funny..that shows perfectly, how useless reviews are.

...and the Spacesector review.

Looks like a lot of their gripes came from the slow pace of the early game. Once again it seems like the more mainstream reviews place a premium on how easy a game can be digested.

Most of these reviewers have to play every game that gets released to keep the income coming in.

I can see his point that the early game is brutal. Only the ancient Alpha Centauri on the abundant life forms can match it.  But, I see that as feature, not a bug.

Now that they got it right, I see it becoming another "cult classic".

I don´t find tatical battles shallow. They are short and fun. If i want deeper tactical battle i would play HoMM for example. 

Another example. Deus Ex. A fantastic combination of Shooter and RPG. But i would never complain that the char.development is not as deep as in other RPGs.

Kings Bounty has the best tactical battles

This review seems to be trolling. Everything mentioned about the flow of the game (early, mid, late) appears to be backwards from what you'd expect. However, here too, a lack of depth is mentioned in the tactical battles.

I wouldn't have even considered FE worth buying if they didn't include tactical battles, and are planning on making them more complex. It's half the game.

That's a very good point.  A poster claimed earlier that the reviews are useless because there's no consensus.  I think, rather, it points to the somewhat inconsistent quality of the overall game.

I will say that Fallen Enchantress is greater than the sum of its parts, but I agree with you that there's no one thing we can point to and say, "This is what makes Fallen Enchantress a great game."

I would say quite the contrary - Fallen Enchantress is less than the sum of its parts, because it is trying to do many things that don't really work too well together, hence the (IMO) good observation about the lack of focus in Rock-Paper-Shotgun review.

It tries to do tactical combat, but provides only flat, featureless combat maps where positioning, flanking, support and such do not exist. For whoever's sake - if you do tactical combat, and have cities with walls, please include the walls on the map with gate or breaches as chokepoints. As it is, tactical combat is repetitive and player input is trivial. It's a chore.

It tries to do citybuilding, but the building placement has no importance. You can place an inn next to a gateway or training yard, and there is no effect. Thankfully, autoplace is the default setting, but once again, it's not a gameplay element of importance, it's a chore.

It also did dynasties, but thankfully, that have been scrapped.

Surface complexity is just a fluff if it does not offer deep, varied, and diferrentiated strategies to achieve victory (mutually exclusive would be good too). The fact that the only viable strategy early is the pioneer spam indicates that the game design has problems.

If you want an example of a game that does the strategic balance right, play Settlers 7. It's a wonderful modern remake that is actually deeper, more tense and rewarding than the original game.

I said that reviews are useless, because its simply too subjektiv. They are useless for me as a customer. In one review they talk about tedious endgame and in the other review the middle and endgame is beautifully. I´m sure its the honest opinion of the reviewer. But what does it help for peolpe, who consider buying or not? Nothing! I only can read and inform about the baiscs of the game and then have to try by myself. Only than i can decide, if i like the game or not. 

Reviews are good to read what a game is about. But not if it is good or not. Anyone knows Alpha protocol? I really love this game. For me it was one of the best RPGs of the last years (setting, storytelling, conversation mechanics), but look at the reviews.

Okay kids, some reality checks:

• Reviews are subjective by their very definition.
• Numerical scores for reviews are arbitrary, but reviewers have to give them or else they don't get listed on Metacritic and don't get more page hits.
• Reading a review in its entirety is the only way to make use of it.  Decide if the criticisms are about things you care about or not.  If you want relatively straightforward tactical battles, and the review criticizes them for being simple, then that's actually a plus for you.
• You can't respond to a criticism by saying "but that was a design decision!"  The primary purpose of a review is to judge those design decisions (as well as the quality of their implementation) and whether or not the end result is good.  If all reviews do is tell me how polished a game is, then they're useless.  I'd take an unpolished game with awesome design over a polished one with mediocre design any day.  (Hint: I prefer Paradox games to Blizzard games)

And finally

• It's a sad truth today that games live or die by their Metacritic averages, because no one listens to my points above.

Eh - none of the reviews I've seen even touch on what I consider to be the biggest flaw of the game, which is that making troops is often a really poor decision.  This is what is the disconnect between Heroes and cities, I feel - your Sov and Champs do everything and your cities are only there to support the gold and mana the heroes need, which feels shallow.

If I could adjust it (maybe I can - haven't looked in), practically everything would cost 25% less to build, regular troops (not henchmen or Juggs etc..) woulc be about 50% less and the spawn rate of weaker lairs would be about 50% more, so that a lot more action takes place between your troops, the world and the other factions.

Also, the late game "chore" would be better served by old-style WOM spawning of creatures and quests of higher levels upon any faction hitting the research for those levels.  In this way, the "pacing" setting would do more than simply make sure you aren't standing up against dragons well before the world is at least not at a impossibly handicapped disadvantage vs them

I actually enjoy the tactical battles. Granted, I have been focusing on Beastlord, so there are the creatures' abilities to play with, but still, it is not as shallow an experience as I originally feared. I prefer it over the HoMM-style, but would like some additions from AoW's approach. Anyway, it works for me.

As for the review, well, the usual uninspired write-up by someone who is not into the genre and spent limited time with the game. It is not a title with a huge amount of hype, and the review reflects that (what did they give Civ5?). Bit of a shame, but hopefully more and more people will check forums for opinions rather than looking just at metascores, though yeah ... Who am I kidding!  Personally, I really only pay attention to reviews by Tom Chick and James Allen, and occasionally Eurogamer's stuff, and that's it. 

FE is offering me the best strategy experience this year, and that is something to be grateful for even if some reviewers seem to have different expectations.

I agree with this. FE does not stand out in any part of the game. Each really good game I played stood out in something or many things. New X-com has pretty bad geoscape part but fun and challenging tactical combat part (old X-com was excellent in both base building and tactical battles). Games like Heroes 2,3,6 have (to me) uninteresting city management but make up in fun and interesting battles. Civilization games have terrible  battles (and earlier versions had spearmen defeating tanks lol) but awesome cities/civilization management parts. MoM had awesome fun heroes/spells parts of the game. AoW:SH had really fun combat similar to Heroes in a way and decent city management (a bit better then Heroes in my opinion). Don't get me started on Birth of the Federation which excelled in so many ways (except bugs and late game slowdowns :/).