods of Rome loses its momentum.

Because in its final act, Gods of Rome centers stalemates. Every advantage a player takes will be destroyed by somebody else. Players will deny each other any improvement of their position. What sounds like a tense and electrifying contest, can just as quickly turn joyless and inert. Despite its clean rules structure, it’s difficult to quickly parse your options and analyse the board state. This is in part due to presentation. While the board is colourful with an emphasis on strong contrasts, it is also busy. Overlooking even a small details feels like handing over victory. So you pay very close attention to make sure not to make even the tiniest mistake. With four players at the table this really draws out the last few turns of the game. In addition to that, your personal tableau only covers some of the necessary rules. It is more of a basic cheat sheet than a rules aid. The conditions and limitations tied to each action, you just have to remember yourself.

So as the game is about to reach its dramatic climax, play slows down to a standstill. To be fair, the rules are designed to make an actual stalemate impossible. In order to re-use an action space on your tableau, you have to take the scoring action. This opens up deadlocked situations on the board, pushing the game towards its conclusion. This is another smart design decision to solve the issue mechanically. But unfortunately, it doesn’t really affect the game’s flow. In fact, some players end up agonizing over their decisions even longer. Because now, every single action is valuable and might be the decisive move that determines the winner.

This all adds up to Gods of Rome taking more time, than it needs to. The details you have to keep an eye on during play keep adding up. What starts out as energetic and constantly in motion, quickly becomes a prickly “take-that” type of game. One that soon demands so much effort put into it, that it dampens our enjoyment.

Still, in its strongest moments Gods of Rome reminds me of one of my personal favourites: Eric Lang’s Chaos in the Old World. There, you also fight over majority, unlock new options during the game and are inevitably pushed towards a conclusion by triggering scoring rounds. But it is easier to focus your attention on the part of the game that matters during any particular phase of the game. By comparison, Gods of Rome asks you to pay attention to everything in your field of vision all of the time. It might seem trivial, but what makes great game design stand out is the ease with which players get into the game. An inviting entry-point as well as unobtrusive guidance into the more demanding facets of the game are the two biggest demands that are placed on game design.

Every strength that Gods of Rome possesses in terms of elegance in its design, is sadly devalued by insufficient transparency. Passionate area majority fans might still find a lot of value in this game. Others may feel taken aback by the effort needed and the game’s languid pacing, and turn instead to more familiar fare like Wolfgang Kramer’s and Richard Ulrich’s El Grande.