This is my first review, so I fully expect I'm going to leave something out. I've now played this game twice and, after last night's play, was able to confirm my feelings on this game.

Frankly, I just don't like it.

I want to like it. I should like it. It's got investing mixed with some area acquisition, but in the end, it just fails for me.

My two plays:

1) 6 players with the Investor card
2) 4 players without the Investor card

I'm going to leave out the explanation of the rules, since it's been done by many other reviewers better than I could. Basically, the goal of the game is to earn the most money and you do that, primarily, by owning bonds in the countries that have best managed to balance area acquisition, troops, and tax generation. If you own the most worth in bonds for a country, you control that countries actions until someone else controls more than you. It is possible to have control of no countries.

There's more to the game than this, but that's the rough gist of it. And now the fatal flaw for me...It's just not fun to not have control of a country, particularly if you aren't able to earn money and reacquire control of one. The mechanics of the game seem to set up situations, particularly without the Investor card (which gives $2,000 to the person with it when it activates) where a person can have control of no countries and not be making enough money to acquire control of one from the players who currently control them. At that point, that player can literally get up, push in their chair, and go find another game, read a book, take a nap, etc, because getting back into the game at that point is nearly impossible. My last play, I was at this point 2/3 of the way through the game and had to sit there for the next hour watching as people moved bits around and saying "pass" since I neither had nor could acquire money unless the other players wished to allow me (and themselves) to. However, since they were all able to get some minor amounts of money coming to them via bonuses during taxation, they had no reason, for the most part, to hit investor on the rondel. I saw this happen to a degree in my first game as well. Once one player had no countries, he pretty much could only sit there and try to scrimp together money and try desperately to retake a country just to have SOMETHING to do.

Honestly, I've never been overly fannatical of games where people get knocked out. I like a few (Samurai Swords, for one), but for the most part, I dislike when people get knocked out of games because then they have to sit and watch. The nice thing, though, is if at a game convention or game night, there are others around to play something else. However, in Imperial, something even worse happens. Players don't get knocked out, but don't have the ability to do much-to-anything either and that, to me, is FAR worse. Sitting there for an hour watching other people play, but not being able to go do something else on the off chance that someone might toss you a bone and let you back in the game a little is just problematic to me. It's something that could've been fixed by perhaps letting a player trade down their bond and get back some money from the country's bank, at least giving the player some money they could attempt to use and alter their strategy to get back in the game. Instead, a player in the situation just ends up in the "No-Fun zone," likely until the game is over.

As I said earlier, I REALLY wanted to like this game. Everything, from the theme to the bits is excellent. The rondel mechanic is outstanding. In the end, though, I just don't because of the game's Achilles heel. I'll probably try this game again in the future, hoping that this time I won't see that issue pop up, but with a game that's this unforgiving and knowing that more time in the "no-fun zone" is the punishment that awaits, I'm not sure how fast I'm going to want to volunteer to play again.

For me, a 5.5 out of 10.