The Good:

I LOVE the direction you guys are taking this game. i've always loved master of magic, so the closer to that, the better. This is not to say i'm afraid of the new rpg aspects, i love them too. but the fame system is, imo, much better and creates a better feeling when playing. Not just that, but the leveling system, too, helps that feeling. It almost reminds me of Diablo, another game i love, but in master of magic. That's beautiful no matter how you look at it. The new monsters and the addition of undead pushes more variety into the units of the game, which i whole-heartedly embrace. i rarely get all the magic in the game so the new spells are but a nice little addition. Though the graphics don't seem entirely too "updated", i do see a difference from before, and definitely in the character models. they just look much crisper. I can't wait to try the larger map size, because theres just something about knowing you have a huge world to explore makes me happy and adventurous. The new way to do battles will take a little getting used to, but it is an improvement. Lastly, Steamworks was a good idea. I don't make mods, but i've tried a couple, and let me tell you that there are some creative and talented elemental lovers out there. Steamworks should eliminate my only complaints with the old way to do mods (not that the old way very hard either).

The Bad:

The game is still missing some key components to really give the player that feeling of being in a fictional world. Yes, we want it to be fictional and magical and such, but there are certain things that add realness, or maybe credibility, to the illusion of this fiction. I believe the major problem here is making bodies of water more a part of the world. I've always liked playing on islands with strategy games, and thats impossible the way the game is now. Ships and sea creatures are beyond our channelers knowledge. Most of my problems are with this one. I'd also like to see a button for a menu that has slots for our heroes equipped items and what slots he can equip, so it looks nicer when we are looking at our champions equipment (though this is just a small thing). Another small thing i'd like is more creature diversity. just a bit. The creature base in FE and LH is amazing, but most of the enemies are humanoid, and so theres a slight repetition there. elemental type enemies are very creative and unique, but powerful enough to be somewhat sparse. just a few monsters in each element and it would make quite the difference.

The Bugly:

I have only seen one bug so far- blank tech slots. the tooltip tells me what it is, but there is no name in its slot in the tech tree window. it is quite random, and affects different tech.s every time. I'm sure this will be resolved in a future update.

Thats about it. Well done Stardock! and keep up the good work.