I feel like purchasing, but I am not sure what it is like. I'm curious to hear people's opinions.

It's like a fantasy version of Twilight Imperium, but you can finish it in less than 4 hours. That's about all I can say. Perhaps you should investigate options for trying it out locally before buying. If your FLGS doesn't allow for playing games in the store, maybe they can help you find someone who will show it to you at their house.

the game rocks. Its my favorite board game, as of yet. I want to play it now instead of writing this. It takes some great parts of Twilight Imperium, Game of Thrones, Chaos in the Old World, Runebound, and adds some more, creating an awesome game that takes less than 4 hours to play (more often around 2.5 to 3 hours).

Go to Boardgamegeek.com to read more gameplay reviews. Just remember, the game takes about 3 hours to play, some of those reviews were based on the first gameplay, which will probably take longer.

People tend to only complain about the heroes, questing, and diplomacy but I think they are perfect for the scale of the game, important, and fun.

This game is possibly the best FFG game I have played. It's essentially an RTS board game: gather resources, recruit units, build forts, fight the enemy, take victory points. I would have expected the game to be pretty slow, considering this. Lots of sitting around watching players not you take their turns.

This ended up not being the case at all. The only slow part of the game is maybe the setup. Gameplay itself is very rapid, and combat plays out very quickly, as well. The Hero portion of the game seems a little tacked on, but serves an interesting purpose in helping a player who has to turtle part or all of the game. If you cannot win through conquest, and you cannot even spread enough to win through diplomacy, you at least have your heroes to help you gain victory, largely free of the power of enemy armies. The usefulness of the Hero segment of the game, though niche, is often overlooked by players who dislike it.

That said, I will point out that setup can be a bit skewed against the first player. Depending on the map, the first player (who places their starting realm on the map last), can end up really strapped for resources. It's rarely something you cannot overcome, but sometimes a game just turns on you from the start. I would also strongly recommend against choosing the Elves if you are the first player.

You may open the box and think you didn't quite get what you paid for in terms of game pieces and box contents. But this is one of those situations where you are paying for fun, and a rare example of when the fun is worth the financial investment.

I know of no other combat game which works at all for 3-players, they basically degenerate into 2-players V's 1. And rarely seen a resource (eurogame) which is better than "boring" 3-player. Runewars manages to actually be interesting to play 3-player.