I cannot find the thread collecting players feedback/reviews. So I open this thread until I find the original one.
It's obvious that this game is near to the top of the best games of all time. The amazing gameplay is is based on a nice simple RPG mood, a good class system, some strategy elements coming from the management of movements and troops. But the core of its gameplay is mainly the tactical elements of the combats:
- The magic system is one of the most diversified and balanced I ever saw, the number of spells useful in some cases is amazing.
- The rage system as less diversity but is a nice addition anyway.
- The troops diversity is another element that adds a lot of depth and diversity to the tactical combats.
- One detail but not that minor I really enjoyed to not have to bother with resources managements too much.
- Another detail, the item design is quite amazing, a lot of diversity in their design, morale, various stuff given after n combats like runes or attributes points, gremlins fights, items improving through gremlins fights, each item get personalized description, and so on.
The RPG parts are quite far to best standards in the genre, the story is very schematic and non original, the only distinctive point about it is the numerous touch of humour but for my taste too many are pure reference to modern world. Among RPG elements only the class system match standards quality of the the genre but this RPG setup gives a nice mood to a tactical game.
The sounds didn't catch my attention but the shiny graphics did, they add a lot to the charm of the game and are a quite pleasant change to modern mode to do dirty and/or dark graphics.
The replay value is excellent and based of the extreme diversity and the excellent depth of the tactical combats but also on the subtle differences between the classes.
I should close my feedback here but I like whining so I cannot resist to give few more details about some details I didn't like:
- The score based on game time is a little stressing once you start take care of that. But I admit I have no better solution.
- The game has some strong unbalance that become a little unpleasant when you start take care of your score. The partial list could be Time Back, Cardinal, Anga's Ruby, Dryad, Griffin, Demon, Sacrifice, Gift, Resurrect, Black Hole, Chargers, Emerald Dragon.
- The importance of time in the score breaks too many elements of the gameplay diversity. The game balances hasn't been tuned enough with that point in consideration. The balance tuning forgot a lot the time factor that is major in the score.
- The difficulty level also reduce the diversity of the game. The main problem of higher difficulty level is to be based only on bigger enemy stacks and that breaks many points.
- One weird detail, I hate this knight camp you get soon in game, making very tempting a tedious if not boring little gameplay element. And that point also reduce a lot the game diversity of the first areas, once you have taste it it's hard to not exploit it.
- I am shared about the high random in the game. It's clearly a significant part of the replay value but that breaks a bit too much planned strategy approach. I think some solution could be find but I have no clear suggestion about that.