Despite the nearly unanimous "no" response, I actually went ahead and got it today... It's actually a lot of fun, I played a few hours, then had a meeting to go to and left it running--when I got back it still ran at the 60ish FPS (I didn't experience any lag except a bit on end turns, but that's normal for most TBS games) that it did before. I also alt-tabbed probably 15 times to look up how to do stuff (like build farms, that was a tad counterintuitive at first although I should have guessed it was the same as mines, ha) and only had one DX error.
It seems to be running quite stably and fast for me maxed, but then again I'm on Win7/64 with an eight-month old gaming laptop (a mid-range Asus, though), so I'd hope it would. The graphics are pretty awful, although luckily not as bad as they looked on Youtube. I'm loving the ability to customize units like in GalCiv but the combat... leaves a lot to be desired. Maybe it's because I'm only using low-level units (and I never played MoM) but the tactical battles remind me of those in HOMM--I don't know what it's going to take for a developer to make a game with AoW-style combat, but that really is much more enjoyable than the rather linear system in Elemental and HOMM. I'm hoping higher-tier troops will have abilities, and some racial variation would be nice too.
On one reviewer's advice, I decided to forgo the campaign and 'learn by doing' in a random map game--big mistake. Like I said, I found myself spending a lot of time alt-tabbing in and out to read the forums. After my DX crash I decided to start a campaign, which is definitely good for teaching me stuff I didn't notice myself, like buying and equipping hero equipment.
I didn't really notice any problems that can be patched out; then again, I've specifically been ignoring threads about anything other than technical issues, which luckily I haven't encountered--I don't want to kill my buzz for this the same way I did for Empire: Total War. My biggest gripe with the game right now, aside from boring tactical combat and the visuals from 2006, is the interface: there's no reason why I should have to scroll through action buttons for units when there's only like, six or so to choose from. Critical buttons are way too small and the minimap isn't detailed enough to be useful, although this is somewhat mitigated by the Sins-esque dynamic zoom.
Overall, though, I've been looking to play a fantasy TBS that isn't HOMM or AoW for a while now, and this looks like it will definitely satisfy my fix. Definitely worth buying if you're into the genre, I'd say, but if you want to play a really good, polished game... well, I'm sure I'm not the first poster to tell you this isn't it.
Oh, and one more thing. I've only played as Men so far. I hope to God the other races have somewhat different tech trees, and substantially different-looking buildings, units, and accessories... If they don't it's going to be a huge downer given what kind of game this is, but judging from GalCiv and Sins I get the feeling I'm going to be disappointed in this regard.
Also, to the guy that told me to try the demo: I couldn't find one, which is part of the reason I bought the game. I won't kid myself: I was going to buy it sooner or later anyway, so sooner it was.
