Hi y'all!

Due to bandwidth issues (no job + a 5 GB/mo limit on the 4G), I've not been able to download Fallen Enchantress for a while now, let alone Legendary Heroes.  My situation finally changed for the better, and I was able to take advantage of someone's WiFi for a bit (still took about 4 hours to download both updates, which were over 3 GB each), and after hammering through some issues I am up and running.

Note:  I ran into the 'side by side configuration is incorrect' error with both installs.  Specifically, this:

"The application has failed to start because its side-by-side configuration is incorrect. Please see the application event log or use the command-line sxstrace.exe tool for more detail."

Of course, there WAS no application event log, as the game would not start, so after a couple of hours poring through threads here, here's what I did (for those who run into this problem)

I downloaded this: http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/B/4/8B42259F-5D70-43F4-AC2E-4B208FD8D66A/vcredist_x86.EXE, as suggested by Derek.  It didn't seem to be installing correctly (installer would stop in the middle of the process with no messages or such).  I came across a suggestion on the Microsoft site (I think) that said to uninstall all instances of the Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 Redistributable (under Programs and Features in Vista 32 Bit), which I had multiple instances, and then run the installer to reinstall the latest 2005 version.  I uninstalled the 2010 C++ as well just to be safe, which I may need to reinstall later for Blender, but I digress...

So, in Vista, I cleaned out/deleted the C++ 2005 stuff in Programs and Features, reinstalled it with above link, and everything was suddenly working perfectly!  FYI for the next person searching for info on this...

Anyways, I jumped right in and started playing.  I designed my own faction, very nice set of options so far thank you very much, designed my custom Sovereign and it was off to the races.  BTW, my custom faction is Kingdom with Amarian traits.

Real quick, I'm still having that issue with clicking on on the square in combat or in movement and having movement displaced a square or two every so often.  This is an 'old' issue with Elemental, and is still an annoyance.  But I digress...

I played for about 8 hours straight.  At one point, the game graphics were taking a really really long time to refresh (I had 'black' areas on the screen after a turn message came up that weren't reloading), but I simply saved and reloaded and all was good.  No crashes per se, and I have an older (2007) laptop with old drivers (AMD's Catalyst Control panel won't let me update, saying I have custom Graphics, and Toshiba hasn't updated the drivers since they released my laptop, so I'm stuck, but Elemental is working fine regardless).

On to my observations:

I like the new 'skill tree' for the Heroes/Sovereign.  This is very similar to the idea I and several others asked for a while back during the FE beta, with a much prettier implementation than I envisioned at the time.  Kudos to the Stardock staff on this!

The new Fame mechanic to attract more Heroes is a nice touch.  Under FE, I was snagging any Hero I could afford, to form stacks of doom.  Hence, the heroes didn't really have any 'special personalities'.  Now that there are a much more limited number, and now that the skill trees allow for more variety, I'm finding myself more attached to the heroes than I was under FE.  Sure, there is always room for improvement, but now I actually think of each hero by name, and for his/her skillset, rather than as just as another warm body.

The Cities also (finally) seem to have a little more flavor.  The three choices (Research/Fortress/Town) seem to matter a lot more than they did before.  However, there is still the same issue from before in that, when it is time to level up a city, there is no way to look over the map real quick and see what is going on around that city (i.e. once the options window loads, the map is 'locked' in the background).  So, if you aren't keeping side notes, or saving often in case you need to go back, you are still guessing a bit as to which city (and nearby improvements and such) you are dealing with.  It'd be nice to be able to see how the city is doing upon leveling up before choosing a path for it.  This becomes more of an issue in the later game when you conquer enemy cities, and your city count goes up.

I was having some issues trying to place some upgrades manually.  I'm thinking that since I was upgrading an existing structure, this was my problem, but it might not be a bad idea to state more clearly in the descriptor 'this building upgrades this other building' so that you aren't wondering why the game isn't showing you a building to place.

I'm liking a lot of the new upgrades for cities.  Again, kudos to the Stardock staff on this one.

I'm perfectly fine with 'city spam', always was (I play Gal Civ II a lot, so you have a lot of planets to upgrade in that one).  That being said, I did notice that the cities 'natural placement locations' seem a lot further apart in this version, thanks to not being allowed to place them in desolate areas.  This led to some interesting strategic decisions, as once I hit five cities the fifth was the target of choice of the Ythril, and was razed several times while I was scrambling to keep the invaders out of two other cities.  The Ythril are now paying for their insolence, but I digress.  This seems to be a move in the right direction, as more spread out empires are harder to defend than tight clusters.

I'm not sure what this 'outpost' thing is all about yet, and I haven't built one yet.  Maybe I should actually go through the tutorial (Tutorials are for wussies LOL!)?  I did take out an outpost out when I was beating up the Ytrhil, so I know they are there...  I'll figure this out on my own, so no complaints here.  I'll do a thread search once I finish this post to get up to speed.

Road movement seems a lot faster than in older versions, which I think is a good thing.  Back in the Elemental and Fallen Enchantress days, I was suggesting that movement really should be doubled, so essentially 'doubling' the road movement is a nice way to go about that while still keeping exploration in the early stages at a slower pace, and increasing the importance of roads.

Power levels between units seem a little better than before, but again the Familiar is dead meat on the battlefield, and Annie the Dog too once you start approaching the midgame.  At least they level up now, but 8 hit Familiars have no business on the battlefield.  I was choosing a Summoner path, and I did note the 'Increase Summoning Level' upgrades which I picked, but my Familiar, once killed, was re-appearing at 8 hp... So now I leave the Familiar in a well protected city, where it creates new Air Elementals to send to the front line when they are killed in battle.  Not really what I had in mind, but unless they get tougher that's the safest thing to do, especially where you lose a HP every time one is summoned.

This brings up a much needed enhancement for Elemental: Formations!  You should be able to choose which units deploy nearest the Sovereign/Back, and which ones are placed farther away.  I know that the current implementation is to simulate fog of war a bit, but all this does is kill weak units almost instantly if they are placed near a stronger foe in the initial placement.  So, at the very least, an easy way to 'reorganize' the order of a unit stack, with the units at the top favoring locations nearer the Sovereign might be nice at some point.

Also, I'm not sold on the missle weapons (bows) having unlimited range.  As far as I can tell, there isn't an accuracy dropoff for long range shots, which at the very least should be the case.  I liked the range limits in older versions of Elemental, and wouldn't mind seeing them back (so you don't have a bowman in one corner of the map shooting at the bowman in the opposite corner of the map like it's no big thing...).

The creatures appearing at Mana Shrines is new.  I like it, but haven't figured out how often this happens yet.  I find myself lamenting their loss in combat, which means they have meaning.  Meaning shows interest, which is a good thing.  Definitely not just cannon fodder, although in any battle all units are essentially cannon fodder to a degree.  But devastating losses in battle take time to replace, so I think this mechanic is working pretty well.

I like the 'buy a quest' option.  As I've never really managed to get the economies rolling since say the original Elemental (trust me, I'm trying, but as I'm not sure what the effects of unrest are yet I'm scared to go above the 40% tax rate), I'm thinking personal items and such are still a little overpriced, especially in light of everything else that gildar is used for.  But I haven't played LH long enough yet to have an informed opinion on this, so this is just an observation for now.

I've seen a couple of threads now that suggest that Heroes should earn 1 xp every turn regardless, in addition to the XP they already earn.  This fits with a suggestion several of us made during the FE playtest, that is that XP should be earned for non-combat activities (such as building new structures in cities, training new units, etc.), so that Governors have a source of XP to increase their expertise.  Again, this shouldn't be a large award, but it should be significant enough to have an impact, and make sidelined heroes more useful.

Of course, this would likely mean repurposing the Adventurer's Guild.  When I first saw that upgrade, I was thinking 'Cool!  Something that will help attract heroes more often, I want one!'  One per empire is plenty, and having it add to fame instead of XP just makes sense to me.  'Cuz you know the legendary heroes like to go to their favorite pub and brag about their exploits...

On another note, that quest where you earn the three brothers?  I find myself liking to keep them around my sovereign!  They are just tough enough to hang for a good part of the early game, especially since they level up, and it's nice that if one survives, you keep all three.  I've actually reloaded a couple of times when they were killed in combat, just to keep them around in MY story.  It'd be nice if there was a resurrection option (for 'x' number of gildar of course) for your favorite units (or dog for you Annie fans), but that's a minor nitpick...

Note to the Elemental team:  One 'keyboard shortcut' that would be nice would be one that toggles between all of your heroes, whether they are in cities or elsewhere on the map.  This would make it very easy to see if that hero that lost his last fight is ready for action yet, without having to click on all of your cities trying to figure out where he ended up when he was carted off the battlefield...

Overall, I'm liking where LH is a lot.  Note I still like where Elemental started, and LH seems to be getting back to that place to a degree.  It was fun having that Dragon fighting alongside my Fire Elemental, Familiar, and Stone Giant in the original Elemental, and it looks like I can get a lot of that 'feeling' back with the current version.  Trying to get that second eye (Dragon Quest) has proven to be quite the challenge, however.  My sovereign stack may be 'mighty', but that fort with all of the knightly types in it is no pushover, so now I'm trying to gain enough upgrades to finally take those guys out...

More specific stuff later, once I've had the time to evaluate the design more fully, but this feels a lot more adventurous to me than FE did, so good job Stardock and specifically the Legendary Heroes team!!!