I think RoR is what AoE 1 DE should have been since the very start, instead of what we got. I also think that, even though in itself it is a good, it has some very significant drawbacks.
From a gameplay perspective, the additions they have made (gates, trade, formations etc.) are very, very nice. However, since this is the second time the remaster is done, I think most of us were expecting more, at least a bunch of new units to improve the game. There’s a bunch of topics making very good suggestions on what to add in the AoE 1 sub-forum and I’m sure the devs must have seen those…which means they deliberately choose the conservative approach and not to add more substantial changes, most likely to appeal to the vietnamese players.
This brings us to the second point, which is the big issue in how this DLC is marketed and sold and to who it is targeted to. First of all, this really should have been a standalone DLC for AoE 2 and the AoE 2 romans should have been part of a different DLC (maybe with a campaign) for like 5 bucks or so. Putting everything together has pissed off AoE 2 players quite a bit, as you can see from the steam reviews. This was just microsoft being greedy and also resulted in a very confusing marketing of the product (it was not so clear to the average customer which romans where in which game doing what).
The other problem is the target audience for the DLC: in my opinion targeting primarily the vietnamese players, which are still playing the original AoE 1, was a rather foolish choice. They should have tried to generate sales from the international AoE 1 and 2 audience (especially 2) proposing this DLC as an alternative game mode/setting for the much popular second game.
TLDR: overall, while I think the game itself is good, I doubt it will generate that many sales unless the devs are willing to put in the work to actually improve the game, especially in terms of content. I think a lot of people would be more willing to invest time and money in a game if the devs show that they supporting their product.
PS: some time ago, we had actually a nice discussion regarding some of the changes we wanted to see in the DLC, this would be a good start for the devs: [poll] What AoE2DE features would you like to see in Return of Rome?