In the Year of the Dragon: Oh the pain and the agony!

I just want to do EVERYTHING.....but i can't. 

So on track to play all other Stefan Feld games in 2013 (when i started to realise I like his games this year :P ), I was eager to try out In the Year of the Dragon and Jon brought his copy over to try out.
I won't go over the details because this is not a new game but I will share my thoughts on it.

Now it seems that Jon has taught some rules wrongly (i.e. we can get the coin guy during setup) but overall I think the experience of the game was not very deeply impacted.
Components wise is ok, I like how the roofs stack up but the art is very dated. Meh even. Color selections could have been better LOL...
I liked how you can really plan ahead for the whole game since all the events are already shown. However that also means the only random part during the game will be what your opponents are playing. This is not a small factor though and there's still a lot of game to be played. It also means that if you screw up at the beginning, the game is very unforgiving and you will probably not win. The game doesn't seem to have a catchup mechanism as well so that can be a bummer. The cards that we all have makes for a very tight game because you only have 2 wild cards. So throughout the game you will probably grab 1 of every person on the board but you have to plan when you WANT to take the person. Essentially that is the main gist of the game, its all about timing.
All in all, like a lot of Feld's game, you want to do everything but you can't. Its a painful and agonising way of playing a game but can be quite satisfying when you get it or aren't doing too badly. I do quite like it but the dated art and the various thin cardboard pieces put me off. Try before you buy!