Well, I played this game once about three weeks ago and after trying it I have to agree with Greg about its Risk-esque style and rules. Quest for the Dragonlords could have been a good game, but it misses its main goal, i.e., to make you feel inside a true fantasy world. It's not a bad game, but you must be aware that is not that ultimate fantasy adventure they say on the box.

Substantially, the main part of the game is centered on accumulating troops and battling all over the board in order to expand your kingdom and conquer most valuable regions. You collect income depending on the specific terrains you own, and the four populations also have unique skills requiring different strategies, but it's overall too similar to Risk, even though combat is a bit more detailed. INHO, however, those skills are a bit unbalanced, so that in our game Elves proved to be quite overwhelming.

The adventure part of the game is limited to the wastelands where players can send quest parties. The problem is that quests are almost completely dice-driven and you can't plan any strategy: just roll the dice, see where you can go and act there. If you're lucky, maybe you could gain something useful, otherwise most probably you quest party will be destroyed.

If you could manage to acquire more wizards/spells and eventually a DragonLord, it could be great for your armies, but this is always random and could bring even the worst player to build the most powerful army, no matter how well you're playing your side. Items are good, and magic objects also could be useful for your armies, but soon you'll learn that some items are most important (if not mandatory) than others in order to solve quests, greatly limiting the adventure part of the limiting the adventure part of the game. Most game components are very good in quality, especially for tables and cards, but models are quite ugly and undetailed. The rulebook, despite its impressiveness artwork, is quite messy, as I specified above. And last, but not least, the CD-Rom does not include anything useful for the game itself

Finally, I think this is a Risk-Talisman mix, just a little bit more complex, where complexity is more due to rules than to the game itself. It's not a bad game, and sure you could enjoy it, provided you remind it's just a wargame with limited resource management and quite a random adventure phase.

Obviously, it's all in my humble opinion.
The Goblin's Lair http://wwwgoblins.net An Italian non-profit gaming group.