Dear Stardock Gaming Team, dear Derek and Brad,

I think Americans say "Third time is the charm" or "Third time pays for all", and it has payed off with LH. I am a longtime Stardock customer since the early days of GalCiv, and was very dissapointed in late summer of 2009 when Brad closed my thread expressing apprehension and caution just after the announcement that E:WOM had gone gold. I felt all my work and feedback in Beta had been in vain -- and rightly so, after seeing the final product in September. I would have rated that product a 4/10. I thought FE was significantly better, even if I found it dissapointing, and I rate it around 6.5/10.

But LH is much the game I had been anticipating back in the Beta of E:WOM. It has taken a while, and it has payed off. This is a very good fantasy TBS, is solid and is fun to play. With a little more work, I think LH can be a truly great, perhaps even legendary game, one that people will look back on in years as a milestone and a benchmark against which other games must be judged. I'd give LH just shy of 8/10 now.

Currently (1.10), I see only very few flaws, and just a couple of areas in which a fair amount of work would reap huge benefits. These would be:

- the UI. It can still feel clunkly and clumsy at times, with many extra clicks necessary (e.g. manual "done" clicks to close windows, multiple clicks to access the research or design screen), often counter-intuitive ways of trading between and equipping with characters, the way hotkeys are used (cycling units cycles caravans, many hotkeys not customizable), and how armies are managed.  

- the AI. Brad himself has addressed this issue recently and I am sure that progress will be made, but there are many serious issues including AI aggressivity and risk-assessment that need a lot of attention.

- Late Game Tedium: While some of this could be addressed by an improved UI, most of the problems I see is that in the late game, there are fewer and fewer real challenges and real choices open to the player. There is a lack of real disjunctive game-making strategic choices once most of the research tree has been investigated. It can quickly become a slog, where it is often clear that the player will win anyway, so that a sense of closure is often lacking as well. (I posted in-depth about this a few years ago, but I cannot seem to find the post to link to now.)

- Tactical Battles are much better now, but at times can still feel cheesy and immersion-breaking, not only due to the way that the AI handles them or the way that some skills are much more potent than others (see below). I see two areas which could be improved greatly: First, implementing some rudimentary form of terrain-type bonuses and penalties (plains, hills, forest, desert, swamp, city) for most units or factions, utilizing both the value of the tile on the strategic map (e.g. bears get a bonus in forest tiles, Ironmen in hills, etc.) and the individual tiles on the strategic map (being on a hill could give a defensive bonus, etc.). Secondly, implementing a rudimentary form of range calculation for most ranged skills, so that archers, for example, have a slightly less than optimal chance to hit a target on the other side of the tactical board than at point-blank range (while magic staves, for instance, might have an infinite range), and some form of rudimentary line-of-sight calculation (so that obstacles, debris and other units give a slight penalty to hit) -- all of which could be modified by a unit's level or traits.

- Minor Issues of Cheese: Some skills, spells and abilities just feel too powerful, limiting real strategic choices (because they are no-brainers), such as the Tame or the Bash ability, while others just feel goofy, such as the Impale ability.

- Minor Issue of Resource Balance: There always seems to be an overabundance of Metal and a lack of Crystal, and this is mostly because Metal and the things for which it is required are less interesting than Crystal and the things for which it can be used. To increase the amount of real disjunctive strategic choices available in the game, Metal should be made more worthwhile to obtain (e.g. some magic items, like weapons and armour, should require metal as well as crystal).

Much the way that many people thought The Witcher was a fairly suboptimal game upon release, yet its so-called Enhanced Edition (fully patched version) was seen to be a tremendous hit, I am sure that with a few patches and the addressing of some of these issues, LH could be a 9/10 or more.

Thank you for all of your effort and stamina!