i usually do not take the trouble to provide feedback, in fact, i was not even going to buy anyone games from stardock since i got screwed over WOM

then stardock give the offer for me ( early purchaser ) to be give a new version of WOM that will be what i would have wanted originally in the first place and more important had asked for my feedback and also been given the chance to influence the final version

i felt compelled to give it another chance and to take interest again

so far, my first impression, yes most observation is that it is already looking good and definitely can feel the difference from the old WOM

i am not going to repeat what others said but instead try to add some feedback on the look and feel ( aside from the story ) which is what make the difference between a great game and a dull ( mediocre ) game

so here goes ( specs: window 7 on 3 year old pc with 2560x1600 resolution, DEL U3011 lcd monitor with all video spec at max, 5.1 audio )

NOTE: as this is my first try, i may be rehashing old problems or even solved problems

1) after i finished the tutorial and when i start a new game, it crashed into win 7. after that, restart the game and go straight to new game, it's fine

2) when the settle cut scene appeared, there should be some fanfare music but there was just silence

3) notice some audio stuttering in the background music ( or BGM ) whenever scene or selection change.

4) during tactical battle, should limit the colored selection grid which briefly appear ( especially during auto combat) to the currently selected hero and monster and better to change it to a highlighted outline rather than a color tile because it is very distracting and looks chaotic when lots of enemys

and fast pace, the fast pace is good but the color selection tile destroyed the  feeling of battle and make it less attractive to watch the battle

in fact, in the original master of magic, one of the main fun is to watch battles with detailed hero and monster figures, even in 1024x600 resolution.

there is some unique combat animation per hero and monsters and it is unique enough that there is a sense of ownership of the particular hero and therefore, it feels much more personal to take a interest in them - the type of feeling that most MMOs tried to get

unfortunately, FE's tactical battle is ugly because the figures don't look detailed enough and there is not much unique combat animation, hero and monsters are not unique enough in their behavior to take a second look. i.e. after a while, i just press the auto-resolve button

5) notice when i unequip the hate stone did not restore my hero dodge stat

6) felt that it is too tiresome to have to place the cursor on each hero in a stack just to see their stats, it would be better if just placing the cursor over the stack and a tool tip of stats and status will appear with all the heros in the stack, very friendly. this is very important because after a battle, one has to look at all the heroes in the stack to see if they need to heal, wait for mana etc and time wasting to have to select individually ( micro manage ) them

7) general observation: why we can immediately feel the difference between WOM and FE, FE is much faster paced due to tighter GUI or " easier and more intuitive environment and situational control of the gui ( in fact, i have fallen asleep while playing WOM due to too much repetitive and cumbersome micro managment)

8) notice not much change to the hero selection and movement, after some cut scenes or actions related to the hero or situations, the hero stack will lose cursor focus and when i always ended up trying to move the stack but discovered that i have to reselect them again,

the game will be vastly improved in speed and reaction if the GUI has intelligent focus selection and anticipate the user so that we do not lose our attention to such mundane things has having to reselect items or heros which is what causing the boredom after a interesting encounter, one is forced crashing to reality because one forget to reselect due to lost cursor focus,  all this give a unfinished lousy feel to the game

9) the events indication of top right is too cumbersome and slow to use, ( all these cumulative idiocies are part of the things that make for a dull game ) would it be better to just have it pop up the priority level flag in it,

one look and we can see the priority level and decide if we want to look at it first or do something else and when the cursor tip is over it, show the full message and change the flag to a different color to show that we have read it, left click on it to go there, right click on it to clear if we are not interested to read which right now is a two step process,  change it to be intuitive, fast and easy to use 

10) it may be good to use the mouse cursor tool tip method also to allow mouse over objects like city improvements to pop up a descriptive message especially when i want to know how many study or workshop i have in a city or some city stat without having to open yet another screen

in other to have a fast and less micro managment, it is better to less mouse clicking and have brief summary on tool tip, if i want to have a detailed picture, then i will go the total summary screens

11) sometimes it is hard to see monsters on the world and tactical map ( due to option selection for proportional size, this is to add realism to my game world. again unrealistic sizing distract from personal involvement of gamer and will eventually cause loss of interest

12) tactical battles especially auto run battles can do with a magic enable/disable button, or else even for weak monsters the hero uses precious mana to kill obviously weak monsters, this make the whole situation ridiculous and worst , it makes the gamer feel dumb and lessen the sense of identification between gamer and hero and therefore less personal involvement in the game. put in some decision buttons to select things like

allow magic level 1,2,3 etc, stand off attacks, close in per hero or monster, then the tactical battles will begin to feel more personal because

gamer's input becomes important rather than what is happening now where either you just auto run and act dumb because your hero do dumb things

or just click on move, attack or defend and your hero still do dumb things

even then, battles are boring because the battle sounds are inconsistent, whenever dodge appeared, there is not sound attached to it

it would be more realistic if battle sounds like mace or swords should sound like it and swings and jabs and dodge should like one as well 

i am sure not hard to add this, but imagine the atmosphere of the battle

13) created a explorer and auto send him to explorer but immediately after two turns he run smack into a wolf and was attacked

two problems with this

a) since he is a explorer, he should not be easily attacked. i.e. monsters can only attack him if die roll high enough, then a explorer is useful or else what is the point of explorer when they cannot even survive a few turns or fool enough to run straight into monsters ( stupid game??? )

anyway, when that happened, my explorer was not kill but instead survived with only 1 HP but then the game got stuck

it is still sort of running but i cannot select some buttons and if i can, it does not work, the end turn button when clicked grayed out and nothing happened and i cannot move any stack

c) when i press crtl alt del, the game crashed with a message " DX ERR "

so far, i have got to here and have not even encountered any other faction

but