I am having a lot of fun with the v1.4 patched versioin.  For me that is the measure of a games worth -  is it fun to play?  With the patched version and a couple days play under my belt I say yes to 20$.

It still has some bugs.  For example, there is one in combat where everything freezes up and it reports the side with only one unit left has zero hit points when you mouse over it but the bar on the bottom still shows health.  I have to ALT+CNTRL+DEL to get to task manager and shut the game down cause after watching the screen for 8 minutes I still could not do anything.  So I autosave and manually save often.  For some people that would be a deal breaker.  But for me the customization I can do in the game, even with me not being a programer, makes it very interesting and a stand out from the pack game.

Trinity is 9.99.

That deal has sailed by on boats that were deleted from the game. Don't get me me wrong, I love frozen pizza, it's just bad timing. 

IMO, the campaign is a lost cause. I hate campaigns.  For FE, we had Jon Shafer (Civ V's designer) write it which resulted in something much better.

In WOM, it was the opposite, the guy who drew the short straw did it (poor Boogieback).  We just don't like campaigns generally. I still don't like them but understand the need better to have them be more compelling as a lot of gamers seem to play that first (I still haven't touched the Starcraft 2 campaign).

Nope.

I like campaigns, though I understand how that can be up to the individual gaming companies.  I mean, naturally I do not like Dark Avatar's campaign.  It had the makings of being really good, and just a little more polish would have made it really good.   Stardock needed somebody with a heart for the campaign. 

Starcraft II's campaign was one of the best I've ever played.  Utter Darkness is my favorite battle within it. 

I tend to like campaigns in general, particularly as a form of tutorial.  One problem is that campaigns which also serve as a tutorial do not tend to have good replay value.   The nonlinear campaigns like Rise of Nations:TnP, Rise of Legends, and Warlords:Battlecry 2 are among my favorites, but they have no tutorial value.  In fact, the first battles are the hardest.  CnC's campaign was really good, but the Scrin was bugged.

I've played every C&C campaign, and I didn't find Tiberian Sun particularly memorable.  But then, I tend to remember the C&C campaigns according to how hot the chics are in the cutscenes. 

Legowarrior - If you decide to buy E:WOM, Heavenfall has a MOD that addresses many of the issues the game still has.

He is really good and his work can be trusted.   

https://forums.elementalgame.com/412225

I like campaigns that introduce me to gameplay mechanics, important characters, and give me a "feel" of the world I am playing in.  But, I will play 0.01% of my gaming time in a campaign.  I played a billion hours of GalCivII and only played the original campaign about 1/3rd the way through.

The campaign wasn't too terrible. Just real buggy, and didn't a good job as a tutorial.  But it did introduce characters, gave you a feel for the different human kingdoms.  It wasn't awful, it just suffered from being in a very buggy game along with one that changed a lot with patches and no one cared enough to keep the campaign up to date.  

I agree with you on this Frogboy. I have never played a TBS (or for that matter RTS or Shooter) campaign that was better than the Sandbox version of the games. Campaigns tend to be to constrictive and linier. Sandox is always ther better choice in any game to include RPG's (I.E Fallout 3 and Rage)