I spent about 6 hours playing it before I finished the desert area. It took me 180 turns to accomplish this. I did play through all the side quests though and I found it necessary because of the precious experience points you can gain through doing so. The storyline is a nice dungeons and dragons style adventure with side quests such like you would find in RPGs. Also side questing is the only way to get certain units (like Typek, an elite warrior soldier). There is no resource management in this game simply because there are no resources. You cannot create new units just by gathering resources. This is what makes the game unique. Almost all strategy games, and even most strategy/RPG hybrids are all about resource management, get a lot of gold/lumber/spice and you have the game beaten. Not Empire of Magic. It boots the resource management out of the strategy arena and replaces it with a popular role-playing twist.