Played a 3 player game. With two people who had no prior knowledge of the game.

First hour was setup & explaining main rules.

Second hour was the first 6 game seasons, and included careful explanations of the first combat, first hero duel, first Diplomacy etc...

Finished the game in the next 1.5 hours.

Looks like this game actually does take the 3-4 hours written on the box.

That's good to hear. =)

After so many years of budgeting X+3 hours for an FFG Epic game, maybe with this one we'll have time for two games =)

The first game I played was the Epic Game Variant with 4 players. After about 30 minutes of instruction, the game ran about 5 hours. Of the four people, two had played one game prior, while it was the first play for two of us. It probably could have run shorter, but one of the players had some serious ADD issues.