Just played my first serious game of Legendary Heroes, (been waiting for the major AI work) and must say the game is now very polished and impressive, really good in most areas of game mechanics, gameplay, and graphics - Congratulations!!
For what it's worth, in the never ending quest for game perfection these are the things I found not so good :
1 - In the tactical battles there was insufficient contrast on the potential movement squares for the unit, especially on snow, when I couldn't see the "possible-to-move-to" squares at all. Also, in some of the urban battlescapes with paving slabs it was virtually impossible to see which unit was activated if you had more than one of a given type.
2. - Whilst the AI has definately improved, most noticeably in the use of spells, strategic and tactical, it is still pretty lame. I guess this just shows the near impossibility of developing effective behaviour algorithms for computer games such as this. The subject is vast, but just to mention two specific weaknesses :
The interaction between the monsters and the computer players is not right. As you invade the computer's territory you find loads of monsters that have presumably been hanging about all through the game neither attacking the computer's units or settlements, nor being attacked!
The computer player still tends to react to invasion by spawning loads of pioneers and trying to sneak past you in a hopeless attempt to start obscure new settlements. This is rather like the deliberately vindictive "hide the farm" spoiling tactic used by some people to prevent victory in online multiplayer games!
On the whole though, a brilliant game which I can see will be devouring great chunks of my future time! A real vindication of the interactive development process that Stardock has used. Perhaps their achievement has motivated the recent move to develope a successor to the classic old 3DO Might & Magic games by a similiar player-feedback process?
Cheers
Chris
