While only being able to judge from several demo play throughs, in overall i like the game so far.
The resemblance to Fantasy General is quite obvious (especially the unit-upgrades and the damage system itself), but the game offers quite a lot of improvements graphically and playwise to justify a release of its own.
Graphics are nice, a little bit more animated terrain in the main hexfeld view would have been nice to keep oneself focused. The close up fights in Battle Isle style are quite amusing done sometimes, but i tend to turn them off in long battles, after a while one has seen most of the animations. Still, i appreciate the work done there. Flying units are difficult to judge where on the battlefield they are exactly sometimes.
It's difficult to tell something about gameplay right now with two demolevels. It seems to be fairly balanced (Bronze easily reachable, Silver with taking care, Gold really takes some planing), and i didn't noticed major bugs. Interface feels intuitiv, no deep tree-based menus, everything accessible, although the activated hero and unit abilities are somewhat unconspicuous placed.
The sound is okay, nothing special, but i wouldn't turn it off immediatley.
Advantages:
Well, i do like the customization system with perks. Some perks seems to be imbalanced, but overall the choices are varied enough to have fun playing with various combinations. The support and hero system is well done. The quasi-isometric look makes the game easily accessible while playing, and suits the turn-based system.
Disadvantages:
Terrain seems to influence the game sometimes too much. While having various modifications for different terrain is a common feature, it is sometimes really difficult to break off closely defended high-defensive terrain even with superior numbers and unit levels. In the beginning i did have to look for quite a while where to view artifact abilities and how to assign them to different characters, this is somewhat unintuitiv right now, maybe the tutorial in the full version will solve this problem.
Overall a nice game in a nearly dead genre (turn based strategy), which will please most fans and maybe even draw attention from outside (but no suprise hit like Kohan back then, sorry). Looking forward to the release.
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