My review of FW 1:

[espritcrafter]

To note, I really enjoyed playing the game, but my interest slowly faded as I got further into the game.

I played through a large chunk of the game and nearly got to the end, but got bored. The timer system and exp system made me have to think 10 different moves and 3 moves ahead every time I made a turn.

Because experienced units unlock so many more abilities and upgrades, I definitely want to keep them alive, especially since death is permanent. But the problem is that I have to spend so much time planning what to do, how to beat the timer, how to kill all of the enemies within the time limit, how to keep all of my veteran units alive, and how to most effectively do it that it loses some of the fun.

Of course, this would all be different if I could somehow "res" a defeated unit after combat.

I would like the time limit to not be imposed upon every mission, only a few missions where a time limit does make sense, like rushing to save an allied town before it falls to the enemy. The time limit makes it harder to really sit back and enjoy the stage to the fullest, and especially hard to go an explore for little hidden secrets.

Also, maybe make it so that the player gains experience and then uses it to unlock unit ability and upgrades through some sort of skill tree, that will transfer to all of the specific unit type, rather than the individual unit gaining experience points. Either that, or allow me to ressurect defeated units after combat.

At one point in the game, I ended up NOT using my best units in my army and settling for my mid-level units, because they were full level and I felt that it would be a total waste to kill stuff with the max level units, because they can no longer gain any experience. So I had to settle with using lower level units, just so the experience from fighting enemy units did not go to waste.