Alea 12 finally made it here from Essen (it sure is a long way) so I thought I'd put up my opinions of it on the 'Geek.

I will not go over the rules as they are already well presented in other reviews. Instead I will discuss the experience of the game.

Physical Appeal:

Game box is a typical Alea big box which is to say very appealing from both front and the right side (which is the way it will be seen from on most shelves) Illustration is sufficiently Asian looking to convey the theme and the color scheme (burgundy and gold) is both thematic and very pleasing visually. Contrary to the previous Rio Grande big box issues this one has Alea logo on the front of the box which is a nice thing from Rio Grande to do. Box fits well with the rest of the series which continues to be the prettiest part of my game-shelf.

Board is the single weakest part of the physical design of the game. It does not sit straight on the table and feels slightly cheaper then one would expect from Alea. Also, color scheme of various hues of orange and yellow feels somewhat weak to me and is really only serious flaw in the visual appeal of the game. That said, board is exceptionally functional during gameplay and very well laid out. Two point tracks are both of the right lengths (in that in most games most advanced player will be close to the end of the point track but usually not over it).

Other components are: Action cards, Character cards, Character tokens, Event tokens. Money, Palace floors, Player action markers, Privilege tokens and two standard wooden game bits (disc and a cylinder) per player.

This does sounds like a lot and the game is one of more component heavy in the Alea lineup (there was 6 full pages of cardboard to punch out) but fortunately this translates into neither excessive complexity nor overly difficult setup.

Component quality ranges between excellent and extraordinary. Yuan coins are among the most beautiful game money I have ever seen. They are both exquisitely beautiful (square hole, artwork that makes them look hand made and worn out) and very practical (golden ones - which are worth 3 - are just a touch bigger then the silver ones, not enough to be annoying but just enough to be able to distinguish them by touch).

Palace floors are another component where Alea went above and beyond call of duty. The floor stacking mechanic in the game is strongly reinforced by the floors that not only stack beautifully but look gorgeous (and yet different) regardless of how many are stacked on top of each other. I would call this almost a perfect example of physical design reinforcing the understanding of the rules of the game.

Rest of the components are of usual high quality for Alea done with understated but very strong Chinese visual theme. They look well together, handle well and - importantly - are very clear and easy to follow during gameplay.

My only quibble with the components is that while the Character tokens represent the "junior" and "senior" persons in various trades the actual illustrations on them are the same for each trade making the numbers and symbols on the token only means of distinguishing the "junior" from "senior" person. This by no means diminishes their functionality but having an illustration of an older version of the same guy on the "senior" token would surely have been another awesome touch.

Tray that comes with the game is serviceable if generic. Also, of lately Alea (or is it Rio Grande) has started shipping plastic bags with their game finally realizing that one can never use those trays alone in a game that is supposed to stand on its side.

All in all physical aspects of the game are superb, and despite some quibbles with the board I would say that this game is on par with the most beautiful games in my collection and that without sacrificing any functionality.

Learning/teaching the rules and the game setup:

Rule-book is of the usual high quality and fairly succinct (at 8 not very dense pages). Rules are well explained there and illustrated with useful diagrams where needed. We managed to play our first game without any significant mistakes that I am aware of. Teaching the rules to others takes about 20-30 minutes [or did for our group which is fairly experienced in board games - but I do not think that it would be substantially longer even with fairly newbie crew] which is slightly better then par for the game of this complexity. Clear and intuitive game components help quite a bit here.
Setup is perhaps 5 or so minutes long, definitively longer then Notre Dame but fair bit shorter then Puerto Rico. So far it did not feel like much of a chore to set up "Year of the Dragon" the way it can be for some other games.

Gameplay:

And here comes the meat and potatoes of the game: how does it actually play ?

Mechanics of the game are not particularly innovative, they consist mostly of choosing actions and selecting characters which enhance utility of their associated actions in the future. Game is driven by the series of very simple events which mostly boil to "do X before this event happens or lose Y characters". Along the lines some actions grant victory points directly or indirectly and others enhance the player's ability to gain and retain the characters. Only moderately novel thing is the way of determining the turn order based on the player's choices of characters.
This, however, is not a bad thing. While mechanics are not original in themselves, their interplay is fairly unique and it is very difficult to honestly say 'This game plays like X'. Simple mechanics also mean that rules are that much easier to explain and that it takes fewer plays for a new player to start seeing the actual depth of the game.

One of the first feelings one gets at the beginning of the game is: "Everything is Possible". In this, game is very different from most of its kind (and definitively from its immediate predecessor: Notre Dame). Practically every action possible in the game is open to the players from the outset and even the actions of other players can't prevent one from following a course if they are sufficiently set on it. This sense of freedom, particularly lack of "artificial" restrictions such as card deal in Notre Dame, will appeal to many, to me it was a bit worrying at first as I was afraid that it may lead to set strategies and solitaire-like play.

However, very early into our first game this feeling gave way to the one that describes game much better: "Everything is Possible - But at a Price". Every decision one makes carries with it a series of costs and consequences which can vary tremendously depending on the current situation in the game and the positions of other players. One is free to take "good" (senior) character but has to pay with falling behind on the character track. One is free to take an action from a group that has already been taken - but has to surrender precious 3 Yuan. Fall behind too far on the character track and you make costs of "good" characters too small to those ahead of you, spend too much money and limit your choices in the future, opening the possibility for other players to actively "shut you out" of some actions.

The main component of the game is thus weighting of costs and benefits and potential future costs and benefits of the available actions. Fact that those costs are directly influenced by other players and the predictability of other player behavior that comes from full information makes this game intensely - if subtly - interactive.

Full information is important for another reason. Contrary to games like Notre Dame or Cuba or even El Grande, where characters receive information piecemeal and thus have to respond to it by making tough tactical decisions, full (or close to full) information games (Puerto Rico is probably most celebrated example) allow players to develop game spanning strategies. If a game allows for multiples of viable strategies all with their own variants (like shipping, building, factory etc... in Puerto Rico) then it has - at least in my mind - potential for much greater depth then one that is "merely" tactical. If in addition one is forced to make regular tactical decisions in the light of their grand strategy *as well as* circumstances then the game has a potential to be a treat indeed. While "Dragon" at this point does not seem to me to be as strategy rich as Puerto Rico or Taj Mahal it definitively seems to allow for grand strategy while being as engaging tactically as any of them or, for that matter, as its purely tactical cousin "Notre Dame".

In conclusion, I find the gameplay of "Dragon" very rich, filled with hard tactical decisions, subtle interactions and significant weighting of costs and benefits. I have yet to play the game sufficient number of times to determine just how rich strategically it is and on that question will depend whether I will think of it as a very good game indeed or as one of the all time classics.

Play-time and Number of Players:

In terms of the length of play "Dragon" seems to be on the lower end of the Alea big box series needing about 45 minutes per play (again, this is with my group of fairly experienced gamers). Those are very tense 45 minutes with little or no downtime for anyone. A great feature of the game as far as I am concerned is that much as Notre Dame does, it appears to scale very well indeed between 2 and 5 players.
Truth to be told I have only played it with either 2 or 5 so I can not vouch for the scaling in the middle of the spectrum but both 2 and 5 have worked excellently for us though of-course the feeling is notably different between the two.

Theme:

Game is rather strong thematically for a Euro of its length. Between art, components and gameplay one does feel like an official in medieval china. My one objection to the theme is that from what I understand 12 turns of the game are supposed to correspond to the 12 months of "Year of the Dragon". If so that would feel like quite a crazy year with two droughts, two epidemics and a couple of mongol invasions. Rather, I prefer to think of the game as the whole lunar year cycle with each turn representing one year with last one being "Year of the Dragon", minor point I know

Conclusion:

Over all, "In the Year of the Dragon" remains a very worthy addition to Alea big box series, as good as most and better then many. It also represents a step in what is so far incredible upward trajectory of the designer Stefan Feld. I rank it a high 9/10 and have a feeling it will see a lot of play around here.